Chinese New Years: Dinner/Flower Market/Fireworks

Happy New Years Everyone!
May All Your Wishes Come True, and Your Year be Filled with Happiness,
Prosperity, and Longevity.

I'm very excited to say that I had the opportunity to spend Chinese/Lunar New Year in Hong Kong. There were a lot of new things that I had the pleasure of experiencing, and I would love to share them with you.

Before New Years, I was invited to a dinner with my Aunt P, Cousins, and their families, on my Dad's side. Aunt P had prepared a delicious meal of crab, various pork cuttings, escargot, shrimp, jellyfish, abalone, fish, and veggies.

This was what was on the table when we started eating
and then came the soup, another veggie platter,
steamed fish, and abalone.

FYI:
Abalone: a common name for any group of large/small edible sea snails
(wiki)

The food was amazing and the company was great. During the dinner I was asked if I had been to the Flower Market in Victoria Park. When I said that I hadn't, my cousins strongly suggested that I walk around at least once. So I planned to go visit
Victoria park the next day.

A few friends and I went to explore the Flower market. As we approached the stalls of trinkets, baubles, and food, this is what we saw: LOTS OF PEOPLE! (at 1pm!)

I thought this was a lot of people.
 My cousins said that if I had enough room to take a picture
 it wasn't THAT crowded

Although, there were indications as to which direction we were supposed to head toward, this was one of those moments where I've had the pleasure of feeling herded like sheep, to who knows where. The experience would be very hard to replicated if you've never been in large crowds, but imagine yourself being funnelled into an aisle of people, bordered by toy stands, and having the merchants yell into microphones trying to get you to look at their wares, while hoping to be louder than the stalls beside them doing the exact same thing. The trinket/toy section of the Lunar Market over stimulates one's senses that there's nothing you can do but move forward to save yourself from straining your neck trying to see everything. Heaven forbid that you should stay in one place!

Frozen strawberries on a stick,
drizzled/dipped in sugar

There were a lot of interesting treats for sale. Among them, as seen above, were berries on a stick. There were a lot of other fruits on a stick, but I thought that strawberries were the safest things to try. Who doesn't like strawberries anyway? Well, the snack was great, albeit a little sweet and a little dangerous. My friends and I had to navigate our way out of the crowd before I even attempted eating one. There just wasn't enough room. Pointy sticks in a crowd did not seem like the best idea in the world.

Orchids, one of the many flowers
available for sale at the Lunar Market

On the less crazed side of the market was where a lot of the plants could be found. The stalls were lined with orchids, cherry blossoms, pussy willows, and many other weird looking plants. One of the plants that we found everywhere looked like a cross between lemons, oranges, and pumpkins. We had no idea what they were, but they definitely were cheery.

One of the examples of weird plants
Solanum mammosum aka. Nipplefruit/Cow's Udder/Apple of Sodom

Some of the potted elements we found were quite adorable. This ornament was no larger than a softball, but the detail and living sceneries were amazing.

Plant ornamentation

On one of the evenings, a display of fireworks between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon was set to celebrate the new year. I was told that many people went to Tsim Sha Tsui or Central to watch the fireworks, but A and I decided to hike up to The Peak and watch them there. The view was beautiful. We managed to see an overall view of the fireworks display and the rest of Kong Kong's night-scape.

View of the fireworks form the Peak

Hiking up to The Peak was great. It was peaceful and less crowded. We found the best spot to watch by situating ourselves right behind the row of guys with huge cameras. All in all New Years was a blast and I can't wait for next year.

Me and A at The Peak. 

All the best!