Uncle Richard take care of you

Today was very cool. I started off my day by checkin' out the Yuen Po Street Bird Market. Basically it's a small outdoor market where you can buy songbirds of all shapes and sizes, along with accessories for their cages. It was neat because there were lots of old men just hangin' out, taking their birds for walks. It was quite unique.

I also tried checking out the Fa Yuen Market - an outdoor market that sold a wide variety of goods but was primarily aimed at locals. Have you ever seen fish spawning? Trying to swim upcurrent? That's how I felt walking around this market. I could barely move there were so many people (today was a holiday). I also kept getting attacked by some plant a little old lady was carrying over her shoulder. Leaves taste bad.

However, the real highlight of the day came around 5pm. I met up with Emily and Kim so we could wander around. We had made plans to meet some locals for dinner and needed to waste time till then. We decided to go into the Peninsula Hotel (an upperclass hotel with expensive fashion shops) to look around. This place had a maid in the bathrooms that you had to tip on your way out. Gah.

Anyways, we were poking in and out of stores randomly and happened to go into a jade jewelry store. The prices were pretty decent. We were looking at some jade bracelets that were $150HKD each. The shopowner then asked Emily where she was from, and when he learned we were from Canada, he got super excited.

Turns out he's a Canadian citizen too! He also lived in Victoria, the same city Emily lives in. He showed us some old newspaper clippings from when he owned an art gallery and travelled around with his exhibit. He was so excited to meet us (he's a Canadian citizen now). He pulled out one of those cheesy Canadian pins that flash light.

His name is Richard, but he insists on us calling him Uncle Richard. We ended up hanging out at his shop for nearly an hour and a half just talking. We got to see photos of his pet turtle, "QQ" and see some videos of it on his handheld. He was asking us how we enjoyed HK so far. It was so much fun. He gave us each a business card and told us, "Anytime you need anything, you call me 24 hours. That's my cell number. You call anytime!" He's taking us out for dinner tomorrow and Thursday too. He was so excited and happy. I can't wait to see him again.

He gave us each a jade bracelet for free (he told us it was chinese tradition to give gifts... Yeah right, but he refused any money for them).