Hong Kong Kaan Bon

For the Fall break in 2023, called Pchum Ben in Cambodia, we decided to do a couple of days' staycation outside Phnom Penh at a resort called the Bale, and then to break up for some one-on-one vacations, which we had always heard from our friends are fun. 

So Daddy took Kaan to Hong Kong, Mama took Evren to Singapore, and Moo had the freedom of the house to herself for a couple of days (and is owed a "ticket" later!). 

This post is about Daddy and Kaan's trip, October 10-13, 2023. Kaan and Daddy narrated it together.

TUESDAY

Tuesday morning, we went to the airport quite early because we were worried about traffic, and we got to the airport like three hours in advance we saw Angie of Jim and Angie fame there, and from Starbucks we got hot chocolate for Kaan and coffee for Daddy.

Then we went to Krispy Kreme and Daddy told Kaan about the movie Air, about Nike & Michael Jordan.

On the airplane we were worried that there wouldn't be any entertainment devices but it turned out they were super nice on Cathay Pacific and this was one of their newest model planes so it was great and they had all kinds of games, when we had just been talking about how they weren't putting games on planes anymore. Daddy watched Corner Office with Jon Hamm and Kaan played a lot of games and watched some of Spiderman Across the Spider Verse; and then at the end while we were waiting to deplane, we played a lot of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire together and we didn't win a million dollars but we will try on the return flight.

When we arrived in Hong Kong the airport was really big and took a lot of walking, but it was pretty easy and then we realized there was a train into town. Kaan exchanged some money by himself and did a little shopping while Daddy got a SIM card, and then we went to the train and got Octopus cards which you need for all kinds of public transportation in Hong Kong.

From the train station we had to figure out how to get to the hotel and we decided to take a taxi. And the taxi driver zoomed out of there superfast! This was our introduction to Hong Kong. He was like a video game driver and we buckled our seat belts and held on for the ride.

The hotel was cool with really colorful decorations, paintings of Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin on the front of the building and then Frank Sinatra on the side, and it is called the Hollywood Madera, on Hollywood Road. Space is so tight in Hong Kong that you had to leave the tiny lobby and go outside and take a different door to get to the elevator to the rooms.

Our room is a suite with a living area and a kitchen and a washing machine and everything. We also realized there was a gym on the fifth floor. We only rested for a minute and then headed right out to see this city.

We walked down the steep hill on which all of Hong Kong sits (at least on the south side of the bay), and we found our way to a Magic the Gathering shop. To get there we took the Ding Ding, which is the tram that runs on the main street, Des Vouex. They are really cute short trams that are double deckers and we always sit on the upper level and you can look out the windows. It's awesome and you use your Octopus card to ride them. We saw some nice architecture as we walked too.

The Ding Ding does go ding ding if you're in the way of the tracks, which Daddy found out the hard way. We talked a lot about how cool the city was with its tall modern buildings but then also lots of neon signs and lots of little shops and stands everywhere, and all the stairs going up and down the hill and the alleyways.

At the Magic shop Kaan got some packs and lands but mostly functional things like dice and sleeves.

And then we went out to find some good dinner.

We ended up at a dim sum place. There was not a lot of English ability in the restaurant and we had to figure out how to communicate. We got soup dumplings and a kind of shrimp and pork dumpling that had a gold leaf on it and vegetables and Daddy ordered one spare rib and noodle dish which looked crazy and did not taste good either but the rest of it was quite good. We were thirsty and we asked for water and they brought a pitcher of hot water, so then daddy used Google Translate and showed them "cold water" in Chinese and they brought a cup full of ice! So Daddy poured the hot water into the ice and it made lukewarm water so then we had to ask for another cup of ice. We played Magic the Gathering there with our new decks which are Jump Starts, pre-made ready-to-go decks.

On the way home we stopped at a Japanese-style bakery and got chocolate cake for Kaan and pudding for Daddy, and then on one of the stairway alleys going up the hill of the city, we found a bunch of Halloween costume shops and Daddy got fake plastic chains for the haunted house he's planning, but Kaan didn't get anything and then we walked the rest of the way to our hotel.

We watched a John Oliver on homeschooling and went to bed.

WEDNESDAY

We got up and because the hotel doesn't have breakfast we went out to find it, and we ended up at a very nice place called Mr. Wolf. You had to take the elevator up which confused us because at first Daddy was like, where is the storefront? But then we realized it was on the fourth floor.

Kaan ordered a big Western breakfast and it was amazing with really good sausages.

We played Magic the Gathering, and the waitress said that her son collects Magic cards, and we said how old is he and she said 27, and we told her yes it's a great game.

She said he has those cards all over our house but he tells me we can resell them later, and we were like, Yeah... but we know that he probably never will.

And then we went out to go to the Peak, the hill that is above all Hong Kong and is probably the top tourist destination. We took a long walk to the Peak but once we got there there was a very cool funicular that led you up, at sometimes quite a steep angle, and that was really fun and it was quite modern and nicely made and a unique ride.

On the walk to the Peak, cool architecture

The Masons!

You could see the city kind of falling below you as you went higher and higher, and there were lots of trees too. And then we got out and we went up to the observation deck and it turned out you had to take 11 or 12 escalators to the very top, and up there was a big platform for viewing. It was very windy but we had a beautiful view of the city and you could see the harbor and the water and the buildings and the trees.

The view was stunning. Meanwhile mama was having trouble getting her taxi to work so she and Evren could go to Singapore for their one-on-one fun vacation times, so we helped her with that as much as we could (which wasn't much).

Then we started to go down, but on the way we stopped at a cafe also on the Peak where we got iced tea and fizzy lemonade and played speed, and it was fun even though Daddy won most of the games. We had our Octopus cards checked by the barista and she said one of them had a negative balance of about a dollar! Which means they let us on something even though we couldn't afford it, which is a generous system.

Then we went to a candy shop that K wanted to go to and we tried to figure out how much it was per gram for scoop-yourself candy, and Daddy told Kaan how much he could get...but it turned out he was off by a factor of 10! So Daddy said don't worry, and paid the difference.

Oh by the way on the first day Daddy gave Kaan a $100 bill and said "This is your money, spend it on whatever you want during this trip...but you ain't getting a cent more." So some of that went for that candy. Kaan did great managing his own money, both in controlling how much he spent each day so he had some left at the end, and in keeping the bills safe.

Then we went the rest of the way down the funicular, which was awesome again--we had to stand, because there were no seats left, and standing on that thing was nuts. It was at such a steep angle, and it had a wavy floor so you could use the waves for "purchase" when it was at an angle, but you could walk across them when it was flatter.

After we got down, Daddy led the way to a series of escalators called the Mid-levels Escalators, that we can see right now as we narrate this from a cafe (called NINETYs) on the last day of our trip.

This park is 2-3 stories up and in the middle of
 a bunch of skyscrapers. Worker bees
take it from one building to another.
Probably about the Johnson account.

It was pretty cool and it takes you across all the streets of different levels. It's the longest series of escalators in the world.

We got off randomly at one place and realized we were right the beans next to our hotel! It was very surprising, and then we decided to take a little break. Daddy wanted to have a high quality beer in HK and Kaan is very nice and wanted to let him have one, so we sat at at a little place called Blaze and played MTG. Kaan had a coke zero, Daddy had an Australian stout and we only ate calamari because we wanted to be hungry for our fancy meal later.

Then we then split up for a bit. Kaan went back to the room and Daddy went to get a haircut and walk around and see some cool streets. The guy at the haircut place told Daddy he should go for longer waves rather than short curls and gave him a haircut like Silvio from the Sopranos.

When Daddy came back we went to the gym and did exercises together. Then it was time to get ready to go to the fancy restaurant of steak! We showered and got in our suits and our dress shoes on, and we then went by taxi, a very fast ride, to the Grand Hyatt Steakhouse.

At that place there were very very good steaks! And the atmosphere was really nice too--it has a separate entrance from the hotel, and there is an elevator with candles lit in front of it that you have to take up to enter, and that's all dark and cool looking. And then the whole place is dark and fancy inside, lots of curtains and dark wood. We took a lot of pictures there because it was such a cool area and I'm (Kaan) gonna use one of them as my profile.

We had a really nice conversation too, like we did so many times in Hong Kong. We talked about the future and what we each prefer if we have to move, and we talked about school, what school is like for Kaan these days and what it might be like if we move to America.

After having our half wagyu, mixed breed beef, which was amazing, we had shared a dessert which was an Oreo sundae basically. And we used a method to choose the dessert that's been passed down through generations (which Mama and Daddy figured out when they were choosing snacks from the vending machine at Syracuse University). It was a really wonderful meal and special time together and we loved it so much.

Then we went and got a taxi back to the hotel and watched the first half of Seth Meyers' comedy special, Lobby Baby. Then we got into bed and Daddy read his book Guard of Honor which he still hasn't finished! And he read Kaan a couple of pages where the guys in the machine shop are talking tough to each other, because it has so much funny slang.

THURSDAY

On Thursday we woke up in our hotel, got ready, and then went to a breakfast place where it was all adults. It was a coffee place where people get ready to go to work and Daddy liked it 'cause it was really aesthetically cool and dark. It was called Fine Print, and Kaan was the only kid. He ordered the pretzel with cheese.

But it was not tasty, so Daddy gave Kaan some of his avocado bread that he ordered and Daddy ate the tomato one.

Then we went out and walked to the Tai Kwun Museum, which is a complex of buildings which used to be the Hong Kong Police Station and prison, built during colonial times, and is now several restaurants, cafes, art museum areas and the prison museum. It is just a block from our hotel, next to the Mid-levels Escalator.

Modernity + Colonialism

When we first went we realized the visitor center wasn't open yet, so we went to a cafe to play Magic, and then went to the visitor center, and they told us the museum part wouldn't open for another hour! Because it opens an hour later than the visitor center...

So we went back to the hotel to exercise. Daddy did cardio on the elliptical, and Kaan did weights. They weren't playing any music so we played the soundtrack to Spider-Man: Enter the Spider-Verse.

We finished the workout, showered quickly, and headed back out again and took some pictures at cool murals along the way.

This time the courtyard of the museum area was a lot more full of school kids, so we rushed ahead to try to get ahead of them, Daddy almost knocking one kid over, and went up the stairs to inside the prison area. We quickly found the main exhibit, which is about 8 or 10 jail cells in a single cell block.

Kaan repents for his countless crimes

A punishment where prisoners had to keep
 walking on a wheel for hours.

There was a lot of information in the cells and on the walls about what life was like for prisoners when the prison was operational, starting in the 1800s. We assumed that the prison food place would be bad and not tasty, but upon looking at the plastic reproductions of the food, we actually thought it was a very good meal and wished we could eat it. They also said that there were rumors at the time that the food was so good that the prisoners ate better than regular people, but that those weren't true rumors, but when we looked we weren't so sure because it looked yummy to us.

After leaving the cells, we went to the other exhibit of in complex called Killing TV. It exhibited work by several different artists from the last 30 or 40 years, all using video and TVs, and also giving commentary on video and TVs. A lot of it was very abstract and weird and we liked it a lot.

There was one art piece that was sort of a simulation of a large pinball game in real life, with a large metal ball rolling across streets and people getting knocked over. It was very entertaining and good. It was a short film called "Run", by a filmmaker named Alexander Prager.

From "Run", before the main character starts running from the pinball.

We also liked a piece that was a bit weirder and more experimental, which was a story about the artist's (Aled Simons) aunt who was the first person to make a Welsh language fitness video. He played the video and narrated and also had a lot of other clips and facts about how videos get moldy over time, and how the mold spores move around inside the tape and it was surreal but cool. One way he listed that they got moldy was if they were in "disused mines" which was supposed to be serious to the listener but we thought it was just funny.

Then there was another one from the seventies where these guys filmed themselves driving through a wall of flaming TVs, but the flames weren't very high and it was sort of cheesy by today's standards. However it must have been very cool back then.

There was another area that was a rotating platform with one couch and there were five TVs on the platform; one would play its video, and then it would rotate and you could see the next one. We didn't stay for very many of them but we saw one guy again from the 70s who made artsy "commercials" of himself saying strange things that apparently played on broadcast TV in the 70s.

We then finished our visit to Tai Kwun after that we went to eat lunch at a nice place called... Five Guys!

They recreated it exactly like it is in She states, with the walls covered in the reviews from local newspapers and magazines. But most importantly it tasted the same and was delicious. They even had the peanuts. It also helped to recreate the feeling of being in the United States that we were underground and couldn't see anything of Hong Kong. And we felt full enough to never eat again.

It was really strange to be in such an American place that felt just like when we were there this summer.

We left Five Guys and had a bit of time, so we walked around and Daddy looked a bit for a watch but couldn't find a good one, so we decided to go to the Observation Wheel, the giant ferris wheel that is famous in Hong Kong, which we had been planning to do later in the evening. This was the view as we walked past (we think) the courthouse.

Walking to the wheel took a while, but we made it and it was enormous up close.

We also passed some kind of racecourse, event and celebration area for a JP Morgan corporate event that was being held at the waterfront. We took photos of it and sent them to the family chat for Levent to see.

The wheel went incredibly high, and you could see far across the city. One thing that stood out to us was a large construction site that had four-story canisters, with water being poured into them and we asked Uncle Russ what they were for and he didn't know. We also realized we could see the Peak and the platform that we had stood on the day before and that was really neat.

There was also a lovely view of the harbor and all the buildings and everything.

Honestly, the first time we went around we were both a bit scared, but on the second and third passes it felt more normal. The last thing the guy said before the door closed to our private gondola was, "If there are any problems press that button", and both of us in our minds were like, "What problems?!"

But it was great!

Then we went to go see the movie Dumb Money at a nearby mall. It had looked like we were going to run out of time, but we realized that we could just barely make it and we took a taxi, then raced through the mall and made it to the movie, maybe missing only the first one or two minutes.

The movie was very interesting to Kaan (and Daddy!) because it taught him things about the stock market and how it worked, and he also thought it was quite funny and just an interesting thing to watch.

And then afterwards we headed towardthe Night Market. This was the first time we ever went to Kowloon, which is the north side of the bay of Hong kong. So we walked back over very near to where the ferris wheel was to get on a ferry to cross over.

The ride there was quite nice, with the water being blue and wavy and all, and Daddy said that this water and the fairies is part of why he likes Izmir so much. We also from a distance saw the famous kind of "junk" boat that you can take for a Hong Kong tour as well, which we had almost taken but didn't in the end have time for it.

And there were lots of signs about being aware of the moving Gangplank when it moves because of the waves.

Once we got to the other side we walked for a long time up the main street on the Kowloon side, and then took the subway only one stop (Octopus cards! Also Kaan kept his own Octopus card and hotel key card the whole trip and never lost them) and got out, and we were just a couple of blocks from the night market.

It was relatively small, so easy to walk through, and there was jewelry and Chinese traditional clothing and electronics tourist t-shirts and all kinds of stuff. The whole part of town was a lot less fancy and less steel & glass than the part of Hong Kong we had been in up to that point.

We also saw a big restaurant area where we could have dinner so we did a bit of shopping and then went to that place for dinner. Daddy definitely overordered, but it was all delicious, fantastic fresh shrimp and Chinese vegetables. Daddy gave Kaan some tips on how to bargain, and Kaan memorized them and then went up and bought something, a mini (like doll-sized) table made of wood, and he did use his new negotiating skills to get the price down to almost half!

Then we were real tired and we walked to a taxi, and took it home. Again the taxi driver was a bit of a nut and we sped through the streets.

Back at the room we finished the Seth Myers special and went to sleep.

FRIDAY

We didn't have to go to the airport until after noon,so we packed up and checked out and then found another great place for breakfast. This was an American-themed diner with an American owner, and they had a Commodore 64 on the wall--Daddy's childhood computer!--as well as an old fashioned arcade game, and Daddy had a chorizo burrito and Kaan had pancakes. It was great.

With our last time, we walked around some more intriguing streets...

Sliding down the banister of the stairs
connecting levels of the city

Daddy loved this alleyway

We walked back to the Mid-levels escalator and got off at a cafe (NINETYs--where you can't pay with your Octopus card!) to sit and do some entries in this journal.

And then we headed back to the hotel and instead of taking a taxi, we walked through the streets with our luggage, all the way to the train station, which was really only 8-10 minutes (all the walking we did in Japan last winter break taught us that we could handle this no sweat, even with luggage).

And we took the train to the airport. We were pros at this now--Octopus card!

On the flight back we played more Millionaire and watched movies again, and talked about what an amazing and wonderful trip we'd had to Hong Kong! It was incredible and a fantastic memory for both Kaan and Daddy.

(We thought this was great advice...but why hide it by putting it only on the airport escalator?)