yum cha + iron fairies
Two friends birthdays last night called for a celebration, grabbed some beers and jumped on the ferry to the city. Pretty chilled way to get around so although Discovery Bay isn’t my first choice of places to live I can see why people like getting to work this way! Managed to lose the only people who knew the way within about 3 minutes of getting off the ferry but once we got ourselves back on track we found ourselves on the 3rd floor at a very cute dim sum restaurant called Yum Cha. There was a big group of us, mainly South Africans, plus an Aussie and a Scottish-Dutch, so plenty of good banter to go round. Ordering at this place involves a little pamphlet with a ginormous selection of things and you simply write how many you want of each thing. Sounds easy enough, however, we had people on various budgets from “I’ve just arrived and ordering 4 dumplings for $59* sounds scary” to “been living here for a few years and gotten used to these prices, bring it on” as well as combos of couples and singles. Plus we arrived just before 2 for 1 drinks happy hour ended so we were trying to maximise that. All in all, we totally confused the waitress and entertaining chaos ensued. Somehow out of it all, we ended up with food. Good food. And ridiculously cute.
The ones on the left are hot custard buns, you stick your chopstick in where the mouth should be and watch them spew custard, cute and weird. The custard is quite similar to your classic custard, just a bit runnier and slightly less sweet, it was more like dessert than dinner though. The pigs were your classic bbq pork bun, yummy if not slightly disturbing how clearly reinforced it was where that pork came from! We also had spicy wings and wontons and sampled random bits and pieces from other people. All the food was really good, so gimics aside its a nice place to eat.
Mission two for the evening was a bar called Iron Fairies, we wandered through town, finding ourselves on the famous mid level escalators along the way (so much better than walking up that hill!). I had no idea what to expect at this bar so was literally speechless for a moment when we walked in. Its a small hobbity kind of slightly hidden entrance, and when you step inside you are greeted with the most beautiful ceiling of hanging butterflies (google tells me there are 10,000 of them hanging on thin copper rods). Its truly stunning. Round the edges are also big bunches of fairy dust (glitter) in tiny glass jars. And completing the theme are all the iron fairies scattered on the tables. If you were ever into ‘my little pony’ as a child some part of you will be filled with glee in here. It’s a popular spot and was absolutely packed to the rafters, a live band was playing NZ sounding reggae type beats and I was just standing there rather entranced by it all. Eventually getting to the front of the queue at the bar for a drink I was speechless for an entirely different reason, a beer and a glass of soda water for 35 NZ dollars… welcome to Hong Kong!
*HKD is 5.5 to 1 NZD
The butterflies and the band… photos really cannot do this place justice. I’ll try again next time with my better camera+
