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The Colors of Asia I spent the last couple of weeks on a trip through Asia which took me to Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing. Along the way I met up with several local friends and had a grand time hanging out a the watch stores, eating fabulous local food and just generally enjoying the easy-going Asian lifestyle. To stay on topic, the first part of this post will be about watches but I've also sneaked in a few images and thoughts on other things which may be of interest to those who are tempted to visit Asia themselves.
Regardless of what you photograph in downtown Hong Kong, there's a good chance that a Rolex logo will be on half of the images.
Virtually every brand is available and some of them like Franck Muller or Panerai, have become very fashionable ....
... but the undisputed King of the Continent is, without any doubt, still the brand with the five-pronged crown ...
The number of watch stores, their size and the watches they're stock with is even overwhelming to somebody like myself who lives in a city with a watch store on every second corner.
Especially in Hong Kong, watches are very much treated as a commodity. While you'll get a bug-eyed stare if you ask for a discount in Switzerland, the staff in Asia will whip out a big pocket calculator, hack on the keyboard for a while and then present you with a net price which is usually is just too low to pass on.
The stores in Tokyo are a bit different, the discounted price is often already on the price tag and I don't think much haggeling is done. They are quite amazing though, often seven stories high and they stock many Japanese-market only models from Seiko, Citizen, Orient Star and other brands. In these stores, I got my first chance to see some of the Grand Seikos up close. They're beautifully made watches and I think qualitywise very comparable to many of their Swiss made counterparts but unfortunately, their $3,000+ price-tags forced me to pass this time. I would have loved to splurge in this store ... ... but as I had managed to polish away this year's watch budget long ago, I had to content myself with a more modest souvenir from Japan ... ... and another one from Singapore. What was I thinking?!?
Well that's about it from the Asian watch front, the following part deals other topics - mainly FOOD!
The variety of restaurants and types of food available in Singapore may be unmatched anywhere in Asia. I seriously am considering flying over there one day to do nothing but eat and sleep Apart from the "downtown" Orchard Road area, Singapore consists of several districts, one around "Arab Street" is populated mostly by Malays. Apart from satay, I had no experience with Malaysian food and it's quite difficult to categorize, there are bits from the Indian and Chinese cuisine, as well as completely independent dishes and flavors. Next time I'm in Asia I will sample a lot more of this very flavorful and beautifully prepared cuisine.
Another area in Singapore is called "Little India", no prizes for guessing what kind of food is served there. Some local friends took me to the Banana Leaf restaurant for some incredible "Fish Head curry" and other delights
If you're in an area where you don't know the restaurants, just pick the one with the most people standing in line. I followed this advice myself and the results were an enormous success. This place is in the basement of the Paragon shopping center on Orchard Road and makes dumplings of amazing flavor and quality.
The pork and shrimp dumplings would put most ravioli I've had to utter shame, pass on the "hot and sour" soup though, it was neither spicy nor sour.
Hong Kong I had the impression that the restaurant scene in Hong Kong was less varied than in Singapore and many of the places served Chinese dishes. But because China is so large, the varieties of food coming from there is also very big. My hosts tooks me to several really nice places where the food was so different than in the Chinese restaurants in Europe. Cantonese food in the Restaurant Wan Loong Court. The duck and especially the duck-liver sausages were out of this world
A room with a view. My advice is to splurge a bit on hotel rooms when in Asia. The best hotels there are outstanding by any standards and are mostly very affordable
In another place, we had some typical dishes from a cuisine which I believe is called "Chiu Chow", specialities include things like steamed goose and baked crab and you start and end your meal with a shot of incredibly strong "Kung Fu" tea
Beijing Beijing is quite far up to the North of China and it was already snowing and so cold that I had to buy a jacket there ... which was quite an experience in itself :-) Accordingly the Beijing cuisine is quite hearty, the signature dish is of course Peking or now Beijing duck. Crispy pieces of meat served together with raw vegetables and a slightly sweet plum (?) sauce which you wrap into little pancakes.
There are several night markets within the city with loads of foodstalls which serve everything from grilled meat skewers to fried noodles.
Beijing night market. No wonder people were laughing with all this good food around
Tokyo From all the destinations I've visited within Asia, Tokyo was certainly the most challenging and the most exotic from the standpoint of a Western tourist. English isn't spoken widely at all and apart from some of the signs at the subway stations and a few major streets, nothing is written in English either. But the people are exceedingly polite and try to help you as best as they can, communication difficulties nonwithstanding. And if you enjoy wandering through the streets of a huge city, taking in the sights, smells and sounds, Tokyo just can't be beat ...
A lifetime wouldn't be enough to try all the restaurants in Tokyo but I did spend four days trying as many as possible. Restaurants are everywhere and a typical department store may house 50 or more of them in its top three floors! Many of the places only have menus written in Japanese which is less a problem than it sounds like because many of them have all of their dishes on display - out of plastic!
Oh how I wish I had found a store which sold these plastic pizzas, think of the fun you could have with one of them :-D Thankfully the food served has nothing to do with its plastic counterparts. I indulged on tempura a number of times because I love it and it's quite unpayable here in Switzerland. I came across several "tempurerias" which first served this wonderful and not particularly healthy dish in several courses. First you got some vegetables and jumbo shrimp, then maybe some fish and other vegetables and at the end a helping of scallops.
One of my favorite Japanese combos, tempura shrimp and sushi. My theory is that the unsaturated Omega-3 oils of the raw fish will compensate for the high-cholesterol of the deep-fried shrimp and that the beer works as sort of a .... ummm .... catalyst so in total, this is really a very healthy meal :-)
Noodles in many form are also one of the staple foods in Japan. They come in many different varities like Soba or Udon and are often served in a broth together with vegetables, fish, seafood and in this case, some quail eggs (side dish of tempura vegetables in the back)
It was really difficult walking through past these stalls without buying from every one of them ....
Tuna
Beef
Breads
Fish
Bento lunch boxes
Pastries, amazingly many famous Parisienne confiseries had booths in these foodhalls. During my trip I tried to avoid eating Western food as much as I could but passing on the countless pastry stalls simply proved to be impossible and resulted in ....
... some rather bizarre but superyummie midnight snacks
Yakitori, little skewers marinated with a kind of terriyaki sauce. Best enjoyed piping hot from the grill with lots of .... ... ice cold Japanese beer!
After all this food and watches, you may ask "did I do any real site-seeing at all?" ... well ... I did go and check out Akihabara, Tokyo's gigantic electronics district where ...
... the staff you megaphones or unusual costumes to lure you into their stores ...
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