It's Always Great to be in Hong Kong!

As I prepare to leave Taiwan this year, I just had to make one last trip to Hong Kong and since my sisters were going to visit during Chinese New Year, we decided to meet up there to spend the holiday together with family and relatives.

The yearly traditional CNY lunch at Grandma's home.

Delicious homemade radish cake. I'm drooling!

My favourite cousin. She always keeps us (well apparently, mostly just me and D) entertained with her chattiness and ideas.

Since we were in Hong Kong for CNY , we decided to join in the festivities and go check out the flower market in Mong Kok. Big mistake! The line just to get into the park area was ridiculously long. So imagine my relief when we finally got in and I could see the fairgrounds at a distance.

You'd better be so worth it!

I wanted to jump for joy! That was until I was this.

Really, flower market? After all that lining up, this is what I get rewarded with? More lining up?

Needless to say we didn't bother trying to get any further into the market. And truth be told, it wasn't all that exciting for us because we see this kind of set up in Taiwan all the time. It's just like a night market so we took a picture and called it a day.

Pat on the backs for making it this far without getting trampled on. I'm just surprised that I didn't need to use the bathroom once during this crazy debacle.

It's a rare occasion indeed that you'll find both of my sisters and I in Hong Kong at the same time so we took advantage of this and went to pay our respects to our beloved grandfather and uncle whom we love very dearly and keep close to our hearts. They are resting at opposite ends of the MTR so we took some snapshots on our way there. 

Dad and his daughters.

With our Aunt 3. She is awesome.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of time to meet up with my friends as each day was packed with spending time with the family. However, I did find the time to meet up, albeit very briefly, with my good friend Aaron. His children are growing up very quickly! They know how to speak now!

Cute little Munchkins!

CNY in Hong Kong is an experience like no other. Growing up in Toronto, we did get red envelopes and we celebrated the holiday by having dinner, but as we got older, the tradition seemed to have dwindled. It was not until a few years ago when I experienced my first CNY in Hong Kong that I finally realized what Chinese New Year was supposed to be like! All the delicious food, spending quality time with family and relatives and oh yes, did I mention the red envelopes?

These are just the envelopes I thought were worthy of keeping. Most of them didn't make the cut and ended up in the trash.

And the food...YUM! Warning: the following pictures will make you hungry! Well...they made me hungry.

What's a trip to Hong Kong without having some dim sum?  Excellent dim sum at Tsui Hang Village at Miramar Mall in TST. (I didn't get a chance to take pictures this time so I put up some pictures my friend, Cat, took when we went to HK together last October. =p)

This was something interesting I had never encountered before. Pineapple bun with char siu (roasted pork) stuffing. 

The annual seafood dinner extravaganza and the annual Ching family get-together.

Needless to say, we stuffed ourselves silly.

Farewell Hong Kong, but only for now.We will definitely meet again soon!

Thank you for reading and please leave a comment for me. =D

Mel

 P.S. While in Hong Kong, I got the chance to go hiking on Dragon's Back in Shek O. That will be covered  in the next blog.