Eat till you cry (but bring your own tissues)

You'll never go hungry in Hong Kong, but we nearly did, just from paralysis-by-indecision: too many options and we were frozen. On every street corner there's little vendors with their habachis doing up street-meat skewers. Think Richmond Night Market x 1000. But don't ask for sweet-and-sour chicken; Nazma went on a short-lived hunger strike because she couldn't find any, before finally giving up and tucking into her congee like a good (and starving) girl. And of course the noodle dives, posh buffets, and everything in between. And in case Chinese isn't your flavour, I think we ended up having Japanese and Indian food twice each.

In the end, though, the topper was this "Mongolian"-style hotpot we had with my mother's side of the family: insanely spicy broth on one side, and this garlic/ginger/ginseng concoction on the other. Basically you cook squid, fish, chicken, various meats in ball form, and paper-thin cuts of lamb and beef (no pork in deference to Nazma) in either broth and chow down until you pass out. To top this off, the family ordered spicy lamb ribs, the likes of which we've never seen in Vancouver. Each a foot long and heavenly. They even gave us disposable gloves to eat them with--Hong Kong being super hygiene-conscious post-SARS--and yet they still don't give out napkins at restaurants: you have to bring your own.