Hong Kong - Day 5

day 5

umbrella vending machine.

the problem with all the tailors in china and HK it looks like is that they don't have cool fabric.  they have old man fabric, or business bland fabric.  i set out to buy my own to bring to a tailor to have a suit and other stuff made.  little did i know that you need to know what you're doing.  i do not know what i'm doing.  Sham Shui Po is the big area in HK to buy fabric

so basically the only place you can buy fabric is from these guys on the street.  the store fronts are all like showrooms and most of them don't even have the fabric on the premises, it's all stored in mainland china in shenzen and takes a few days to be shipped down to HK.  and you need to be a company and not an individual little guy like me because they sell wholesale not retail.  i've read online that you can buy at some of the places that are wholesale as an individual and i tried but i speak no cantonese and they speak no english here.  in lots of HK many people do speak at least basic english but here they don't.  it was a hot sweaty 3 hrs of learning the hard way.

Wanda of Travellers Yarn this recommended this place"Moon Yue Piece Goods" on 1M3, Shek Kip Mei St, Sham Shui Po, Kowloon.  They actually all spoke english here and have a daughter and son that are in their 20s that speak good english.  they asked how i found the place and they knew i found it from this woman's blog.  i didn't end up getting anything from here but i would if i had more time.  They and other places have fabric from famous brands like shanghai tang.  i guess you really need to know what you're doing here.  I met some brit girls on the street and they said just go to shenzen because that's where all the fabric is anyway.

i was searching for cool linen to make a summer coat with but it doesn't exist.  and all the really cool hip fabric you see is made by the respective companies and never sold to wholesalers.  i'm sure there is some that is smuggled out but it's hard to find.  in the end i learned that the tommy hilfiger jacket i was trying to copy was made out of cotton not linen.  there was a lot of cool cotton patterns and checks, but in linen it's impossible to come by.  i even looked in singapore too.  i'm learning dudes!

normal to see guys all out stretching in asia.

a lot of these kind of collars going on in HK.  what are these called, club collars for women?

victoria park 

Tin Hau station.  love how each station has its own colorful color.  We'll explore Tin Hau, an up and coming neighborhood in another post.

view from some rooftop fancy bar.  here you can see happy valley, the race track.  if i didnt go to singapore that wednesday i would have gone to see a horse race.  it's cheap and HK loves it.  they say time stands still in HK on wednesday nights when the race is on.

7-11

already a pic of signage before but i like how they look underneath.

eugene and vivian.  i went to school with eugene at Yonsei in Seoul back in 2001.  He's from LA, Vivian is from Queens, they's gettin' married soon.  I met Eugene up in Shanghai a few times when i lived in China.