Our alarms woke us up at 6AM, and after getting ready
quickly, we caught a train back to Incheon. We arrived at the airport at 8AM.
This is where the stress kicked in. Our flight to Hong Kong
was at 9AM, and after having to cross the entire airport, we ran into a
ridiculously long security line. CRAP.
I’d probably have been more hesitant to do this without
Ghyrn there, but we ran as close to the front of the line where the security
agent was, showed them our boarding passes, and told them that we’d miss our
flight if we didn’t get through security quickly. This somehow worked, and they
shuttled us through to the front of the security line. This was lucky moment
#1.
Lucky moment #2 was when they weighed my backpack (most of
the souvenirs were in it because G brought a smaller pack) and it was
overweight, but they hand waved that too.
Phew.
We made it just in time to our seats, last ones to board.
Close calls seem to be a theme of this trip…
My heart rate started to settle back to normal, and soon
after takeoff, the Asiana flight attendant rolled by with a cart of bibimbap. Score.
We REALLY need food service on the shorter flights in the States.
After chowing down and using the whole tube of gochujiang, I
crashed for about 2 hours, and then watched part of the Scooby Doo movie. Missed
the ending, but meh.
We landed and then caught the E22 bus to Lam Tim, per
Carrie’s instructions. Carrie was a Post-Doc in my lab back at Stanford for the
majority of my first two years there, and it was really awesome to work with
her and be mentored by her. She got married toward the end of my Master’s
degree and moved back to Hong Kong with her husband, who is a professor at the
University of Hong Kong. She’s an awesome person, and we’re really blessed to
be hosted by her, her husband Kenneth, and her parents during our last leg of
the trip.
We were surprisingly a little hungry by the time we landed
in Lam Tim, so we found a café called Laguna Pearl below Carrie’s condo (she
was still at work, but said her dad could meet us in a bit). I initially
thought we ordered too much – nian gao (rice cake), wonton noodle soup, HK
style onion cakes, glutinous rice balls – but we devoured everything.
Stuffed, we headed up to the condo, where Carrie’s dad met
us at the door. His English isn’t great but he knows some Mandarin, which put
mine to the test. I was able to communicate that we should probably take a
shower (after all the running around and Hong Kong humidity) before we were out
the rest of the day. I have no idea what he and Ghyrn talked about, but while
Ghyrn was in the shower Carrie’s dad kept saying (in Mandarin), “I’m a big
dummy. You guys are smart.” He reminds me of my dad in this regard – really
values education, and is expresses extreme humility to those who have more
letters after their names than he does. I told him he’s probably smarter than I
am because Carrie is so smart, and he laughed :)
It was hard to keep up with him – he’s really spry for his
age – as we raced through crowds toward the ferry, and then hopped on a bus to
Carrie’s work.
She ran out of the hospital, where she is a research
director, smiling. It’s always nice to see someone doing well after a big life
transition :)
We headed to Causeway Bay for some sushi, got caught up on
her job and life out here, post-wedding and move, and finished just in time to
catch the light show that the skyscrapers around Victoria Harbor put on. Look
up Youtube videos. It’s pretty cool.
After the show, Carrie took us toward Temple Street, where
we got some tea and milk toast. The food adventure continues! Temple Street
also features some street markets, so we picked up some inappropriately funny
souvenir magnets, one of which says: “Distance far you look like model. Near
you look like animal”. It was hard to choose from the many options, but these
are going to the Cal homies. They also had some canvas oil paintings of Hong
Kong for ~$10. I am a sucker for these when I travel internationally, and
bought two.
Meals seem to come in pairs here. After shopping, we got
second dessert at a place that is known for their sweet soups. Carrie ordered
an egg dessert, a green bean dessert, and a potato dessert, and even though we
were still pretty full, it’s hard to stop me from trying everything when food
is in front of me.
Due to exhaustion, the trip back to Carrie’s is a little bit
of a blur, but we set up our bed and started a much-needed load of laundry.
Tomorrow we will be meeting some people, eating some stuff, buying some stuff,
and doing some stuff. Sounds about right.
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