Waiting for Mangkhut

This restaurant enticed diners to come for the evening

Late yesterday afternoon, Hong Kong's security minister John Lee Ka-chiu told the public to "prepare for the worst", because of Super Typhoon Mangkhut coming close to Hong Kong, so today people came out in droves to stock up.

It wasn't as severe as bare shelves in North Carolina when Hurricane Florence was approaching yesterday, but the wet market in Kennedy Town as well as the Park n Shop were much busier than usual around 10am. The atmosphere was like Chinese New Year eve, people buying up ingredients they would need for the next few days.

Many shops around Hong Kong taped their windows like this

In the afternoon, the shopping malls were packed with people. At Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong, people were even checking out the cars on display, not necessarily getting supplies for the impending Super Typhoon Mangkhut.

By evening things had calmed down -- my colleague and I had a delicious dinner at a Lebanese restaurant called Francis in Wan Chai. It was full, but there weren't a lot of people waiting outside for a table in the second round.

After our early dinner around 8pm I walked to nearby Pacific Place in Admiralty, and the shopping mall was practically dead -- hardly anyone was in the shops and even Great, the supermarket downstairs was relatively quiet.

Most people rushed home on the MTR because we'd been warned it was going to be a big one. The bakery in the Kennedy Town MTR station it looked like it had been raided as most of the baked goods were gone.

This bakery was practically cleaned out of baked goods

I am curious to know what kinds of snacks and food people stock up on for a typhoon! I saw one guy carrying a shopping bag full of candies including a giant box of Malteasers...

The Hong Kong Observatory is expecting to raise the T8 signal between 11pm and 2am, with Mangkhut coming skirting just south of Hong Kong in the late morning or early afternoon, depending on its speed.

Many shops have taped their windows so it looks like the Chinese character for rice (米)... before they would only tape an "X"... guess this time Mangkhut is special that it warrants more tape?

In any event we're prepared... everyone is also watching to see what happens to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge!