Hong Kong Adventures: Hong Kong Day 38 -- Ride on the corporate junk and seafood dinner

Today we stopped to pick up buns on the way to work. After today we only have 2 more days of work left, including Friday which is mostly our final presentations. We spent most of the day working on our presentation and report, but also had some stuff with our project to finish up. Chris also spent some time after lunch looking over our report and presentation and gave us some suggestions on what should be included and what changes should be made. We will be finishing it up tomorrow morning so that we can go over the whole presentation and put the finishing touches on the report.

We went for an early lunch at the Korean restaurant that we went to last week with Josh, Vana, Mark and Ana. They have a lunch menu, and if you finish eating by 1 then you get 15% off your meal. Because of this, we went so that we would be done by 1 and get the discount! I got the same thing that I had before, the traditional stone pot rice with BBQ beef. I almost got stone pot rice with kimchi pork, but the lunch includes some kimchi, so I decided to go with the BBQ beef. It was so good, a lot of food and was only $55HK. The stone pot is really hot, and the rice and everything in the pot keeps cooking on the edges the whole time. The rice at the bottom that is nice and toasty was really good.

Tonight is the night that we got to go on Crown’s corporate junk, the “Crown Jewel”. We were supposed to go a couple of weekends ago, but it was really stormy that weekend, and the conditions weren’t going to be good to go out on the water. After we got done with work we headed up to the 20^th floor to meet up with Chris and Magali (HR director, has organized a lot of details for the internship) to go down to the pier. Evelyn, Ciara and I were with them, and Kathy and Yan went with Alena and Louis (Kathy and Yan’s sponsor). We went downstairs and got a taxi to Central and the pier. The Junk was out in the harbor a little ways waiting for us to get there, and once we were all there it came over to the dock.

We took a picture in front of the junk and then got on and headed out to go to Lamma Island. We went to Lamma Island our first weekend, but we were at a different part of the island then we went to tonight. The water in the harbor was pretty rough and choppy, the boat was moving all over, front to back and side to side. As we got out of the harbor a bit it started to flatten out, but it was still a bit rough. The sun was setting as we were going to Lamma, and with the clouds it was really pretty. I was able to get some nice pictures, and there were also some small islands that I got some good pictures of. It took us about an hour to get from Central to Lamma Island.

The junk is really neat. There is a lower deck with a bench around the edge and it also has a table in the middle. They have an area with a sink next to the steering wheel. There is also a kitchen/galley, a booth with a table and seats, a bathroom, and a little bedroom with two beds. This is down below the main deck. You can also go upstairs and there is a seating area up above with cushions, where you can sit. At the front/bow of the boat is a bench where you can sit and see out in front of the boat, and there is also a deck behind it (between the raised area and the bench at the front) that you can relax on. We all went up to the upper deck for at least part of the ride to Lamma. Chris and Evelyn sat in the bench up front for a bit, and then she came back upstairs. I went down for a bit and sat there too, it was really neat to be there.

We got to the island, got off the junk and headed over to the restaurant. We ate at Rainbow Seafood Restaurant, there were two Rainbow Restaurants on this side, one on each side of the pier basically, and we think we also ate at one when we were on Lamma before. We had reservations, so we all sat down, and Alena, Magali and Chris looked through the menu and decided what to order. They placed the order and then the food started coming…

They ordered so many things, a lot of seafood and also some other non-seafood items. They ordered steamed scallops with garlic sauce, fried green kale, fried prawns with salt and pepper, fried rice with vegetable and eggs, steamed prawns with garlic sauce, fried chicken with cashew nuts, crab meat and corn soup, and deep fried tofu with salt and pepper. All of the “fried” things were stir fried, only the tofu was deep fried. The food was SO good. They brought out the soup and then the tofu and scallops. Then the chicken and fried rice came out, followed by both prawns and then the kale. The soup was good, had a lot of crab in it. The scallops were VERY fresh, they were served on the shell, and had rice noodles, garlic and scallions on them. It tasted so good, practically melted in your mouth. The fried rice was good, especially with some sauce from other dishes on it, and the chicken was similar to other cashew chicken, had some tasty sauce. Both kinds of shrimp were really good, the steamed shrimp with garlic were probably my favorite of the two, they were so tender and the garlic flavor was really nice. The shrimp with salt and pepper and the deep fried tofu with salt and pepper had the same seasonings, the shrimp were really juicy, and the tofu was nice and crispy on the outside and so smooth on the inside. They had fried rice noodles, salt, pepper, and chili with them, I took some of that just on its own and ate it with some of the other dishes. The kale was really good, I ate quite a bit of it, it was cooked perfectly, it was really tender but still had a slight crunch/crisp to the stem. At the end of the meal they brought out a plate of fresh fruit. It had pineapple, watermelon, and cantaloupe. All of the fruit was really sweet and juicy, a nice way to finish up the meal.

After we ate we went back over to the dock to head back to Hong Kong Island. The boat is kept in Aberdeen, so we went back there instead of going back to Central. The ride to Aberdeen was only a half hour, and it was really smooth. We all (almost) sat outside on the decks for the ride back. Magali, Kathy and Ciara sat on the bench at the front, I sat on the deck right behind that, and Louis, Evelyn, Alena and Yan sat on the upper deck. Chris had a conference call that he had to be on, so he stayed down below for his call. There was a big floating restaurant, “Jumbo restaurant” in the harbour where the Junk is kept. We took a few pictures of it, this is a restaurant that is on a lot of postcards that we have seen. There were also a lot of really big yachts and other boats here, and some old chinese boats. We walked out of the harbor and then took a taxi back to Causeway Bay. Tomorrow is our last day of work before our presentations.