BBQ for Twelve

OK - the meat of this trip still hasn't started as I got to Vietnam tomorrow, but I'm having an amazing time in Hong Kong.  Bill decided to pack our schedule, with Yoga at 9:30 (he's super serious about Yoga, and even has an Om tattoo), meeting my great friend Scott at noon, and then a BBQ for 12 of his yoga buddies for dinner.

HK Yoga Studio, located in big high rise

But perhaps the sleeper events of the day were the various shopping trips we needed to do to make all this work.  Bill lives in a neighborhood with tons of shops of every kind, from a whole street full of dried fish products, to amazing fruit stands that have odd looking but beautiful fruits I never heard of, like the aptly named dragon fruit (a relative of a Kiwi apparently).

Dragon fruit are the pink ones in the middle

But the highlight of the day was the fish market.  I've had some obsession with fish markets since I visited the Tokyo one about 15 years ago - the mother of all fish markets.  This was smaller but more interactive, as Bill was in his element, poking and prodding fish to find the best choices and haggling with the sellers.

I hope these guys have good healthcare - they chop up big fish at an amazing rate

There were like 10 variety of crab, 5 of clams, and who knows on the big fish that they were hacking up at incredible speeds.

Pretty crab - all still crawling

After shopping we settled down to a slightly drunken lunch of take out Thai with Scott and his girlfriend.  Scott is a close friend who left VMware to travel the world, living in Singapore and now HK.  We put Bill's rooftop garden to great use and caught up on old times and new startup plans.  How super cool to be 9000 miles from home with two of my best buds in the world?

Then came Bill's big party.  Honestly it was 10 yoga women and us, which was slightly intimidating.  With that many folks I knew the chances of a lot of english conversations were not high, but luckily I brought my guitar, and Kirin (one of the yoginis) was really into singing and performing.  So we swapped the guitar and Bill's daughters Uke back and forth and had a really nice time learning music from each other.  Bill is super ambitous to cook for 12 folks on short notice, but it was an amazing night, even if it got pretty hard to keep my eyes open towards the end, running on 4 hours sleep for the last few days.  

Singing Jason Maraz's "Lucky" with Kirin (and cheating on the lyrics)

Bill is a rare dude very interested in cooking (as I aspire to be), but his influences are deeper in Thai than I, and he rocks the fish sauce and lemongrass like he is using salt and pepper.  He stuff the fish with tons of thai spices and coated the outside with salt and garlic rub.  Then we rolled the cooked fish in lettuce leaves like tacos.  

The moment of Truth as Bill puts the fish on the BBQ

BBQ for 12 in Bills Rooftop garden

What's Next...

Tonight I leave for Vietnam and the real challenges of the trip will begin there, as I try and rig up a view prototype kit to test out at the orphanages.  Having so much fun in HK may be a mixed blessing, as I'm not used to amazing food and old friends, but now need to work hard to make this trip an overall success.  But that's what I came for, and I'm also anxiously excited about getting started.  We meeting in Ho Chi Minh City at midnight tonight!  More on the service side of this trip in my next post (finally)...