Destinations

Lung King Heen - View of the Dragon - is the contemporary Cantonese restaurant at the Four Seasons Hong Kong. The food was exquisite! We started our meal off with the Peking Duck and they brought out a whole duck and sliced it in front of us. This crispy duck was served with the traditional sauce on little flour tortillas with sliced cucumber. It melted in your mouth and was hands down the best Peking Duck I have ever experienced.

Then the soup came out - double-boiled supreme shark’s fin soup with yunnan ham and brassica. To be honest, I have never tried anything as daring as shark fin, but I figured that it was mixed in with the broth. I kept eating thinking the soup had noodles and when I reached the end of the bowl my husband explained that the noodles were actually thinly sliced shark’s fin. It’s a good thing I didn’t make mention of it sooner! Sometimes you just have to close your eyes, plug your nose and dig in (not literally).

The next course was steamed lobster with egg whites and perigord truffles. I wasn’t such a big fan of this dish, only because of the egg whites. The lobster was presented on a small plate with with the uncooked egg whites as the base. I actually like lobster, but I just couldn’t bring myself to each much after the first couple of bites slithered down my throat.

I opted to skip the next course - one because I was getting quite full, and two because I don’t eat beef, but my husband and friend thoroughly enjoyed it.

And, finally, on to dessert - my favorite meal of the day. Back home in Milpitas, my husband and I like to visit this little dessert place in one of the Asian neighborhoods called Bolansa Dessert, or Healthy Dessert. We always get this drink with mango, coconut and sago - a clear jelly. So, we were very excited when we saw the chilled sago cream with mango and pomelo. We opted to share since our tummies were already getting quite full and loved every bite of it. We followed that up with a tasty little petit four served Hong Kong style. One was an orange flaked pastry with green marzipan swirled inside and the other was a pink and white marshmallow.

It was an amazing experience with succulent cuisine and impeccable service. To top it off, we sat overlooking the bay and the skyline of Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon. When you next visit Hong Kong, I highly recommend an evening at the Four Seasons View of the Dragon.

My wife and I recently took a 15 day cruise on the Costa Allegra on Costa Cruise Lines. The cruise started in Hong Kong and visited Manila, Kota Kinabalu, Brunei, Singapore, Saigon, Danang, Sanya, and back to Hong Kong. We chose this line because of the expansive itinerary and wanted to celebrate our Christmas and New Year’s at sea. However, the experience left much to be desired.

Port of Call - I would not recommend Sanya, China. It is touted as a beach resort where most of the Chinese locals visit, but when we arrived it was clearly not well maintained and the sidewalks did not look clean.

The Ship - I was told the ship had no stabilizers. I don’t know if this is true or not, but the stretch from Hong Kong to Manila is supposed to be the worst. It was very calm seas and smooth going. All the other times we were at open sea - which was about 5 days - were bad. There was a stretch of about 70+ hours where my wife and I were taking Dramamine every 8 hours. I believe everyone was on Dramamine, so much demand in fact, that by about the 60th hour, the ship ran out of it. I was fortunate I had some extra pills.

For about 3 full days, the ship was moving all over the place. Lying in bed at night was no relief. The ship seemed to be moving in all directions, and, it became worst because the springs in the mattress made you bounce up and down like you were on a trampoline! There was one night at dinner where the ship was moving so bad that dishes, glasses, wine bottles were crashing and falling over.

The Menu - On paper, the menu looked excellent. In reality, it turned out to be rather poor quality and hit or miss on the taste. I had shrimp scampi once and lobster twice. All three times the food tasted like it was previously cooked/frozen/cooked mushy/or powdery. Even their pasta was not consistent in quality and taste.

The only saving grace on food was their pizza bar which served fresh pizza from 10pm to 1am. Costa is an Italian cruise line, so I’m glad they got this one right. In addition, their service from the dining and bar personnel was also to a high standard.