Our friend had ordered a delivered poon choi. Ok – so I then assumed it must be a banquet of dishes just delivered to the apartment. When the delivery driver arrived he handed over one huge bag with a big round thing inside it. As the plastic was pulled back it revealed a giant metal bowl filled with what looked predominantly like meat. It looked amazing. All I could say was “wow”.

Prawns, chicken, roast duck, roast pork, scallops … and that was just the TOP layer. What I soon discovered is that this giant bowl is several dishes combined into one big pot. The bowl was placed on top of a gas stove (like you would use for steamboat) and heated up slowly until steam was blissfully rising from beneath. With the meat on top warmed up, everyone began to eat the top layer – the meat. All the meats were delicious.

With enough meat removed from the bowl, green veges were added – in this case chinese lettuce. Left to stew in the soupy juices it took on the mixed meat flavour which was actually very tasty. Also hiding below the meats were more meats – steamed pork, abalone – turnip, mushrooms and other delights all soaking in a brown broth. The turnip in particular was incredibly yummy. The flavour went all the way through the big chunks as they soaked up a lot of the both and juices. As the broth got a little low, more broth was added – extra broth was included in a bottle along with the big bowl of food.

Paper thin tofu and thin bean noodle balls were added to give even more variety and soak up the broth as well. Everyone was so full and there was still food left!

This poon choi fed at least 10 adults! Nothing short of amazing.

As for the big metal bowl? Believe it or not you keep it. It is included in the price which is barely HK$100 per person. It also has a grill inside on the bottom to stop the food burning and sticking to the bottom.

What a great social event to share among friends. We had the best time. Chinese certainly know how to make food a social gathering. I want to do one of these at our place one of these days.

As for the Mah Jong – we had a great time. It was social and we all moved around and shared the spots so everyone got to have a go. Full of laughter and competitive but enjoyable banter it was loads of fun.

I know what you sick people are thinking, but you’re WRONG!

The bun is shaped to look like a dog (although I thought it was a sheep at first). It is a steamed bun with a chinese sausage in the middle served at yum cha.

And the bunnies are marshmellow … mmm … mmm … mmm

These are but a couple of the interesting delicacies you can find at Superstar Seafood Restaurant in Times Square, Causeway Bay. This is one of the large Yum Cha restaurants in Causeway Bay with a reasonable range of dishes. Their food isn’t fantastic, but for the most part it is convenient, enjoyable and edible.

One word of warning though – don’t try the penguins – they’re yucky.

The busiest part of the fair are the novelty stalls. They sell all kinds of crazy products – mostly junky stuff that probably won’t last more than a week – as well as Chinese New Year trinkets and ornaments, snack foods and the like.

The photos above show a couple of the novelty stalls. One is selling giant inflatable chicken on a bone stick, while the other is selling poopie plushies. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the Asian fascination with poop.

The crowds are huge so the stalls are guarenteed good business, but it doesn’t stop the vendors trying to out-shout each other and put on spectacles of showmanship to get the crowds attention. Bethany was having a hard time of it all as a literal sea of people ebbed and flowed down the wide alleys of stalls until we finally reached the flower section of the fair.

It was certainly quieter in that we had room to breath but as is they way of Hong Kong certainly plenty of people around. Vibrant colours were everywhere with a diverse range of flowers waiting for people to take them home and brighten up their homes to welcome the new year.

Orchids were very popular as well as Mandarin and Cumquat trees shaped and cultivated in a variety of sizes and designs.

I couldn’t get over the colours in the flowers – pinks, oranges, yellows and even green. I couldn’t figure out if it was natural or not. Each colour seemed so vivid I am still not sure how they got the flowers to be the colours they were.

There were a lot of vendors selling orchard blossom trees. The idea being the blossoms will bloom in the New Year and bring good luck. It was a little like choosing your own Christmas tree as people took their time choosing their own blossom tree from the wide selection on offer. There were plenty of empty blue buckets where many trees had already been sold and taken away.

Bethany came away from the fair tired and a little grumpy from the crowds. However she did manage to get herself a little memento … just a small trinket of a thing …

Well … ok … maybe a big red lucky dragon. She was pretty happy about that.

The flower fair only stays up until Chinese New Year. By Chinese New Year day the stalls are already being taken down. The day after Chinese New Year day you couldn’t even tell there had been a fair there at all!

When we got home they couldn’t wait to put them on and give us a fashion show. Mitchell eagerly got dressed up and strutted around singing a chinese new year song much to our delight. You can see a short video of the kids singing here. As a side note, all the decorations on the door behind them were created by Bethany. We’re very proud of her for writing in Chinese.

Mitchell happily got dressed up to head off to school in his Chinese New Year outfit. He was so happy when we went downstairs to wait for his school bus and he discovered his classmates were all dressed up too.

Don’t they look adorable in their red and gold?
Mitchell had a wonderful day and participated in all his Chinese New Year activities. My little boy is growing up and inch by inch he is becoming more open to trying new things and wearing different clothes. Hopefully he’ll have a great year of the Dragon!

In the middle of Disneyland was a lantern adorned with giant golden dragons.

The centre spun around showing a montage of the classic Disney characters. Look closely and you might just find Mushu in this picture too!

Around the rest of the park were various coloured dragons.

These are just a couple of the dragons we encountered. Lady and the Tramp – one of my all time favorite movies, and Aladdin’s Genie.

Bethany decided to rub his lamp and make a wish!

And BAM! There was Mushu. The kids couldn’t leave the park without wishing him a happy year of himself.

Yep … B is for BETHANY! And even Disneyland want you to know “This is it!”

Her brief was “dress scary”.  After a lot of deliberation and mulling around Pottinger Street (the area in Central that specialises in costumes), Titus decided to make use of the Terminator leather jacket I got him many years back. To complete his ensemble we stopped off at the Wan Chai toy markets where he was able to get a replica gun (scarily with bb pellets included).

He got into character walking down one of the main streets of Wan Chai. I was freaked out both by how creepy he looked AND the fact I didn’t want him arrested. He certainly drew a lot of attention.

I went for the basic monster mask approach …

The birthday girl loved our costumes. She couldn’t stop roaring with laughter at Titus as he kept pulling out his gun and asking her guests if they were Sarah Connor.

Was a great night and great fun but I can assure you my kids will never be getting a hold of that gun!

The tour we went on used a boat to take us around to various locations. Our first stop was Sharp Island where the kids explored the coastline for shells, walked up the trail in Kui Tsui Country Park and got to see a “pineapple” rock.These boulders scattered along the shoreline and tidal bridge are named after ‘pineapple’ buns, which have this lined and lumpy texture and actually have nothing to do with the fruit they are named for. They are created from weathering, contraction and expansion of the mineral makeup of the rock. On Sharp Island we also got to see quartz outcrops. I got to show the kids a few examples around the shoreline where they could see the translucency and difference between it and the surrounding rock. The kids loved exploring the rocks after that, realising there was more to the rocks around them than what they thought.

We hopped back on the boat and were taken around some rugged coastline. We travelled past virtually inaccessible but incredibly private beaches, water bashed caves possibly used  by pirates centuries ago and even a stone arch.

My background in geography and geology meant I was totally fascinated by the structures we were seeing, but the kids also seemed to take an interest in what was around us which was great to see.

After stopping on an island for a seafood lunch (included in the price of the tour), we hiked up over the island and the landscape eventually opened up to this …

I couldn’t believe we were still in Hong Kong. This was the last thing I expected to see … a near tropical beach with crystal blue water. Needless to say were were very taken by the breathtaking view and the cleanliness of the beach.

The kids could have stayed here all day and so could I. The guide told us you can actually pay to use an area just off the beach to pitch tents and camp here. If I can ever convince Titus to go camping, this beach would be an awesome place to escape from everything. The hinterland around the beach had wild cows – their parents were just left there many years ago and the cows have continued to thrive in a small herd since.

The final stop on our tour was to an abandoned Hakka village – ‘Yim Tin Tsai Village’. The only part of this island that seems to have had any preservation on it is a church which is kept in beautiful condition. Everywhere else you look you see abandoned ruins of what I can only imagine would have been a very quaint village in times past.

The ruins were beautiful in their own way, surrounded in lush green foliage as the jungle slowly grows over the homes. No one could tell me why the residents deserted the island. I can’t help but wonder as these houses would make very nice homes by Hong Kong standards if they were renovated to their former glory.

Most of the village looks out over salt fields. Villagers used to harvest salt but now only the tidal crabs seem to make use of the fields. The fields were bordered by mangroves offering a barrier between the sea and the land.

We walked around the village through bamboo forest, eventually coming to what we thought was a dam, but turned out to be a breakwater barrier which acts as a typhoon shelter. The barrier connects the island with the Kau Sai Chau golf course.

On our way back to the boat, we passed an abandoned girl guides complex. Surrounded by prison fencing and masses of rusting barbed wire I couldn’t help but wonder whether the barriers were put there to keep the girls in or to keep everyone else out. It certainly would make an interesting setting for a horror novel.

As we rode our boat back to Sai Kung pier the sun was beginning to set and the kids quietly pondered everything they had seen. Mitchell sat at the back of the boat mesmerised by the waves and foam forming in the wake of where we had been.

I wasn’t sure the kids would enjoy a day where we spent a good part of it looking at rocks, but they did. In fact everyone on our tour came away with a new appreciation of what is hidden in Hong Kong if you just take the time out and the effort to explore.

Santa ate his cookies and drank his milk. The reindeer ate a lot of their carrot and made a mess. Santa used sparkly wrapping paper that the kids had never seen in the shops and the magic weaved its spell over both the kids.

Once again the kids were spoilt with a bounty of gifts surrounding our tree. This year Mitchell was truly into the spirit of ripping wildly into his presents, although he has a ways to go to catch up to the speed of Bethany.

Bethany appears to have outgrown much of what I would expect a normal 7 year old to be into with her sole surviving interest being that of Littlest Pet Shop. She was suitably delighted when she discovered Santa had brought her a LPS treehouse to play with all her pets. Mitchell meanwhile was also happy to discovered Santa had read his letter and given him a giant airplane.

There is nothing as joyful as seeing the sparkle of happiness Christmas morning brings to our kids.

First up was my birthday. I’m old. Not OFFICIALLY old … I have to wait until the end of 2012 for that, but I am old. I’m now living my last year of the dirty thirties and to see that in Titus and the kids took me out for a birthday lunch where I was given my ‘cake’ …

Chinese birthday buns to be more correct. This is a bun, not dissimilar to those which are used in bbq pork buns (char siew bau). However these buns are larger, shaped like a peach and filled with a lotus paste, and sometimes a baked egg yoke as well. They are generally only made to order and YUMMY!

On the actual day of my birthday the kids thought it would be a nice day to have a picnic and bike ride. I totally agreed with them so we headed out to Inspiration Lake – an area of Disneyland set aside for free public access – and took a ride around the lake.

Mitchell and I hired a four-wheeler. He had a blast ‘steering’ it with me as we followed behind Bethany. We spent an hour exploring the whole bike track and taking in the scenery. Being away from a lot of the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong it was relatively quiet and peaceful … the only lingering evidence we were in Hong Kong was the ever present pollution mist that hovers unending in the air above us.

We stopped in different spots to explore the vegetation and run on the grass. No ‘keep off the grass’ signs here.

We ended the afternoon sitting on the grass enjoying our lunch together. Our first picnic in Hong Kong was a great way to unwind and relax and just have fun with my kids. It was perfect!

To end my day, Titus and the kids took me out to dinner with one of my favorite cuisines – Teppen-yaki!

 The kids took a front row seat and were completely mesmerised by the chef as he worked his magic. They tried almost everything he created and spent the whole evening smiling as dish after dish was prepared before their eyes.

A prefect day with my family – I am one very lucky mum indeed.