On Transit and Wonton Noodles

After having a marginally better night's rest, I decided to go out for a short morning run at 6:00.  I found that Sham Tseng is one of the most scenic places to run as I groggily trudged onward in the early morning heat.  Picture that image of the Tsing Ma Bridge from yesterday always in front of or beside you as you run beside the ocean shore.  It's great.  Any later in the day, though, and it would just be hell.  It was already 29 degrees when I went out, although the low angle of the sun made it almost comfortable.

Later, we went out for breakfast at a local branch of Fairwood  (大快活), a Hong Kong based fast food chain.
Well, that's how it brands itself, anyway.  Have a look for yourself.

Apparently, they have a no photo policy, so this is the only one I got.

Yep, they do fast food differently here too.  You walk up to the front counter to order and pay off of a menu that's displayed on a side wall, before walking up to the kitchen counter where you pick up your meal (in these nice plastic trays with metal cutlery).  There are three chains that give you this kind of dining experience:  Fairwood, Café de Coral (大家樂) and Maxim's MX (美心MX).  The food is roughly comparable to a standard neighbourhood Hong Kong-style restaurant, or cha chaan teng (茶餐廳), like the one we went to yesterday for breakfast.

As you can also see in the photo, the people of Hong Kong seem to love mixing traditional Cantonese dishes with "western" platters.  In this meal, we have a bowl of preserved cabbage and pork rice vermicelli (雪菜肉絲米) and a plate of sunny-side up with a chicken cutlet and toast.

There's one thing I should have introduced to you guys yesterday:

This is the Octopus card.  The original contactless smartcard, in 1997 it was introduced on the subway system in Hong Kong, known as the Mass Transit Railway, or MTR.  (By the way, the word "subway" here denotes a pedestrian underpass, as it would in the United Kingdom).  By the mid 2000's it had worked its way into nearly every aspect of life in this city, being accepted as a payment method everywhere from grocery stores and chain restaurants such as Fairwood, to public transit and parking meters.  Some newer residences even used personalized Octopus cards as keycards, and some schools use it to track attendance.

Basically, the Octopus is electronic cash.  You load money into it at designated "Add Value" locations, such as the convenience store and the MTR station, and you simply tap it against a reader to pay.  Being the practical people Hong Kong's residents are, many simply wave their wallet and/or purse over the reader, not even bothering to take the card out.

Today, we decided to go to Central (中環) to sample some of the most highly recommended wonton noodles in the city (more on that later!).  These next two pictures show buses pulling into our stop.

The first one is a public light bus, or minibus (小巴).  Minibuses hold 16 people, and generally follow less travelled routes.  There are two fundamental types: the ones with the green roofs, like the one above, which have a set route and stops, and the ones with red roofs, which operate as a sort of group taxi, with vague, general directions of travel and wildly varied individual routes, depending on where the people on board wish to go.

The second picture is of a standard double-decker bus.  It's this one on which we would be going to Tsuen Wan to get on the MTR.

Tsuen Wan station is the terminus of the eponymous Tsuen Wan Line, the red line on the map.  Central is the other terminus.  How convenient!  However, to get there faster you have to take a bit of a detour.  Can you tell what it is from just looking at the map?

Here we see an Octopus reader on the turnstile into the station.  That screen behind the reader informs the passenger of how much money is left in the card.  As the MTR works on a pseudo-distance-based fare scheme, the trip cost is not deducted until a person leaves the system at another station, thus making this information especially helpful.

Tsuen Wan, being an above-ground station, was one of the last to receive automatic platform gates to prevent people from falling onto the tracks for whatever reason.

This articulated train design is similar to the one currently used by the new Toronto Rockets, introduced last year.  Except they've been here since the MTR first opened, in 1979.  But no matter, our technology's usually some 32 years late anyway.  Like that Presto card.  It should be kicking in sometime in the next two decades.  Hopefully.

And this is the detour I was talking about.  Changing here for the Tung Chung line (東涌線) - coloured orange on the map - shaves a good 10-15 minutes off the travel time, as there are three stations instead of ten before we get off.  The interchange itself is also quite painless to go through:   

You get off one side, and you walk across the platform to get on the other side.  Doesn't get much easier than that!  You may also notice that the Tung Chung Line destination appears to be different.

The Tung Chung Line was built as a local counterpart to the Airport Express.  As the Airport Express is generally for people who have just set foot in the city, the names of its three stations are very general.  Hong Kong is divided into three major sections: Hong Kong Island (香港島), Kowloon (九龍), and the New Territories (新界).  It makes sense, then, for the station in Central to be named Hong Kong, the station in West Kowloon to be named Kowloon, and the station in the New Territories to be named Tsing Yi (青衣) (don't ask about that one, although it is on the island of Tsing Yi)  

Arriving in Central, we're quite a bit early, so we decide to go to the ifc mall (as stylized).  This is the view across the harbour to Kowloon from the mall.  On the right you can see Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙咀), the most popular shopping district in the city, and on the left Union Square, the site of a few recent luxury condominiums, with prices well into the tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars, and the tallest building in Hong Kong, the International Commerce Centre (國際貿易中心) or ICC.

Here's a side view of Central from the Apple Store in the ifc mall, with the angular I. M. Pei designed Bank of China tower prominent.

And here's 2 International Finance Centre, the namesake of ifc mall, and the second tallest building in the city.

Central is built into the side of a mountain, so the Hong Kong government, in 1993, built the longest covered escalator system in the world, the Central-Mid-levels Escalator, to ease commuting.  It rises 135 metres over a length of 0.8 kilometres.  We needed to take it up to where we were going to eat.

Wonton noodles is considered the national dish of Hong Kong (insofar as it can be, Hong Kong not actually being a country!).  Traditionally, there are only four ingredients in it:  the wontons, the noodles, the broth, and the yellow chive garnish.  The wontons are made from either a pork and shrimp mixture, or just shrimp, wrapped into a ball with a thin wheat wrapper.  The noodles are thin and al dente, and the broth is made from dried flounder, giving it a unique taste that complements and does not overpower the other ingredients.

Wellington Street around the Central-Mid-levels Escalator has two wonton noodle places that are highly recommended by everyone.  First, Tsim Tsai Kee (尖仔記), which proudly displays its mention, for four years in a row, in the Michelin Hong Kong and Macau guide.

The noodles here are nice and al dente, and the broth has a good amount of flavour in it.  The wontons are also quite nice, albeit somewhat bigger than ideal, making this place on par with some of the best wonton noodles I've had.  They serve a well-sized portion for a reasonable $21 ($2.8 CAD).

Across the street is Mak's Noodle (麥奀雲吞麵世家), arguably the most famous wonton noodle shop in Hong Kong.

It's obviously designed to draw tourists in, with its glowing recommendations from every travel guide out there, and the not so subtle placement of the kitchen:

Its prices certainly reflect its touristy nature, because you pay $32 ($4.26 CAD) for this:

A bowl barely bigger than a regular rice bowl.  The noodles were al dente (they better have been, in a bowl of soup that small!), but the broth was completely tasteless and the wontons - while being regarded as higher quality due to their 100% shrimp content - were just difficult to eat.

I guess the tiny portion sizes should be expected here.  After all, the second character in Mak's name, 奀, does mean stingy.