Kowloon City Market

Surfing through the Hong Kong Streets with Google Maps street view got me to the Kowloon City Market which is near the park that they turned the Kowloon Walled City into. I thought I wrote all this stuff down somewhere but I can't find it. Or maybe I was just surfing. In any case, one needs to cross Prince Edward Road early because it is very difficult to find a crossing further on. Sort of like crossing a freeway. Cars can't even do it. The Kowloon City Market Cooked Food Center is open from 6 am to 2 am every day.
At the base of the drive that goes from Prince Edward Road to the Royal Plaza Hotel there is a crosswalk that will take you to the other side of Prince Edward to the Flower Market.

Streets of Hong Kong

As I'm clicking along Hong Kong streets in Google Map's street view, I'm looking up things about them, for instance, Portland Street which runs parallel between Shanghai Street and Nathan Road. Because it has little shops, it looks interesting but Wikipedia says that it is also a famous red light district between Dundas and Argyle Streets. Good to know I suppose although it looks pretty innocuous in the Google street view early in the morning.
North of the swanky Langham Place mall, there are tile and building material stores. Perhaps we can go down Shanghai Street and then up Portland Street and then down Nathan Road. After all, Portland street is only 3/4 mile in length.
It might also be interesting to take a look at the "shop houses" or tong-lau on Shanghai Street. The wikipedia article led me to Hong Kong University's Hong Kong Heritage Stories. Fantastic! more for me to read!
Now I am at Yin Chong Street near Fa Yuen (Sneaker from Soy Street to Nelson Street) Street and going east it is full of fruit and vegetables stands. There is a waffle shop at 95 Fa Yuen just before Argyle Street, but then you can't cross Argyle street so I'll have to take a right. It is quite easy to navigate the street view if you make it full screen and then use the up and down arrows to move forward and back ward and the right and left arrows to change direction. After the right on Argyle you can take the next left on Sai Yee Street and at #121 there is a Lei Garden Restaurant. That is where CNNGo Top 40 article says to go for Chicken Feet. Then take a left on Fife Street and back to Fa Yuen. A right on Fa Yuen will take you another block or so but then you are foiled again by Mong Kok Road but that is near the Fa Yuen Street Complex with a wet market inside and a Mong Kok footbridge network overhead. Evidently the Mong Kok footbridge is the only way to cross Mong Kok Road, and it is also hard for cars to cross it. Tung Choi Street seems to be one of the few streets that goes through. Evidently the photos taken south of Bute Street were taken later in the day since all the store fronts are open. But north of Bute Street, Tung Choi is very deserted with store fronts closed up.
If you keep going north on Tung Choi you eventually run into Prince Edward and if you hang a right, you get to the Royal Plaza Hotel. If you keep going beyond the hotel, there is a right on Kadoorie Avenue which winds up into a residential area that is very pretty and quiet (and probably quite expensive) and would make a nice morning walk to get away from the hustle and bustle of the shops. This is a very wealthy and thinly populated area so I don't understand how they could say that Kowloon is the most densely populated area in the world. Kadoorie Avenue loops around the hills and then down to Argyle Street.

CNNGo: 40 Hong Kong foods we can't live without

I came across this article looking for tofu pudding. The subtitle is "Street-style comfort foods, reptiles, and a lot of pork -- here are our picks of the most delicious and iconic food items of this foodie's paradise". So there are 40 items we should try (or maybe not, I'll pass on the stinky tofu, chicken feet, snake soup and cow offal). Juan and Mandy, which do you recommend?? Maybe a wife or sweetheart cake?
And I notice that OpenRice.com has an iphone app but alas it is in Chinese.

BC Magazine

I still haven't found out what "BC" stands for (British colony?) but BC Magazine includes restaurant reviews. In this issues Urban Delights, they mention the neighborhood of Sai Ying Pun, sandwiched between Sheung Wan to the east and Shek Tong Tsui and Kennedy Town to the west on Hong Kong Island. The MTR doesn't go there so you'll have to go by tram or bus.
They mention the Ba Yi Restaurant: Flavours of the West, that sounds interesting: Specializes in cuisine of Xinjiang province of western China. Their specialties are the roasted lamb skewers ($30/5pc) and Xinjiang noodles ($23); camel, mutton or beef with pancake wrap, traditional Xinjiang salad, fresh cold yoghurt drink. I put it on my google map.
Another issue has an article on summer desserts, and they mention Honeymoon Desserts, which has a Thai Black Glutinous Rice and Mango in Coconut milk that sounds good. Some of the other ones I'd like to taste (Durian Glutinous Dumpling, Red Bean & Green Bean Soup, Sweet Ball & Sesame Soup & Walnut Soup, Mango Pomelo & Sago Grass Jelly with Sweet Soup). There's a branch in Langham Place.

GOOGLE MAP NOW HAS STREET VIEWS OF HONG KONG

Wow!!! It just happened!
Now we can drag the little guy for a street level view of Hong Kong
Check it out on my google map!
Is this in conjunction with the Google China move to Hong Kong?? Evidently it happened March 15th.

36 Hours in Hong Kong

On Sunday, The New York Times ran a 36 Hours in Hong Kong. Of course, most of it recommends night clubs and drinking holes we would never go to, upscale stores (T-Shirts for US$120) and chic restaurants we can't afford. One really has to look hard for information that we can use, like maybe the great views from the urinals in the Peninsula Hotel.
Although maybe we could afford the Dim Sum at City Hall Maxim's Palace and they do recommend getting off the Midlevel Escalators to visit Cat Street. However they link to sites for "serious antiguities" and "contemporary galleries" rather than simple chinese arts and crafts and odds and ends, but then those types of stores don't have websites. And the second day, they send you to Stanley, the tourist haven for souvenirs. No Temple Street Night Market or Mong Kok or Yau Ma Tei.

Maotai, Mooncakes & Monks

Currently I'm reading a book by expat Hong Konger Jessica Bellas about her experience living in Hong Kong, to which she moved in 2006. It was printed in Hong Kong and the only reason I can figure that the Green Tree Public Library had an autographed copy is that the author was born in Library, PA, in the South Hills. It is fairly interesting even though it is supposedly a compilation of emails she sent home, essentially a blog. One thing becomes clear: there is a large expatriate community in Hong Kong which appears to operate independently and quite separately from the Chinese majority. Bellas ostensibly moved to Hong Kong to get away from George W. Bush but the choice of Hong Kong, run by big business and government bureaucracy with little input from the people, seems like a weird alternative.

Arts and Crafts and Souvenirs

This is a collection of figures from Cat Street on Hong Kong Island taken by Laszlo Ilyes, an engineer from Cleveland. They remind me of the Ekeko god of abundance from Peru and the Caga Tío from Barcelona. I definitely need one of them to round out my collection.

City Between Worlds

So that I don't forget the name of this book on Hong Kong that I enjoyed because it was well written and informative, here are the details:
City Between Worlds: My Hong Kong
By Leo Ou-Fan Lee