walking sheung wan
I’ve read my little guidebook cover to cover. Twice. But am yet to put it to use. Today I determinedly set off to follow one of the recommended neighbourhood walks through Sheung Wan stopping for lunch at Mrs Pound. I intended to see a couple of temples and a street selling some traditional Chinese medicines.
I took the MTR to Sheung Wan and made my way out to the street, instant confusion ensued between my little map, google maps and what I saw in front of me, so I abandoned the exact details of the recommended route and headed in the general direction towards the first temple. I happened upon the Chinese medicine street to start with and took shelter from a summery downpour in a shop full of birds nests, lots of red and gold lanterny stuff going on around here. Next, I found myself outside a wee bakery, sheltering from more rain, they had egg custard tarts (an HK delicacy) for $1 NZ, who am I to turn down a bargain. And a bargain it was, fresh out of the oven, flaky delicious pastry and lovely custard filling. After smashing that in record time I started working my way through the puddles and towards the temple.
This area has the most epic array of street art so I found myself stopping every few minutes to take photos, there are so many interesting alleyways with tiny hidden stores and cafes, I was walking around with the biggest grin. I got near to where the temple should be and found it unexpectedly small and crushed in the middle of a bunch of high rises, up a flight of stairs was a room full of incense coils, and then there was a separate space with statues and offerings and people paying their respects, pretty cool and very different to temples I have seen in other countries. Mrs Pound is the recommended restaurant on this wee walk. It is a “speakeasy” so I was expecting to have a lot of trouble finding it but then feel all special as I pressed the glowing stamp in the window to be let in. Instead, I saw the sign saying Mrs Pound and walked in the front door… apparently, it only turns into a speakeasy at night time! Anyway, I ordered a mean lunch of “Avocado fries” (crumbed, deep fried avo) and eggplant curry. YUM. I will be back Mrs Pound, not only was your food delicious, I liked your vibes.
Full belly I continued my wandering, heading now for the larger temple. I found a very intriguing street of antique stalls including one I could spend hours at, basically just a table piled high with all manner of random items and a most uninterested stallholder, I picked through for far too long and ended up only buying 2 old postcards for the Pilot showing how the planes used to fly right through the skyscrapers in HK. Again, I’ll be back. Also on this walk, I discovered all manner of awesome looking wee bars, cafes, art shops, ops shops and was mentally creating a list of places to take various family members and friends to when they come to visit! I ended up at Man Mo Temple, one of the bigger more well-known ones, this was seriously cool with more of the incense coils but on a much larger scale, lots of relics and statues, really interesting offerings (they seem to offer lots of food, even takeaways in plastic boxes!), red lanterns and gold decorations galore. Winding my way back past inner-city parks, continued street art and even more places for the visitor's list, I gladly grabbed a seat on the MTR to rest my weary tourist feet for the ride home. Sheung Wan is on the awesome places list for sure.
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