Update

I’m all done with school for the semester.  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.  Now, for a not so new trip story.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Lantau Island to see the big Buddha for the second time. We rode the cable car and got some pretty nice views of the island on the way to the Buddha.

Actually getting to the Buddha while it was still open was a big plus.

It also looks a lot more impressive during the day. After getting our fill of the Buddha, we ate some vegetarian food at the cafe next to the monastery down below the Buddha.

After this, we took the cable car back and set off for Shenzhen (part of mainland China).

This was my first time going into mainland China, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. Hong Kong is crowded, but Shenzhen was worse. Shenzhen is also dirtier and more hectic. Unlike Hong Kong, you are allowed to spit basically anywhere. Also, instead of using trashcans, a lot of the time, trash just gets thrown onto the ground wherever you are standing. We walked around for a bit upon arriving, and then headed to the massage place. They were having a special, buy 2 hours, get 1 free, so we started off with our free 1 hour foot massage. This was quite good.  Next, we went out for a bit before returning to get the rest of our 3 hour deal.

For this part I chose a French massage with oil.  This massage was also good, but I felt that it could have been better.  I didn’t feel that loose or relaxed afterwards.  What I thought was a very nice addition was the fact that the massage place also has beds that you can stay the night in, without having to pay anything extra.  However, I quickly changed my mind about this after lying down.  I thought that the beds in the student residence halls were like wood, but these were even worse.  I was able to sleep only because it was so late and I was incredibly tired.  In the morning, I might as well have not gotten a massage at all.  My neck and back were extremely sore.  The next massage I get will most certainly not be followed by sleeping on a bed like that.

After we woke up the next afternoon, we went for a bit of good ol’ cheap Chinese shopping.  Everything that I liked, they didn’t have in a size big enough for me.  I was able to bargain this one suit-type jacket down to a much lower price, but then decided it didn’t look quite right on me, and just left.  Most of the shopping time was spent walking around in this multi-level mall type building with a ton of tiny shops.  Even though I wasn’t able to find much in my size, my main focus was sunglasses.  One of my goals during the trip was to purchase another pair of ridiculous looking sunglasses to go with the pair I already own.  At the last attempt, just before we were about to head back to Hong Kong, I was successful.  A pair of fake Dior sunglasses, possibly designed for a woman, that looked just right for me.  I was even able to bargain the price from 50 RMB down to 35 RMB.  During this process, the seller mentioned the fact that they were Dior, which I promptly chuckled heartily at and kept bargaining.  With these in hand, I was set to happily head home to Hong Kong.

 

The end is near *tear*

This past Saturday we had the Farewell Party for all the exchange students, hosted by the exchange department.  We had sweet snacks and drinks provided.  Most of the program was exchanging by random draw the gifts we brought.  I however, neglected to bring a gift, so I got to watch all the fun.  I also got a certificate saying I studied here for a semester and whatnot.

It doesn’t seem like my study abroad experience is almost over.  I mean, I still have a month, and I plan to do more travelling before I leave, but the time is really almost up.  I don’t think it will hit me until I am back home and not in Hong Kong anymore.  I want to get back home, but at the same time, Hong Kong has been my home for the past 3.5 months.  I really, really hope I will be able to come back to Hong Kong again before too long.

On a happier note, pictures.

 

The Philippines

It seems that I just recently got back from a vacation to the Philippines. We set out early on Friday morning on our adventure. After a ferry ride, a short flight, and of course a bit of waiting in between, we were there. However, there was not in fact where we wanted to be. There was a two hour taxi ride from the airport we thought we were flying into. This made it impossible to make it to the 13 hour boat we had planned to take overnight and arrive near our beach at around 6 am. Instead, we got to pay way too much for a taxi, find out there were no more flights leaving that night, and then pay way too much for a hotel room near the airport. However, there was pizza for dinner thrown in this mix also, so that was a plus.

We woke up early the next morning to buy our plane tickets to the island next to our intended destination. Pretty easy, although a bit more expensive than we had anticipated. After this, a nice breakfast in a nearby restaurant preceded our flight. This was the first time I had flown on a plane small enough to just have propellors. This short flight put us a quick walk away from the ferry terminus, where we took a sweet little boat to Boracay Island. We got to ride a pretty sweet trike to the resort from the ferry pier on Boracay. It was basically a dirt bike with a huge side car capable of accomodating at least 3 people and their bags.

Finally, after all our travel, we were here to relax and get away from Hong Kong. Our accommadations were pretty nice, and we got bumped up since they had better rooms available. Turns out we were staying about a 2 minute walk away from the white sand beach.

We didn’t do much our first day except for relax. Once you get to the beach, you have various merchants offering you stuff from sunglasses, to jewelry, to watches. Also, when you pass the shops, you are offered hair braiding, or whatever souveniers they are selling. After being offered jet ski rentals, banana boat rides, sail boat rides, and parasailing, among other things, we decided to set up a sail boat trip for the next morning. After this strenuous work, we relaxed on the beach for most of the rest of the day. We missed the sun actually setting, but when we got to the beach the sky still looked pretty incredible.

We had our fair share of restaurants to choose from, but we took part in happy hour for a good bit first.

We ended up eating at a nearby restaurant/bar, where I free-loaded a slice or two of pizza from Kaj. After this, we played a few games of pool, which was pretty enjoyable. For some reason, they had this crazy mouth thing hanging from the ceiling, so of course pictures were taken.

After this, we hung out on the beach for a while while listening to the music playing from the nearby restuarants that had chairs, tables, and sometimes a stage for live music set up on the beach. Next, back to our room for a bit, where we had a few drinks with the owner of the resort. We stayed here for a bit, just chatting and whatnot. I ended up doing a bit of pretty bad karaoke before we headed back to the beach. After hanging out for a while outside of this bar/ almost club with decent music, we decided it was time to get some sleep before our sailboat ride the next morning.

Bright and early, we met our sailboat captain on the beach. We set out to a snorkeling place at one end of the white beach. This was my first time snorkeling ever, so I thought the Philippines was a pretty good location to find out how. After a bit, I got the hang of not sucking a ton of water into my mouth with every breath. The coral was pretty nice, thought it seemed like it needed more color. I got to see a decent amount of fish, one of which apparently didn’t like me standing on his coral, as he took to biting my foot and leg. After getting our fill here, we set off to our next snorkeling spot, Crocodile Rock.

Crocodile Rock was basically a stone’s throw from open sea, so the waves here were quite large. One side of our boat would rise out of the water, just to smack back down on the next wave. The trip to this spot was quite fun. The large waves made it a bit more difficult to keep water out of the snorkel. There were more fish here, as well as larger ones. One of the coolest things was seeing the sun glint off of the fish scales, making very vivid colors. After this, we sailed on to our final snorkeling location.

I managed to fall asleep on the way to the last snorkeling spot, and didn’t wake up until Kaj and Lina were almost done. I was alright with this, as I had gotten pretty exhausted swimming against the waves near Crocodile Rock. After another short stint, we were back on our white sand beach.

After this enjoyable adventure, we took it a bit easier for the rest of the day. We relaxed, watched a pretty fantastic sunset, and took more pictures.

Before the day was over, I realized I had made a mistake falling asleep on the sailboat without a shirt, and without any sunscreen on. We ended up going to bed a bit earlier, so we could wake up relatively early to get the most out of our last day in paradise.

Since we had nothing planned this day, we essentially just enjoyed the beach. I worked on my tan to try to even the rest of my body out with my burned stomach, chest, and shoulders. During part of the afternoon, I walked to one end of the beach and saw some pretty nice shells.

There were also some dogs looking photogenic, so I snapped some pictures of them as well.

We of course watched the sunset again for our last evening.

We also tryed our hands at skim boarding, which none of us had done before. Started out pretty abysmal, but got better as time went on. We also got some sweet pro-tips from the Philippino teenagers who were pretty dang good at skimboarding. They could jump waves and do handstands while still skimming.

We headed in pretty early this night as well, as we had to be up before 6 to get back to Hong Kong. Trike to ferry to plane to plane to ferry and we were back home. When we got off the 2nd plane, it was dark, rainy, and pretty miserable, very very different from our vacation island. One of my favorite pictures from the whole trip was taken out the window of the 2nd plane.

Quite the journey, and we learned a bit about traveling in the process.

 

Quick

Since I am so behind, I will basically just list what I have been up to in the past several weeks.

I went hiking again to Lion Rock, which when viewed from the ground apparently looks like a lion. I saw Timo Maas perform and control the crowd with his music, which was pretty dang incredible. We also managed to get behind the DJ booth to hear him finish up his set. Then, we got to meet him and take pictures as well. Very very nice.

I finished up modeling a suit designed by a local girl for her fashion design class. A very interesting experience that was actually quite fun. Hopefully will have pictures of this sometime soon.

I took the Star Ferry across the harbour on the last day that it was going to the Central Ferry Pier on Hong Kong Island. After that night, the ferry started going to the new pier they built, while the old pier and surrounding area are going to be turned into some sort of open promenade area with grass and trees. Since they Central Ferry Pier has been around for a while, this was a big deal to the people in Hong Kong. We got our pictures taken and were videotaped as we got off the ferry, and there were a huge number of people protesting the destruction of the pier on Hong Kong Island.

After this event in the history of Hong Kong, we went to Lamma Island to an outdoor concert type thing. It is pretty difficult to describe the type of music played, but it was essentially some kind of rock music. We stayed here a while before heading back to Hong Kong Island and going to Lan Kwai Fong. We ended up at a pretty intense drum and bass type event in a small basement area. They had some Chinese movie called Magic Monkey being displayed on the wall, which was a weird mix with the music being played. A good find though, and definitely a fun time.

I also went to a Chinese Opera on campus. It was all in Mandarin Chinese, so I understood very very little of what was said. Some things could be picked up on by the actions and whatnot of the actors though. The costumes and makeup were very intense and elaborate. Quite the cultural event.

And the biggest thing recently is probably my trip to the Philippines. This definitely deserves its own post, as it was very amazing. Just about 3 days on a white sand beach was nice to say the least.

And now, random pictures from the events described above.

Atop Lion Rock:

Casey, Timo Maas, and myself:

Sunset on Boracay, Philippines:

PS: Happy Thanksgiving

 

Run Through

Im going to try to make several successive posts to update on the more exciting events up to now.
On the weekend before Halloween, I went hiking with my local buddy, Rachel, her friend Telley, and Telley’s husband, Matt. We decided to go hiking on Lantau Island, known for its giant Buddha statue. Along with this, most temples typically have good vegetarian restaurants nearby, so this was also a plus. This was essentially a replanning of our first attempt, because that day ended started with a red thunderstorm warning, so we had to postpone.

In fact, I didn’t even know we were going to hike, I just figured we would take the MTR train to the island, then take a bus or something up to the Buddha and then eat there before returning. I was very happy that I had at least thrown a water bottle in my bag. From the MTR station, we ate a quick lunch at a mall before heading to the start of the trail. We had to walk a ways along the road to get to the trail, and even got to explore an old fort. Once we got help from a local finding the head of the trail, we were off. It started out level enough, but quickly turned into an uphill struggle.

We climb and climb through the forest, while passing a couple pretty cool looking streams. This is the easier of the two trails that goes between the mountains instead of over the peak of one. All while we are climbing this uphill trail, people are passing us on the way down. I eventually wonder why, if they are nearing the end of the trail, they don’t look sweaty. The trail can’t be all uphill can it? My question is answered when after we pass several dwellings including a place where monks are watering their gardens. The trail from the side we started is in fact all uphill. There were some pretty nice level sections, but definitely all uphill on the whole. Once we near the end, we get our first view of the giant Buddha.

We keep walking and finally reach the statue where you can walk up stairs to get inside the bottom of the Buddha. Except they close this at 5:30, and because we started so late, it is now closed for entry. Bummer. I do get a couple pictures from the base though.

After staring at the statue from the bottom, we explore the nearby temple.  Sadly, the vegetarian restaurant also appears to be closed.

We head back and catch a bus back to the MTR station.  We decide to eat at Matt and Telley’s flat.  We purchase supplies at the store and head there.  After a nice dinner to end the trip, I head back home to get ready to go out.

 

Ocean Park Halloween Event

Quick school update: Did pretty well on two midterms and a test, not quite as well on the other two midterms. Some more homework coming up soon, but I think most of the work load has slowed down until finals in December. Now, onto the adventure.

So all during the weekends of October, the nearby theme park/ Sea-World type place has been staying open later and having a halloween party with decorations and whatnot. A group consisting of me, 3 Swedish guys, and a Swedish/Chinese girl set out to tackle this halloween adventure. It was already getting dark by the time we arrived, so the Panda bear exhibit was closed. There was an enormous line for the first haunted house type building we passed by, so we decided to continue on.
I got this sweet picture of random Chinese people posing with a guy in a crazy costume. All throughout the park were people dressed up trying to scare the theme-park goers. Several of them had cool knee pads that allowed them to run and then slide on their knees several feet while kicking up sparks into the air.

After this, we walked through a short haunted walk that wasn’t very scary at all, and way too short. The Chinese girls were getting at least somewhat startled, which was amusing to watch. Next, we decided to take the skylift to the other section of the amusement park where all the rides were. We got quite a nice view of the nearby bay at night, but no decent pictures because of the whole moving thing.

We ended up riding a very short rollercoaster that was somewhat fun. For some reason, the wait for this was all of 5 minutes, while the advertised wait for the haunted house we had passed earlier was at least 45 minutes. After this, we rode another ride, which had a slightly longer wait. Sit in a sit and get slowly raised up really high in the air, then free fall until you are caught by the apparently elastic cord which causes you to accelerate back upward and then back down several times. Quite fun.

After our rides, we thought we would see what all the fuss was about the haunted house. So we waited in line for close to an hour for the School of the Damned. Nothing too scary, and much different than haunted houses in America. Back home, you are separated into smaller groups of about 10 people and led through different rooms by a guide. Apparently in Asia, everyone just continually enters the haunted house, there are no set stories in different rooms where something is built up until the scary finale. All in all, not very scary, but it was quite fun to see the Chinese girls get scared and try to push past us in the haunted house to get out sooner.

Next was some high quality McDonald’s to satiate our appetites. On to the coral reef building next. They had two huge, multi-level fish tanks with all sorts of different fish in them. Eels, stingrays, sharks, turtles, etc, etc. They also had smaller tanks lining the walls around the huge fish tanks, with smaller fish in them.

Since this couldn’t have possibly been enough fish for us, we next went to the shark house. The shark tank wasn’t too big, but still pretty impressive sharks.

After seeing the sharks, we went up in a rotating cylinder that gave you a very nice view of the theme park as well as the surrounding land. Next, we were interested in seeing the advertised jellyfish exhibit. Think jellyfish of all different shapes, sizes, and colors, and this would be the exhibit we saw. They even had one room lined with mirrors with a jellyfish tank on one side where the tank light would change colors, causing all the jellyfish to also change colors, while being reflected in all the mirrors. Very cool.

We decided to call it a night after the jellyfish extravaganza. Got to go down several, several flights worth of escalators to finally reach the exit. A very fulfilling and tiring evening.

 

Busier than UPS at Christmas

I have been super busy this past week. I had two midterms last Tuesday, followed by a homework that was originally due Thursday but ended up being pushed to Monday, and finally a third midterm on Friday. The midterm on Friday went pretty well, but I think a decent curve will be my best hope for the other two. This week, my only real work is a lab report due later in the week.

After a short break on the school work front, it just picks up again. I have another midterm next week, as well as several homework assignments coming up in the next two weeks. I am really wishing they would have let me sign up for all humanities type courses that would most likely be easier and more interesting.

I do have a couple of pretty sweet things planned for this weekend, but more on that later.

 

Lan Kwai Fong Festival

This past weekend, the popular bar/club area put on a festival for everyone. There were a ton of booths set up selling many different kinds of food. They also had a schedule of performances at three different stages not too far from each other. Think Durham’s Fesitval for the Eno, except for crammed into a much smaller area, with a lot more Asians, and basically no hippies. Twice during the day, they also had a street parade, with Brasilian dancers and tambourine player, a juggler, African drum players, a pirate, and several people doing some kind of martial art. On Saturday night, we got there after the parade had already stopped, which was disappointing, as this was the main event we came to see. We instead just wondered around all the booths until the festival pretty much died down. Then, we went to a couple of clubs before calling it a night.

Because we missed the parade the night before, a few of us decided to to go back on Sunday for the final day of the festival. It was a lot less crowded than Saturday night. We made it in plenty of time to see the parade. The line of performers somehow squeezed by in the street already crowded with people and food booths. It was pretty impressive. After this, we wondered around some and had some crepes with dark chocolate inside. Eventually, we watched a magician perform on one of the stages. He was alright, but it was definitely not the same watching a magician at 20 years old as it is at 10. After this, we walked around a bit more before coming back to the same stage to watch Brasilian dancers and Mr. Tambourine do one last performance. Their dancing skills were very impressive, as was Mr. Tambourine’s tambourine skill. Making it earlier most definitely payed off.

 

Beach Camping/Fire Dragon Festival/Harbor Fireworks

So, in being super busy recently, I forgot to write about the weekend before last. On Friday, a group of us went back to Sai Kung, but instead of hiking, our plan was to camp on Tai Long Wan beach. However, we had to hike for about 1.5 to 2 hours to get to the beach. A decent walk with a backpack full of supplies for the night. Once we finally reached it, the beach was amazing.

We enjoyed the beach for a bit before foraging for wood for a fire. Downed palm-like trees nearby made this pretty easy. Having gathered wood, we ate at the sweet little restaurant just off the beach. Oh, and we had to cross this little bridge thingy to get between the beach and the restaurant.

After dinner, we started out fire and enjoyed the night. Much fun was had playing the guitar and trying to sing. We even hung out with some of the Chinese people who were also camping on the beach. Note to self: when camping on a beach, bring blankets or jackets. It got super cold later in the evening. So much so that I couldn’t sleep in the tent, but had to sleep right next to the fire, and I still wasn’t warm enough.

After such a cold night, the next day’s warmth was pretty ridiculous. Once the sun came up, it got really hot, really fast. Tired from the night before, I didn’t do much but lay around all day on the beach. Part of our group took a boat in the morning to Wong Shek Pier where they could catch a bus, instead of hiking back. The rest of us decided to wait until later to go back. Somehow I managed to get badly sunburned all over my arms, back, stomach, and shoulders. We ate some more food at the restaurant near the beach. Later in the afternoon, we decided we should leave soon, so we packed up the rented tents and waited for our boat. It was already mostly dark at this point, and the mountains/hills looked very nice in the dusky light. Our boat didn’t lack in horsepower, and we reached our destination after a nice little ride.

We took a cab to the bus terminus, where we ate dinner. After this, we took a minibus to a MTR station. I stayed on the MTR when everyone else got off, as I had plans to go see the Fire Dragon. This was for the Mid-Autumn Festival, which was the first Chinese festival since my arrival in Hong Kong. I met a group of Swedes I knew as they were finishing up dinner. Then we headed to a nearby blocked off street to see the Fire Dragon. At first, it was insanely crowded, and I couldn’t see much at all. A bit later on, most of the people cleared out, and I was left with a pretty nice view.

There was this dragon made out of something similar to heavy straw, which burning incense placed all over the body. The dragon has a giant head and tail, also with burning incense. People hold the dragon’s body with poles attached to the straw, as they run around raising and lowering their poles. The people holding the tail and head do more elaborate things, such as swing the tail around and brush it against the ground to send burning pieces of incense everywhere. Also, there is someone playing a big drum very loudly, and an announcer shouting stuff in Chinese over the speakers. Very impressive. They have people to cycle in to hold the dragon and play the drums, as they are doing this basically non-stop for 2 hours or so. I got some nice videos, but getting the pictures to come out at night without a tripod was pretty difficult. This is one of the only ones that looks halfway decent and shows the dragon.

After this, we headed back to the hall. I definitely need the break from running around Hong Kong, as I hadn’t been home for almost a day and a half.

I took the next day pretty easy to make up for my Friday and Saturday. On Sunday night I met Lina and Joel from Sweden down at the harbor for the light show/fireworks. Normally, they just have the narrated light show every evening at 8 pm. However, because of the Mid-Autumn Festival, they also had fireworks shoot off of barges and floating blocks at certain intervals during the light show. This most certainly made up for my horrible view of the fireworks the previous weekend. I took some pretty sweet pictures as well.

 

International Cultural Night

Last night was our International Cultural Night. The purpose of this event is to teach everyone about countries and cultures from all over the world. Groups were formed according to which country/region you were from. I, along with 4 other Americans planned our table and traditional game. For snacks, we made puppy chow and brought chips and dip and hotsauce. For our traditional game to teach everyone, we chose beer pong.

I couldn’t actually help set up the table, as I had class, but I was able to make it before the event really got started. We were able to borrow two cardboard American flags from the US Embassy to put on our push-pin board. We also put up the cardboard from a Budweiser and a Milwaukee’s Best case. In addition to this, we all put up either our driver’s license or our student ID from our university back home.

I got pictures of our booth as well as of each of the other booths. I also got to try food and beverage from several of the booths. I had tea and crackers at the UK booth, wine at the French booth, crackers and cheese at the Denmark booth, a Singapore sling from the Singapore booth, and some sort of vodka from the Finnish booth.

Before our demonstration of beer pong for everyone, we got to do a lion dance. Max from Texas was the lion’s head, I was the middle, and Alex from Purdue was the tail. Tim, also from Purdue, played the drums, and Kaitlin from Purdue clapped the symbols. It was pretty exhilirating jumping around to the beat of the drum.

After this, we got to watch a lot of really nice presentations by other countries. The Swedes did a tradional frog dance, the Finns did a line dance, the Germans told us about their country and its inventions then played a game with pretzels on a string, the Dutch played a game where you try to put a nail hanging from a string attached your lower back into a bottle, the French danced to a French song, and the Malaysians played a game where you step over and between bamboo sticks that are being moved to the beat of music. There were also other performances that I can’t quite remember, as well as other countries trying their hand at the lion dance.

While a good deal of these performances were going on, my American friends were teaching people from other countries the game of beer pong. Every seemed to enjoy it. Finally, after almost every country had given their performance on stage, it was our turn. We carried the table, cups, and beer up on stage and explained the rules. Then, we invited volunteers from the crowd to try it. We had to cut it short, as the cups weren’t being sunk fast enough and we only 5 minutes for our on-stage presentation. We did invite people to come try afterwards, as we would still have the table set up for play.

After our presentation, the only one left was the Hong Kong group. I got to try various foods and guess what they were. The only ones I got right were the ones I had previously eaten. After this, the Cultural Night was technically over, but several groups of people stayed behind to talk and just play around. We kept the beer pong going as well. I got to play a game with Anna, a Polish girl studying in New York, as my partner. It was major deja vu, as it reminded me of being back home at a party on the weekend. We of course took down the team made up of Chris from Shenzhen and Sunmee from Korea. After this game, the beer was pretty much gone, so we had to stop playing. I stuck around a little longer talking and playing soccer before heading back to my room to get ready dance the night away.