The peak & some alone time

Today was more of a relaxing sort of day. I slept in and then went for lunch to the Peak. Unfortunately, it was a bit cloudy today so it was harder to take pictures but I was able to get a relatively decent view of HK & Kowloon. After lunch, my mom headed off to a massage and I was left to explore HK on my own. Actually, both my aunt & my mom preferred if I stayed in Pacific Place & the Admiralty mall. That was okay, since I still had plenty of things to see, shop, & eat. So, with the 2 1/2 hours I had I managed to get some pictures developed, buy a pair of pants and have a very yummy chocolate croissant and coffee. One thing I love is the coffee bars. Unlike Starbucks or Second Cup they make your coffee fresh before they make your cafe latte or mocha or whatever you choose to have. That way you are essentially getting the freshest cup of coffee...and for only $22 (HK) that is already cheaper than Starbucks or Pacific Coffee here in HK.

Back from Japan

Hello! Back from a five day trip to Japan. mm..what can I say about the trip. Well, for one thing I found it a lot more difficult to communicate with than in other countries I've been in. Thankfully, my Mom still remembers a bit of her Japanese so that helped. Other than that we did a lot of walking and looking at things & taking pictures. I didn't even buy much everytime we stopped at the shopping malls since they were always brand name shops so it was more window shopping than anything. I've got to say though, that this trip we actually went to a few amusement parks like Hello kitty Land and Tokyo Disney Sea which was actually quite a lot of fun. All in all, after a 5 day trip we're all very thankful that everything went smoothly & we all came back to HK. There was a particularly tense & stressful period while in Japan, but all is good now. Praise God. I think it's always a good idea to buy travel & health insurance.

Anyhoo, now that we're back in HK I had the opportunity to do a bit more shopping. I just couldn't buy much in Japan since everything felt pretty $$$. With the Yen increasing daily, shopping in HK felt a lot more appealing.

We also had the opportunity to try some different types of meals this week. We went to a Korean restaurant for lunch on Tues & at the same time celebrated my Mom's birthday. Today, we went for shanghai food & that was delicious! The 'siu long baos' were so good. The wrapping was perfectly done & not too thin so the 'juice' stayed in. :) mm..soo good! Anyhoo, just got home as we traveled to Sha Tin today to visit my dad's brother & his sons (my tong gogos & tong didi). It's been so long since we've seen each other so it was great to catch up again. okay time for bed.

Touring Hong Kong

So, my laptop is back! Now, I can load pictures up again. Turns out the hardware is fine, but they suspect that the software may have a problem. Perhaps one of my many applications is causing a problem. Regardless, it's back and there is nothing wrong aside from me needing to buy an external hard disk so I can back up my data.

Let me tell you a little about my travels lately. Both yesterday & today my parents and I became tourists as we toured around the outer parts of the city. Yesterday we went to this place called "california" and "sunset place" which are both gated communities outside of the main city. It's actually quite neat as residents here have the benefit of living within a very secured compound and they can have 2 or 3 story houses with a garden and a view of the ocean (some of them). Each community has it's own clubhouse, pool, tennis court, shopping area & eating complex (see set 1).

today (Tuesday) we went to Repulse Bay & Stanley; areas a bit further out from the main city. Repulse Bay has real sand! & a beautiful view of the water. Stanley was just as nice. There was even an area there with a bunch of bars & restaurants. After walking on that street for a bit you almost forget that you're in Hong Kong. For instance, there was an English pub, a French restaurant, a pizza place, and an upscale restaurant. Anyhoo, I should go to sleep now since I'm off to Japan tomorrow! I probably won't have internet so I'll update you all on those travels when I get back.

ooh and that 4th picture below (bottom right)? that's a historic building that they took down piece by piece from somewhere in Hong Kong and then rebuilt piece by piece in Stanley. It is now a tea house I believe.

first weekend in HK

So, it seems that I may be unable to post pics up for a while since my laptop is currently being repaired. I'm hoping that it will be fixed soon so I can show you all the sights of hk as well. Well, the weekend finally arrived in HK. Didn't do too much on Saturday since I was still feeling under the weather. I was actually looking forward to going to 180, a fellowship that a few of my friends in HK attend on Saturday night. But, since I was still sick, there was probably no way that I could last throughout the entire fellowship. It's actually quite painful to be sick and moving around in HK. You can't slow down because if you did you'll probably get run over or hurried by people behind you.

Hong Kong is very fast paced. Definitely not good for people who enjoy the leisurely life. Everything is geared towards convenience & time saving solutions. The Octopus card is one such example. Any type of public transportation uses this card. You simply load money on it and you can use it to take the metro, bus, small buses, tram, rail and the ferry. You can even use it at a 7-11! They say the standard transaction time is 0.3 sec- octopus card. This is super fast since you must swipe the card as you enter the metro and swipe it again when you leave. So if it was any slower there would quickly be a line up and that would be no good during busy hours. In a way it's sort of like the ticket system for the Paris subway except in this case you're using one card to do everything and the machine simply deducts your money depending on how far you travel. The other thing I marvel at is the ability to use your cell phone in the metro. That too, is another time saver. Never again will you be lost (in my case) or never again will you lose time on that much needed business transaction (not in my case :P ).

Anyways, enough rambling about this amazing Octopus card. You'll just have to try it out for yourself when you come to Hong Kong. So, Sunday. Attended church with my parents at the church they use to attend - Hong Kong Baptist. As an aside, sometime this week, it was also pointed out to me that my grandparents used to go to a very charismatic Pentecostal church! Who would've thought! Anyhoo, after church we met up with my relatives for lunch and then I proceeded to have my own adventures and travelled all the way to Hung Hom from Central station to meet up with friends. The neat thing was I finally made it to a Muji store. Ooh this place has the coolest pens!! Gel pens were only 5 HK$ which is about 1$ CAN. :) So, neat and so many awesome colors to choose from!

Anyhoo, this is a very long post now so I will stop now.

Cool thing from today: watching the light/laser show across from Hong Kong harbor & taking the ferry by myself (hehe, no I did not get sea sick! :P)

Day 3 & Day 4

Day 3: didn't blog on Day 3, because I got sick :( . I've been fighting off a sore throat on one side for the past 4 days so I figured I should go see a doctor. I also had been sneezing a lot lately too. Well, thank goodness for medical insurance! I walked out of the dr's office with 450 (HK$) so about 65$ (CAN) of medicine. Apparently I have tonsillitis and an allergy. So, I ended up with antibiotics, penadol, allergy medication, cough/phlegm min, cough lozenges, ear drops and nose spray. Yes, that is a lot huh? You would probably like to know that of all those meds, I've been using 2 or 3 of them.The rest seem geared towards any symptoms I have related to a cough. mm..I guess that's the main difference between Canada & HK. After you go and see your doctor, they do up your medicine right away. There is a 'pharamacy', if ou will, right there.

Day 4: Went to OceanPark with Cyn & Cal. oooh that was lots of fun :) Although, I was still recovering we saw some adorable pandas (the baby ones are cuter), the coral reef (saw a huge sting ray, shark, schools of fish etc...) and a sea lion and dolphin show. After ocean park we headed back to hong kong to do some shopping. We also bought some fresh egg tarts from a bakery in Wan Cai. Since dinner wasn't until 7:30 with Caleb, Cal and I shopped around & hunted for a fotomax. Perhaps it was our lack of confidence in the directions we were given or our misunderstanding of the language ; either way it took us at least 20 minutes to find the nearest photomax store (which was only a block or so away ) :P .

Highlight of the day: seeing the really adorable pandas & the cora reef (I will post pics soon)
odd thing of the day: I kept hiccuping all day. At least 6 times. Odd huh? I'm not sure how to prevent it.

Day 2 in HK - a day for errands

Today was essentially a day chock full of errands. Of all the lines that we waited in today; from the imigration card office, to the travel agencies, to the visa office the wait time at the imigration office was the shortest - only 20 minutes! In 20 minutes I was finger printed, had my picture taken and had received my temporary citizen card. In comparison, the visa line took what felt like hours. Okay, so it was probably around 2hours of waiting, but my parents and I were cold (from the a/c) and hungry (we hadn't eaten lunch yet and it was 5pm when we finished). The good thing was,I had been thinking & had brought my passport AND a recent passport-sized photo, since we needed both to fill out a visa application. Finally, we went to eat and had our 'afternoon tea/lunch' at 5:30pm. :) I was way too hungry to even remember to take pictures. When we finished our 'lunch' we were all surprised to see that it was already dark outside. Apparantly it gets dark relatively early in hk (around 6pm) We then headed to finish one last errand before dinner - to drop my laptop off at the computer store.

mm..so, not much else that I did today. I did notice though, that everyone in HK walks at a very fast pace. Even the escalators are faster. I was a bit worried going down the escalators as I still have a slight fear of them. Well, I guess it's time for bed. Hopefully tomorrow will be more about relaxing then errand hopping :)

Arrived in Hong Kong

hello all! as promised I've decided to start blogging again and what better way to start then to blog about my adventures in HK? Well, the 15 hour flight or so wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, our section of the plane probably didn't sleep much as there was a child (who wasn't young) around 41/2 who cried about everything & anything the entire flight! :( So, I think most of us myself included ended up watching quite a few movies to pass the time & to block out the noise. Other than that the flight was great. I even got to see the 'fall colour' of Ontario as we were flying off, ate some yummy food (see below) and attempted to get some rest. ahh..but my personal achievement of the flight was that I managed to solve my Sodoku in less than an hour. Okay, so it's still a long time but I finished it. :) Last night, I managed to get a solid 8 1/2 hour of sleep so I'm hoping that I'll get over the jet lag quite quickly. Anyhoo, I'm off to do some errands. I'll leave you all with some pictures (picture 1: pics from the flight - yummy cookie from English Bay, dinner, Sodoku solved! & me attempting to get rest; picture 2: view from the balcony at my yiyi's).