Hong Kong - 3

A trip to Hong Kong will not be complete without a dim sum treat. On the third day of this trip, we took the tram (I've developed a serious fond for the tram by now) from our hotel to Central again for a quest to search for the authentic dim sum restaurant - Luk Yu Restaurant.

Hong Kong dim sum place is known for its packed crowd and patrons needs to posses skill to spot potentially leaving customers to secure a seat and to put on the invisible wall to shield you & your company from the rest of the strangers who are sharing the same table while in the mean time trying your best grabbing skill to grab one or two of the freshly make dim sum from kitchen yourself.

I find the busy, loud and fast moving environment in Hong Kong a bit intimidating and are really not keen on having a pushy dim sum experience, hence chosen Luk Yu Tea House, known as one of the best tea house in Hong Kong. It's featured in quite a lot Hong Kong movies and a business man was shot to death at point-blank range in 2002 by a hired gunman while having breakfast in Luk Yu!!!

The dim sum comes at very slow pace, basically you have to stick your neck out to see one of the serving ladies with traditional tray walking down the stairs to check on what's freshly made from the kitchen. They'll usually yell out the dish name but if Cantonese is not your strong field, then place order with the waiter serving tea. He'll deliver your order to table when it's available.

We had 5 different dim sum: deep fried, braised, steam and the bun. I'm so disappointed to find such famed tea house to produce dim sum at a quality that's worse than a lot of Penang's local dim sum (or the ones in Copenhagen); and they cost at least 30% more expensive than the one-star Michelin dim sum restaurant - Tim Hou Wan. The restaurant environment is nice but I'd definitely advice against going there for a dim sum experience unless you're only interested in the architecture and willing settle the rest for it.

Finishing dim sum, we took a long ride to visit the Big Buddha on Lantau island. Super long ticket queue (we didn't make reservation up front, mistake, mistake) and a 25 minutes cable car ride brings us to the foot of the Buddha where an artificial Chinese village is built to cater for tourists' eating, drinking & shopping demand. 

Massive queue

Forget if you should look left or right? not a problem in HK.

The Buddha statue is magnificent but that's about it. Not that the tourist village is not nice, in fact, there're some personnels scattered around the village helping tourist with info or photo taking, which I find very nice. Nevertheless, I'd rather have the feeling of venturing into a world of tranquillity with a big Buddha and a quiet temple than walking into a hustle bustle tourist oriented souvenir town.

On our way down from the hill top, we were seated in a cable car with 4 other Hong Kong women who were talking about their travelling trips to various places in China. 25minutes is a long time and we soon become interesting subject when they ran out of topic...I ended up engaging in a conversation with them, nice aunties, just a bit too chatty. We almost ran off the cable car when it finally reach the terminal :s

Noticed a lot of shoppers in Hong Kong who are spending big money are from mainland China. Expensive watch, designer cloths, famous brands / outlets, where do all the money come from? ;) Bought some shirts, went back to hotel for a rest and awaits the night where we will experience for the first time, Hong Kong's unique private kitchen dining. Next blog!