Bring your passport the next time you go to Yuen Long

We took Changunnie and Bear to join some friends for food crawl and photo shoot in Yuen Long. We were pretty well prepared for Bear's first outing since he completed his vaccination. Got a big piece of bone the night before (It's a Jamon Iberico!), cleaned the cage, packed the bowl, lunch, water...etc. In fact, we almost forgot to pack Changunnie's bag. It was quite easy to get to Yuen Long and the eating began. Changunnie wasn't impressed by the look of egg noodle toasted with shrimp roe but one bite of it (and I think it was also the taste of lard), there was no turning back. Every chopstickful of noodle went to her mouth instead of mine.

Next, we got Chinese pastry from a local bakery. It was different from the more famous Yuen Long bakery (which made its footprint all over Hong Kong). The winter melon and sugar filling was soft, fragrant, moist without being overly gluey. The answer is 30% lard. No wonder Yuen Long was the key farming settlement and supported all of Hong Kong for a long time. No one in the city would dare to use lard anymore. Changunnie of course had couple bites of my cake. (I will find the shortest way to go back for some takeout!)

It wasn't easy to drag a puppy and a toddler around town but we made it to the small shop for some beef brisket. The variety was impressive but the food a little too salty. I couldn't taste if the radish had the sweetness only found in the Winter. The good thing was we were able to feed Bear as there's a table outside of the shop by a small resting area under a tree.

After that, we went over to a Chinese restaurant for some Chinese steamed cake. It was nice and soft and I wouldn't ask if there was any lark in it. We then set off to look for cholesterol sandwich (Gold Coin Chicken... http://chi-he-wan-le.blogspot.com/2009/12/going-for-gold.html ) but didn't find it and so we settled for ice-cream from Arce Dairy from the Philippines. Despite the funny sounding name, the ice-cream was very rich and the Ube Supreme and Maize were fantastic. At that point, we were driving to the wetland for the photo shooting session and so everyone except the driver and co-driver happily dug in. At a red light, I tried to pass the tin to the front for the co-driver and a little hand pulled my arm back with a not too little voice saying "My ice-cream!"

A bumpy ride through the fish ponds and we got to the border. Without knowing better, we drove along despite people gave us the "these people gotta be brain dead" look along the way. It turned out that we drove into the restricted area (close to the Chinese border and if it's not the restricted area, what is? Duh!) without a permit which, not being a local, would not be possible for us anyway. A police patrol car came by and asked us why we drove to the area. It was a bit tense at first as it could have been a traffic AND criminal offense. When the policeman found out we drove in from the pond side, we earned respect and he just urged us to leave asap.

It was a fun day and I want to go out more with Changunnie and Bear. Next time though, I need to make sure Bear is better trained as he almost shot into a Chinese cured meat shop when he smelled the cured duck!