where it's all wright: You Dim Sum You Lose Some

The food. OMG the food.

Breakfast was by far my favorite meal of the day. Both hotels we stayed in prepared enormous international breakfast buffets daily. The food was arranged in stations: Western, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, European. Additionally there were huge pastry stations, fruit and granola stations, cereal stations, yogurt stations, and fresh fruit juice stations.

Needless to say, G struggled, and I was in Heaven.

The first morning when we walked around and saw heaping plates of fish balls (??), fried fish tails, and a variety of sushi, he just shook his head and made a beeline for the cereal. I tried it all, of course, minus the more outrageous fish dishes. Part of the reason that breakfast was my favorite meal was because it was the only time of the day I got hungry enough to take advantage of all the cuisine. Also, the buffets were outrageously prepared and displayed.

All the breakfast food stations in the hotel buffet.

I think this is meant to differentiate American bacon from Canadian bacon. I enjoyed my crispy streaky bacon every morning!

A typical breakfast for me: Noodles w/squid and hot pepper sauce, bacon, samosas (or spring rolls), fresh fruit, fresh fruit juice.

A small portion of the fruit/yogurt station.

The Chinese sauces - lots of them were hot!

Lunch was mostly non-existent. You know it's hot when I lose my appetite, I mean, let's be honest. Every day, we spent the entire morning out and about, and around 1:30 or 2:00 when the tours ended, we were usually so exhausted - and nauseous - from the heat, that we would go back to the AIR CONDITIONED HOTEL ROOM and nap for a couple of hours.

However. !! One day in Hong Kong our tour included lunch at a Chinese floating restaurant and let me tell you, it was amazing. It was a 10-course Dim Sum tasting menu that also included fried rice, dumpling soup, and a mango creme brulee dessert.

The great thing about G being a picky eater: B gets to eat twice as much.

Well, hello, fried rice. I believe I will eat you with a variety of hot sauces. I'll diet when I get home. Oh who am I kidding, no I won't.

Most afternoons, once we summoned the strength to get vertical again, we would go out for a drink. In Hong Kong this was more fun because the hotel lobby was remarkable. It included a tapas restaurant and we would enjoy drinks and snacks, such as cheese and fruit trays, while reading or just soaking up the view.

The stunning hotel lobby - the Shangri La Kowloon.

G's fave: Hong Kong Fruit Punch. He has started replicating this at home. He'll march into the kitchen and declare, "I believe I will have a Hong Kong Punch."

My choice was an iced Hazelnut latte. Or two. See how sleepy I look? LOL.

Dinner, like lunch, was sometimes non-existent. Can you believe it? You would think I dropped like 20 pounds while there but nooooooooo. One night we had some tapas in the Hong Kong hotel.

Left: pistachio-coated mushrooms. Right: fig and cheese bruchetta.

Another night, we enjoyed a fancy-schmancy dinner at a gourmet restaurant on Victoria's Peak. It was too nice to take pictures, but here was our view:

G gets total photo credit - one of the best shots of the trip.

In Singapore, we ventured out for dinner each night, probably because it was a whopping 5 degrees cooler. Most nights we went to Clarke Quay on the Marina, a popular area full of restaurants and shops.

Excellent Spanish tapas. And located out on the water.

Moroccan food, also at Clarke Quay.

A hummus plate that I could dive into and swim around in.

Singapore Sling, of course.

Other culinary adventures...

At a Starbuck's they had an Ugly Curry Chicken Puff. Mmmm, sounds so appetizing.

In addition to ketchup, you could put chilli sauce on your fries. Oh yes.

In Little India (Singapore), we started the day off with dessert. !! This was probably the only time that G was happier than I was with the food. They have these honey ball pastry things that basically consist of a fried ball of dough soaked into liquid sugar until it is saturated, and then soaked in honey for a while. It's sickeningly sweet. It's the type of thing you have to eat with a fork because it's so squishy with sugar. BLECH.