"I saw the word 'Taxi' and I thought it said 'Taco'": Our Journey to find Mexican Food

So after my relatively stressful day of attempting to find a place to go, breaking my fast and trying to keep up in my classes, Thursday came around and Sumana, Evan and I decided that we were going to adventure on over into town and wander around in hopes of finding an Indian store and a Mexican restaurant.

After class, we gathered decided to eat lunch and rather than eating the normal cafe sandwich or some sort of thai/chinese/japanese rice dish we decided that we were going to attempt to concoct something that tasted indian! Admittedly, it was more rice but this time it tasted even better! First we went to one of the canteens, and Sumana and I attempted to ask for steamed rice. We should have known better to ask a local student how to pronounce it in Cantonese but, of course, we didn't think that far ahead. We were definitely struggling so this man that was behind us in line tried to help us. He mistook what we wanted and told the lady that we wanted fried rice and when she said they didn't have any at LG1 we were very confused. We told the man that we wanted steamed, white rice and he gave us a funny look that seemed to say, "Really?! You only want white rice? You are crazy" but went on to tell the lady anyway. She asked us how many we wanted and we said 5 and the guy behind us did a double take and sputtered a little and said "You want 5?! Wh-" He thought better of asking us and Sumana and I just burst out laughing. Clearly this is not a typical request that people make.

Anyway, we got our 5 boxes of rice and headed back to Sumana's room to prepare our lunch. Sumana's mom had given her this tomato paste that you just add to already cooked rice so we told Evan to come over and the three of us had some really, really tasty tomato-indian-like deliciousness. We talked for a while and then headed out to grab the minibus to take us to the MTR station. We didn't really have any idea where we wanted to go and didn't take any addresses of the Indian stores or anything. We vaguely remembered where it was so got off at the Tsim Sha Tsui exit and walked out of the Exit that heads toward our favorite juice stand. We started walking in a direction that I thought I remembered seeing on the google maps but had to turn around and walk down the other way. No problems, after finding "1/F , A1 Friends House" we had finally found the Maharaja Indian Emporium!

Let me just tell you that this Indian store was unlike any other that I have ever been in. The entry was a bunch of random sacks, there were boxes all over the place, nothing was organized at all. The aisles were TEENY. There were boxes that were blocking the products and the people that ran the store's desks were a complete MESS. I wish I had taken a picture of the store because a picture wold be worth so much more than I could ever explain. We were browsing the sections and we found random types of instant noodles. They had spicy vegetable (pretty standard), Manchurian (not what I expected..and then Pani puri Cup noodles (WHAT?!). For those of you that may not know, Pani puri is a type of indian snack where you have a puffed, lightly fried dough and you put spiced water (at the very least, most people put different types of cutney's and little pieces of potato etc). I definitely did not expect to see that in noodle form so I decided to buy one of each kind. We got up to the counter and the man would not let us by the pani puri one because it was expired...just our luck. Anyway, just as we were leaving, we saw a man in the other room that was buckling up his belt and adjusting his pant and kind of gave us this deer-caught-in-headlights look. Probably not going to go to that Indian store again....

So we left that shady area and decided to hop back on the MTR and head to a random a MTR station that we hadn't really explored. We ended up at Admiralty (right near Central) and got off and wandered around there where we were able to see the Bank of China building turn from day to night. It was pretty cool. Evan was really excited because the Bank of China building is his favorite building in Hong Kong and we were pretty close to it so he went crazy with his fancy-schmancy camera, as I am sure someone else I know will do when he gets to Hong Kong. :) Anyway, we walked along the roads and ended up towards the IFC building (also really cool) and we went into the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. It was funny because you could see all of these older adults, in their fancy clothes and then here we are, a bunch of early 20somethings in our flip-flops and tshirts (Evan with his camera around his neck), waltzing in and wandering around the lobby. We ended up sitting on the sofas and admiring the artwork. After a while, we asked the concierge about Mexican food (after all, that was one of our main purpose' s in adventuring). He gave us these relatively expensive locations that we were not planning on going to (probably because he was under the assumption that we were staying at the hotel and therefore would pay astronomical prices for our food...haha..righttt). Anyway, we did not remember the address of the restaurant that we wanted to go to, El Taco Loco, but we improvised. I kind of new the general area (near the mid-level escalators) so all we had to do was make our way over there. We walked through the Lan Kwai Fong area (Bar District) to get to the Soho area and Hollywood Road, where the escalators start. I hadn't ever been to the LKF area so it was kinda neat to see all the lights and the different types of Bars (THERE ARE SO MANY) and all the crazy dressed up people. Anyway, we maneuvered our way over to the escalators and I, purely by chance, spotted the words "El Taco" on the side of a building a little ways up the escaltors. SUCCESS!

We ate our glorious mexican food (not the best I have ever had but I can't ask for much seeing as I am on the other side of the world). It was a pretty small place, with only about 7 tables. You ordered at the counter first and if you were dining in, they would come serve it to you. After dinner we didn't want to head us just then so we decided to continue our adventure up the escalators, all the way to the very top. Let me just tell you that we were probably going up escalators for about another 15-20 minutes. They were never-ending! It was so definitely a hyserical experience with a stop at the local Park n' Shop (grocery store) where we saw ice cream tubs that were about 3 inches tall and about 2 inches in diameter. Smallest tubs ever! Obviously we took some pictures and then headed back up the escalators. Once we got to the top, we discovered.....nothing. There was nothing up there! We saw a sign that said that there was this pretty cool cathedral where you could take pictures so we trekked over there but we never found it. We ended up walking down this steep hill, around all of these crazy curves for another 15-20 minutes just get back down to the LKF area. We walked around there and then decided to head back to the MTR station to get back to campus because we had already been out for about 7 hours! We got back to the station and then back to campus around 11:30. It was definitely one of the best nights so far. I am sure that we will do it again soon.

I'll post about the next couple days in a different post..haha. This one is getting kinda crazy.