Thanksgiving Hong Kong Style

A lot of people have asked us how we spent Thanksgiving in Hong Kong so we thought we would share with you how we spent the day. A surprisingly number of restaurants around town had Thanksgiving buffets or sold turkeys to be cooked. Even though the number of American expats in Hong Kong is small compared to other nationalities, restaurants and grocery stores definitely cater to this holiday for us.

We have become really good friends with a couple from Portland, Chris and Stephanie. They decided (along with their Irish next door neighbor, Marion) to have Thaksgiving dinner for about 20 of their friends. Now keep in mind, unless you make a lot of money, the flats we live in are really small. Stephanie's and Marions flats are both around 900 sq. ft. So Stephanies flat turned into one giant dining room. There was literally no room for anything else once the dining table for 20 people was set up. The food and drinks and socializing was in Marions flat.

A few days before, Stephanie put me on costume detail. She had in mind the pilgrim hats that you used to make when you were in grade school. I decided to design my own kind of pilgrim hat. When Troy saw what I made for everyone to wear he said people would have to be insane to want to wear them. The funniest thing, everyone wore them all night long, way before they even started drinking. People even wore them afterwards to get foot massages (obviously at this point they have had way too much to drink). Stephanie also wanted everyone to make a hand turkey: tracing your hand to make the turkey then decorating it with construction paper feathers. She then had everyone write on it what they were thankful for. Even though this was a US holiday, there were only about 5 Americans there. Everyone else was Britsh, Scottish, Irish, Philippino, etc. So a few of the people wrote they were thankful for their spouses, jobs, health, etc. Everyone else wrote they were thankful for gin, shoe sales, business class, expandable pants! These people now also think that hats and turkey hands is what all Americans do for Thankgiving.

Stephanie and Marion put on a full out tradtional meal: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, the works. The amazing thing is the kitchens are tiny, tiny, tiny and they cooked everything in two small toaster ovens. The turkey was pre-cooked but they heated it up in the small oven. To make it feel even more like Thanksgiving, they had American football on the TV. Ok, so it was a DVD of last years Superbowl, but it was a nice touch. It was one of the best Thanksgivings Troy and I have had! In fact, Chris and I even had to do a dance it was so much fun!

You can aslo visit our friend's blog if you want to see more information and pictures.

(I have to make one gripe here. I love Hong Kong. There is nothing about it I don't like. But because there are so many European's here, everyone has become accustomed to greeting each other like the European's do. I'm talking specifically the double kiss. You know, where they do the kiss on each cheeck. I so don't like it. I understand it when a European does it but when an American does it to me - another American - I just want to slap them. I want to stop them as they're leaning in and grab their hand and shake it or give them a high five! I have yet to figure out how to handle this when people give me the double kiss.)