Went to Stanley Market this past weekend to get a bit of the non shopping side of Hong Kong. It was extremely hot, so I wasn't able to go kayaking ,but the views from the number 6/6x buses were nice. Below are a few of the more notable pics.

(The Boathouse restaurant, decent food costing 480 for 2 people with sodas)
Stanley Beach (fenced off for recent shark warnings)

This is how they roll in Hong Kong

You've got to have THE car, not just any car. It must be a luxury vehicle. You get bonus points for loud engines. Multiple vehicles, rare vehicles.

Anything else would be uncivilized.

Once you get it/them, you have to annoint it with all that shows that you are in the SAR game. Club plates, China plates (USD 50,000 gets you this right), a driver. Once you're there you can't just rest on your laurels, as the guy who's got the adjacent parking space in your building has told you about the deposit he's just placed for the 2008 lambo. You've got to get a package - Brabus rims, Chanel upholstery, German glass.... (yea, couldn't think of anything better).

Custom suits don't mean all that much, as they come quite cheap here. However, well-tailored name brand suits / custom-tailored high-end cloth will definitely get you on the list. Even if you only make 20K/year, you've got to get the thousand-dollar her outfit if you work in Central. You can't show up to work without the latest in heels either.

Everyone's an investor, and these days - everyone makes bank in the market (except me). A friend told me that he was recently at the well-known rich man's Chinese restaurant, and chatted it up with a waiter. The waiter ended up revealing that he'd invested his savings into one of the many Chinese bank IPOs in HK, and he'd netted HKD4mn (USD500K+)... yes, he's still a waiter.

You've got to have a maid... or two or three. Heaven forbid that you actually have to raise your own children! Feed them? Bathe them? Dress them? Not for any self-respecting HK-er. They'll just get a few Bun-Moy's or a few Nepalese. They're like US$600-$1000 / month for full-time live-in service. You can ask them to make you any food you want, anytime. Clean this, clean that!
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Bored of Happy Valley Food

I'm so sick of the food in Happy Valley. I've gone through my local HK cha can tang phase, where you can get dinner for US$4. That ended when I found a piece of twine in my bitter melon beef (they said it was from the veggies). The rice there is also pretty bad, kind of day old and wettish. Incidentally, I like to get Wat Dan (slimy egg) anything, or Chicken with Corn. Next I went through the higher quality Chinese food phase, (Pang's kitchen), where dinner will set you back about 10 to 15 USD (rice costs extra!). I've also (briefly) gone through the McDonalds phase, given that it's open 24 hours and costs even less than the US. I've most recently gone through the Western food phase, satisfying it with Il Bel Paese, the local italian grocer which thankfully offers ready made pastas and sides. The cheese there is actually priced competitively vs. City Super or the Great.



If I want to go upscale a little bit on the weekend with 1 or 2 of the friends I have in HK, I can go to Yakitori Tei and Barbarian, which are equally good yakitori places (Tei has better atmosphere, but I've never been upstairs at Barbarian which seems to be more happening than the small downstairs).

King's Palace Congee is another midend (my hyphen key broke) Chinese place, that features a BBQ pork dish called SIK SUN (or god of food/cooking, like the Stephen Chow movie). It's good but has a oddly likeable sauce on the rice. It also comes with a fried egg on it.

There's a famous roast meat place on Sing Woo Rd, but it's not that great. It's practically free, but the BBQ pork is not all that. It's actually not as fatty as you'd like it to be.

Note: Tonight I went to Times Square to find some decent food. Unfortunately, all I found was some discounted City Super spider roll. I trammed it back to the Valley and had a chicken sandwich and a big n tasty. God help me...