Whampoa Adventures

Thursday was a day right in the thick of Melody's studying. She was exhausted from days on the books so we decided to take an evening off and go in search of a restaurant that I heard about. We started our adventure by heading to Hung Hom station.

Emerging at ground level, we meet the large mall and slowly find our bearings. We start walking in the direction of the coast, looking for our mystery restaurant. Along the way, we old dark streets with small stores. The majority of these stores are selling elaborate wreathes of tropical flowers, which we later learned were all funeral wreathes :S

The general lack of large billboards and lights, the little old ladies pushing carts of cardboard, and the old men chatting and smoking in small store alcoves gave us a feel for the old Hong Kong. It was not the new, flashy, bright, 24/7 711 feel of Hong Kong Island.

Most of the stalls in this area sell the funeral flower wreaths

All the while that we are walking, we still do not know what Whampoa refers to. It is this mythical existence that we do not fully understand. Finally, as we wander the dark streets, we find large lit up signs announcing that we are entering the "Wonderful world of Whampoa".

With a bit more wandering we find the area where our restaurant is and we finally understand Whampoa: it is like a housing community, complete with grocery stores and restaurants. One of the most noticeable and distinguishing parts of Whampoa is the mammoth boat that was built there and houses restaurants and various stores. Walking up on the boat, we find a local community group doing Wing Chun practice and Tai Chi.

 It's all one big community

 Up on the boat, Wing Chun practitioners behind us 

 View from up on the boat

Melody admiring the view and spying on locals

The dinner it self was in a building across the street, and is heartily recommended by us. Wang Jia Sha's (王家沙) food is primarily Shanghai cuisine is primarily known for their interesting use of sugar, according to wikipedia, but this is not something that I noticed in many of the dishes. What I noticed in general was rich flavour and very saucy food. My favourite dish that we ordered was called 擔擔麵 (Dan Dan Mian, aka Dan Dan noodles) which is a saucy noodle dish with a strong peanut flavour. We ordered another soup type dish that I was not particularly fond of, mainly because it was full of this slimy rice-cake type material that I didn't really enjoy. We also ordered wonton's that were very tasty. In summary, we had a great meal and I felt that it was quite affordable for two adventuresome students!

 擔擔麵 (Dan Dan Mian) - very recommended!