Tuesday morning started out pretty good. Elizabeth and I went in search of a bakery a couple of blocks from our hotel, and thanks to Google maps and my sense of direction we were able to find it really easily. We each got an assortment of undescribed buns and then Elizabeth headed to the University for her workshop and I went back to the hotel to do some work.
For lunch I braved the extreme heat and humidity to do some exploring. I took the ding ding (awesome double decker trams) to the MTR station (awesome subway) over to Causeway Bay, on the eastern side of Hong Kong Island. I was on the search for Mak’s Noodle which I heard was really good. It took me forever to find it even though I knew where it was supposed to be; this was due mostly to the almost ridiculous amount of Chinese signs, people, restaurants, shops, and people in this very concentrated area. Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas (it might actually be the most) in the world and I totally believe it. Well, I finally found the noodle place and ordered some shrimp dumpling noodle soup, which arrived quickly. It was extremely delicious. My only complaint was that it was a pretty small bowl and I could’ve easily eaten twice that much.
After lunch I headed over to the nearby Victoria Park, which is a large public park. The park had free wifi which was pretty awesome, but it was extremely humid and I was starting to melt. There were some nice gardens, tennis courts, and a jogging track (that many people were actually running on!) but I was needing to find air conditioning and didn’t stay too long.
On the walk back to the MTR station, just when I was thinking that some ice cream would be perfect, I walked right by an IKEA! I was so excited! I walked through it, partly for the air conditioning and partly because I was curious as to how similar it would be to all of the other IKEAs I have been to. The only two real differences were that all of the signs were in Swedish,
English, and Chinese (instead of just Swedish and English) and that it was a lot smaller than a usual IKEA. I got my ice cream cone and happily headed back to the hotel.
Tuesday evening I went back up to the University for the public forum that was starting the conference off which was pretty interesting (it included both learning scientists and policy makers from all over the world). There was a short reception after this which ran out of food and booze waaaay too quickly (this has continued to be true throughout the conference).
For dinner, about 30 of us headed to a vegetarian restaurant in the mid-levels area called Pure Veggie House. We had an 11 course meal served family style. Almost all of the courses were really delicious. I had probably 10 different kinds of mushrooms in all sorts of combinations, as well as some soups and curries and other yummy things. After dinner, we headed over to a bar area that we heard was pretty cool and it was very different than other areas of Hong Kong. Someone in our group said it reminded them of Bourbon St. There were a bunch of bars all lined up next to each other and people walking around with beers. There were also a group of roaming monks (at least they were pretending to be monks) trying to sell beads and a bunch of other people selling light up headbands and glasses. After one (relatively) expensive beer (a Guinness, which tasted kind of off), I headed back to the hotel to get some sleep.
Cynthia D'Angelo 