Hikes are one of the things I’ll wake up early for. Continuing on from the last post, I thought I’d elaborate on this a bit more (ie, I found photos that I forgot I took, and now I want to write more). We left the house around 7AM, and went for breakfast at a little cafe called BB開心茶座, located near the trail head to get to the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Pavilion (尤德亭):

Classic Hong Kong breakfast of sausage, sunny side up egg, and instant noodle, paired with milk tea:

H had the coffee + milk tea combo (yeen yeurng). His aunt and uncle had similar noodles and drinks. The quality at BB開心茶座 was really acceptable, despite being on the outskirts of Hong Kong. A steady stream of cyclists and motorcyclists stopped on the way up, and the parking lot was packed with expensive looking cars. Don’t forget it was only around 7:30 or 8AM… People in Hong Kong really don’t sleep.

I didn’t have to figure out how to get to the trail myself, because of our hosts (H’s aunt and uncle). They also took us to this waterfall/swimming hole, where there wasn’t much water at the time, because it hadn’t rained in a while. The trail was really easy to navigate, and not gnarly at all.

Go up past the houses in the photo above, and you will eventually get here: 

Two hours to get back to the car.

I know. Horrible directions, and not very informational, but hey, I was jet lagged. Easiest thing to do is just go eat at the cafe and ask around, if you really want to go!

Although I didn’t blog these past 2 weeks, I was still eating and hiking and coffee-ing - my weekend rituals. I flew with Hong Kong Airlines, which is a fairly new company for flights from Vancouver to Asia. The tickets were so cheap at just over $650 to go to Hong Kong and Taipei!

First thing after landing – EAT.

Well, actually, first thing was try to get on a bus to make it to the city to meet up with H and his family for dinner. My bus pass did not have enough money for the ride (like the Compass, HK uses the Octopus card that can be refilled with funds so that you just tap on and off the bus to pay), and I had no HK cash yet, because I was going to get some later on… Some kind lady with a baby actually paid for me, which was sort of nice.

Here’s the first coffee I had at Halfway Coffee:

Absolutely adore the decor in here. The owner collected all the Chinese style antique-like mugs and cups that they use, which is impressive because there was a large selection. They also had takeaway cups that cost about $10CAD for a full set, custom printed to look like antique cups:

Before the first cup of coffee, we actually woke up around 630AM for an early morning hike with H’s aunt and uncle:

They’re pretty cool folks, and pretty successful. I mean, being able to afford to live comfortably in Hong Kong and drive around in a Tesla is no easy task. More about this hike in this post.

Then, we went to visit my cousin and her 1 year old baby for lunch, shopped, and ate some more. Boring Hong Kong life?

Luckily, I’m not jet lagged now, but work is really sucking the life out of me. The first day back from vacation is always the most work. Tomorrow is another day… The rest of Hong Kong was still more eating, as you’ll see in later posts.