I can browse endlessly through rows and rows of small shops selling anything from antiques to ordinary stationery, accessories, clothes, bags, shoes or even the Chinese dried food stuff like the ones that I saw yesterday at Sai Ying Pun. I was walking down Queens Road West browsing through the small shops which were selling all kinds of dry pulses and dried sea food most of which I could not recognise. Some looked like starfish, some sea weeds, some were these black flower-like things and many more which I have no clue about. Now the reason I was observing these foodstuff shops and their produce so closely yesterday was because I was looking for dried shrimp. We have a mini fish pond (if you can call it one) on the podium level of our building and my younger son and I like to go and feed the fish there sometimes. We normally take some bread for them and they are quite responsive to our presence and come towards us as if to say a hello or maybe thank you. While they do eat the bread, the other day I saw a neighbour feeding something else to them and the fish looked quite frenzied swimming criss-cross and poking there big fishy mouths out of the water to grab a bite of their snack. They looked very passionate about whatever they were being fed and I soon found out that it was dried shrimp. Ever since I have been on the lookout for this tasty snack, peeking into these traditional shops to see what I can find. Unfortunately with my very limited Cantonese my search was not successful. Hence I just continued walking. I browsed through a hand bag shop debating about buying a waist pouch for my morning jog, through a stationery shop debating about buying calligraphy pens, through a Chinese lantern shop, a cane furniture shop. Finally I ended up buying just a pair of socks for the boys. (No wonder my mum hates going shopping with me!).
I thought I should take a photograph of our mini fish pond for this post and I went there this morning only to see a notice put up there saying ‘Do not feed the fish!’ with a little drawing at the bottom of a hand feeding a fish a big cross on top just to ensure that everybody understands. So much for my dried shrimp hunting!
Liked reading this a lot! As I also love exploring such street markets, there is such a lot of variety which they offer without the stress of 'big decision' of spending too much as it happens in the huge malls 🙂
BTW, I remember seeing dried shrimps in wet markets.
Hi Reena, first of all thanks for getting around to reading my most recent blogs. When I receive one comment from you I know there are some more to follow on the others 🙂 and trust me while I really appreciate all my readers just reading my blog, its the comments that keep me going when I have to decide about my priority task amongst '20 things that need to be done at that minute!' Thanks for letting me know about the dried shrimps but like I said after they have put up the 'No feeding' sign, can't do much! Maybe we should do some street browsing together and in my limited morning time sans kids, the Wanchai one is the only one that opens early.
Will definitely remember to ask you for the street names where you get such stuff when I visit HK. Generally though stuff in HK is pretty expensive aint it? Armin
Hi Armin, generally speaking HK is an expensive city, but sometimes you do get excellent deals in the street markets if you know where to buy what. Do let me know your travel dates.
Remember the time when we had walked into Chor Bazar, that Friday afternoon, with barely any place to stand.
Funny, but I have always know you to collect artifacts for the museum you called home. Did you manage you give your house in HK a 1940's look with all the stuff picked off from the streets?
Dear Faiyaz, yes of course I do and you just couldn't understand why did I want to get 'bhangoo-tutu' back home :)? You won't believe it – the house that I now live in does not have an inch of history. From the furniture to the artifacts – nothing, but you are right, I do have a Red Indian small statue that I bought from England from a car boot sale! I loved going for those sales by the way:)
Shopping is truely a great experience. Its fun bargaining when you have USD 100 and you can buy tons of great things . Experience is same across whether its mongkok in kowloon, Manish market of Mumbai, laxmi market of pune , streets of Kuta beach at Bali, Ben thanh market in Ho chi minh or 168 shopping mall of manila , Odel / house of Fashion at colombo.
wow Vikas, you seemed to have travelled quite a bit looking for a good bargain..thanks for writing 🙂