As this was to be my last full night in Hong Kong, I wanted to go out and have a meal in a nice restaurant. I’d generally eaten street food and noodles since I’d arrived and it had been universally excellent. The food in Hong Kong is something that I would recommend to anyone. It helped of course that the kind of food that was being served was my favourite food anyway. My mother once said to be that ‘you can’t have noodles every day’. Yes you can. So it was that I found myself in a restaurant looking out over Victoria harbour towards the Hong Kong Island side. I doubt I could ever tire of this view at night, and it makes me a little sad that I don’t know when I’ll see it again. I had a chicken satay starter, followed by Szechuan beef with a chow main. The food was nice, but seemed strangely bland in comparison to the other food I’d eaten since arriving. This was a shame as this was by far the most expensive meal that I had. I think it would be fair to say that the charge more accurately reflected the view than the cost of the meal. After dinner I went for a walk around the harbour mall and the surrounding area before heading back to the Temple Street market as I had seen a bag that I liked and regretted not getting it. I knew what it would be a copy, but so long as it was decently made and not too expensive I’d buy it. I found the stall with the bag and couldn’t see any real difference with the ‘real’ thing and so jumped into haggling with the stallholder. For some reason I had a total brain fart when I calculating my price. Instead of using a HKD to GBP rate, and became fixated on the Dollar part of the name and so was mentally converting USD to GBP – a pretty significant difference in price! I got the guy down to what I thought was £25. Quite a bit for a market stall item, but a price I’d happily have paid for the same bag at home even without the ‘label’. So the stallholders happy, I’m happy and everyone’s a winner. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that my brain finally made the connection between that nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite as it seemed and the exchange rate. One quick recalculation later and I realised I’d not paid the equivalent of £25, I’d paid about £4. A totally ridiculous price for what I’d bought. One last journey on the Star Ferry later I headed back to my hotel and a welcoming bed.
DigiDonkey 