The Round Robin Visits

Posted by Shelly

40+ years after graduation, my aunt is still in close touch with her college friends, all teachers or retired teachers. They get together twice a year, usually in southern California. However, twice they have traveled overseas together. A few years ago they met in England, and this September the “Round Robin Gang” came to Hong Kong.


One friend and her husband are now working at the Hong Kong Canadian School and we live on the same street. The group sandwiched a trip to Beijing and Xian, China with two long weekends in Hong Kong. We enjoyed having Karen stay with us, meeting everyone and acting as tour guides.


It was fun to hear everyone’s impressions of Hong Kong. One night we went for Chinese food. In Hong Kong fresh seafood is live seafood (people want to choose their own fish from the restaurant’s tank located in front of the shop). A common dish is steamed fish prepared with spring onions, ginger, a bit of soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil. Since the brain, cheeks and eyeballs are considered some of the best parts of the fish, steamed fish is always served whole. This was surprising to the group and Greg further entertained them by eating both eyeballs and the cheeks. [The cheeks were delicious. I ate the eyeballs on a dare. I'd do it again, but probably not without a dare. -- G]

Chickens are also served whole. We ordered a fried chicken. After frying the whole bird, it is cut up into large-bite size pieces in the kitchen and then arranged on the plate to look like a whole bird (head and feet are usually put on the serving plate). Strangely no one wanted to eat the chicken head, but everyone did photograph it.


Hong Kong has very little flat land. There are a lot of hills, stairs and overpasses. Even though the group was in good shape and used to walking, they did find all the stairs a bit tiring. This made me very happy as I am always happy to have an excuse to have a foot massage. Chinese foot massage start with soaking feet in a large wooden bucket filled with hot soapy water or medicinal tea. After about ten minutes of soaking, the massage starts. In addition to treating all the pressure points on the foot, the masseuse usually continues up the leg as far as the knee or mid thigh and sometimes even offers a quick shoulder massage at the end.


Foot massages are painful in the best possible way. Hour long massages cost less than US$10 in China and are US$15-25 here in Hong Kong. Several of the Round Robin had more than one massage and one even branched out to try the “ear candling” service.