Lights, Camera, Action! - Hong Kong, China
Hong Kong, China
HONG KONG
5.17.15 Time to go to Hong Kong! We had to get up really early because the airport is an hour away so we ran off to the metro at 5 am and caught our plane headed for the South leaving our precious Seoul behind. We will miss you!
We arrived in Hong Kong a little after lunch, and after picking up a phone SIM and travelcards for the MTR we headed off to our hostel in Mong Kok. It was cheap, but sounded nice enough when we found it on agoda.com - Sincere House. When we got there, I was a little scared. It is a tall run down building with a small foyer and the oldest security guard I have ever met in my life. I don't really know why he was there. Maybe he was more there to help people find what they are looking for in that building. Anyway we went into the elevator to try to find our hostel and I think we did, but I am not quite sure what happen because there was a lot of shuffling papers and then the guy at the desk ran off for a bit and Mark went with him. Then the guy came down without Mark. I didn’t know what happen to him and I was hoping a little bit that his organs weren’t being harvested, haha, just kidding. Finally Mark came down for me and we went up to the room. It turned out that the building contains many different hotels, hostels and apartments; we made a reservation at one hostel but the front desk was shared with several others and they found us a room in a different place that was similar to what we had paid for, run by a guy who only spoke Cantonese. I’m not sure he was expecting more guests as he was doing laundry in our bathroom - the washing machine was in our bathroom, filling pretty much the entire space. He indicated it would be done soon, and we were dead tired by then, so we didn’t really care. We put our bags down and laid on the bunk bed. I checked out Couch Surfing really quick to see if anything was going on tonight and I saw that someone posted an offer of tickets for a concert tonight by the City University Orchestra using traditional Chinese instruments. I hope we will be able to get the tickets. She told us to message her and if she doesn’t get back to us she will be waiting in the metro at the concert stop and will be wearing green glasses and red shoes with a purple handbag - got it! Now for some sleep, I guess the washing machine will move out of our room eventually, haha! At least it is a private room with our own bathroom - fancy!
So we were able to meet Yee Shan and it was an amazing night. The concert was magical. We arrived at the metro a little early to make sure we found her because we never heard back from her on couchsurfing, so on faith we went ahead and headed to the stop to look for a girl in green glasses and red shoes with a purple purse and we found her! She also had a coworker with her named Stephen and he was a little wary of Yee Shan meeting foreign strangers from the internet like this, but after he met us he was a little more okay with it. Haha, people are the same all around the world :D
The concert was amazing, it was so cool to see all the traditional Chinese instruments and the music was beautiful, very exciting and told wonderful stories. There were a lot of drums and string instruments, they look a little weird and hard to play, but sounded amazing. One girl played these huge drums and she was so fast, like her whole body was playing the music :)
After the concert we went to dinner and got to know Yee Shan and Stephen a little more. Yee Shan was very interested in learning how we were traveling and was inspired a little to maybe give it a try. She wanted to learn more, so maybe we will be able to see her again this week before we leave, I hope so, she is so sweet.
A great first day in Hong Kong. If we are starting out this big, I can’t wait to see what the rest of our week will hold.
5.18.15 Today we are going to the travel agency to apply for our Chinese visas. Hopefully this will go smoothly. Afterwards we are planning to meet up with another person from couchsurfing named Peterlina who said she can show us a great place for dim sum, yum!
The visa process went fairly smoothly. We filled out the form with what we thought were the correct answers, then the travel agent "fixed" it :) Hopefully we will get our visa on Thursday. Luckily for me, I was able to apply for a ten year visa with multiple entries, but Mark was only able to get a 6 month visa with two entries - aww poor Mark.
Lunch was amazing. We thought we were running late, but we met Peterlina right on time. She brought some friends with her she also met on couchsurfing and one girl from her art classes - her name is Cherie and she doesn’t have arms. We were so impressed with her. She didn’t need help from anyone to do anything - use chopsticks, opened doors, take selfies - she even drew better than we did. After an amazing first Dim Sum experience (the food was awesome!) we went to a café for coffee and tea and Peterlina asked us to draw her in 7 minutes. We all pretty much drew stick figures but Cherie’s was practically something to frame :) It was just so wonderful to see all the art works they both did. Peterlina was into pottery and she made the most beautiful tea sets. I wished we could buy one from her but no room in the backpacks to take them home :/
You can read more about Cherie in these articles, you will be amazed:
http://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina /html1/news/newsmakers/11/215-1.htm
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/arti cle/1252751/armless-cherie-yeung-turns- tragedy-life-inspiration
On our walk home, the guy we will stay with later in the week suggested to us that we should take the ferry to the avenue of the stars and watch the evening light show. So we moseyed down to the ferry station, admired the harbor and saw a lot of beautiful girls in gorgeous dresses. At first I thought it was for a commercial, then I realized it is May, it must be prom J The dresses were amazing! They looked like quinceanera dresses. The ferry journey was very nice as well; we could see the coolest boats floating along, all lit up. Every night around 8, the buildings all around the harbour are lit up in a synchronised show for about 15 minutes, accompanied by music played at the museum of art. It was so amazing! The buildings looked like they were dancing and it was hard to see everything that was going on because it was happening all around us. Definitely something not to miss in Hong Kong, if you ever get a chance to come here.
For dinner we had black and white burgers and green tea Oreo mcflurry from McDonald’sl. The bun was black and had mash potato in it with beef and the white bun had the same with chicken. Super yummy and the green tea mcflurry was amazing. I need to be careful with this new knowledge or I might just have one for every meal :D Next door was a grocery store called the ParknShop. If someone didn’t tell us it was a grocery store, I would have thought it was a parking garage. The store was down under the street, like you were going into a hidden basement, and the treasure inside was Mark’s heaven! There is a ton of British food here in Hong Kong - everything Mark had been missing all his time in America, Alpen and Ribena galore. On another note, in my quest to attempt to eat healthy while traveling, I discovered yogurt and tofu are a great, healthy, cheap (in some countries) meal, I can get anywhere. I think everyone in the world eat yogurt, haven’t been everywhere yet, but I will go and let you know if I found a place that doesn’t eat yogurt, hehe! Good night!
5.19.15 Volunteer opportunity number 2! I emailed our pastor Chris back home just to say hi, tell him about our travels, and see if he might know anyone or churches in Asian countries. He put us in touch with his cousin Victoria. She told us to check out The Vine in Hong Kong, we did and found out about their refugee ministry and learned that we could help them with the services this week. Today we went to the African service and that was another amazing experience. We didn’t help too much, just washed dishes after lunch, but the service was quite moving. The music was in English and French and there were drums and lots of dancing. You got caught up in it quite quickly. I even tried to sing in French, but I doubt I was very good. It was kind of later in the afternoon by the time we finished helping and it was raining pretty hard, so we went home to rest and watch movie.
In the evening we went to tea ceremony we found out about on couchsurfing. We met two Sarahs that evening and learned a lot about Tea. It was very interesting. The word Tea and Chai both came from China, because all tea first came from China. Tea was the word they used when the shipped the leave through the ocean ports and Chai is the word they used when it was shipped by land. So that is why some countries call it Tea and some call it Chai. Also it is okay to reuse the leaves all day if they are strong, good quality leaves, but be sure to not let them sit in the water. Only about a minute is needed for brewing at the longest and then take them out of the water to use again. This lets them last longer. Another funny thing was our teacher would wash the tea leaves first, so dump out the first cup of tea, because it was not good, and then drink all the cups after that. Funny, because I never did that before but I always liked the second cup of tea better than the first. :) We might see one of the Sarahs later again this week. She said she would like to go to Macau with us on Friday if we are able to go.
5.20.15 This afternoon we are moving to our host Oscar’s place, so we packed up our stuff and went to the Vine for our second day of volunteering. This time we will be helping with the Asian ministry and Pastor Michael said this service would be much more reserved. It turned out there were a lot of children running around, so I helped them with the nursery while Mark worked the soundboard. That was so much fun. Most of the children were from Nepal and they were so cute and loving. I had babies crawling all over me almost instantly. I was surprised at how engaged and confident they were, even though we couldn’t really speak to each other very well, we understood each other. It was adorably, wonderful, I can’t wait to have another chance to work with children. Mark said the service was interesting also - everyone took turns praying and singing in their own languages - very sweet. While I was covered in children, Victoria came from Shenzhen to see us. We kind of got our communications crossed. We didn’t know how long the service was going to last, so we didn’t get to talk much over lunch like we were hoping but I am so glad we were able to spend a little time together and get to know each other better. It is so exciting so make connections all the way on the other side of the world. I hope maybe we will be able to see her someday in Texas!
We left the church around 3 and Oscar told that we could leave our bags at a mall near his house for free. He is so full of helpful tourist knowledge, we are very blessed to have him as a host! After doing so we headed to the space museum (On Wednesdays all the museums in Hong Kong are free!). The space museum had a ton of really cool interactive exhibits. Mark was able to do a hang glider simulation and they had others that simulated walking on the moon or being in a space capsule. It was neat. Then like a plague of locusts a mass of children came rushing in. They must have been on a field trip and they just rushed in and touched everything around us. Quite the whirlwind, but as quickly as they descended, they were gone again!
After the museum we went to meet Oscar at the Time Square Mall where we left our bags. Very cool, quiet guy all dressed in black - smooth! We went to his apartment which was smack dab in the middle of one of the coolest places in Hong Kong, Wan Chai. Awesome and we meet KaKa, his kitty. The apartment was studio-style place and we slept on the bottom bunk while he had the top. It was so cool that we could stay somewhere we could really experience what it would be like to live in Hong Kong. There is not a lot of space here, so land is very expensive, so they build the apartment blocks super tall (like 50 to 60 floors each) and with 7 million people living here in this place ½ the size of Houston, people have very small places. Oscar is so generous to want to share his small piece of the world with us. :) Oscar served us tea, and we noticed he did everything the teacher last night had taught us about. I thought that was maybe just a formal or old person thing to do, but Oscar did it all like it was normal everyday stuff. He even had the smallest tea cups just like the ones we used last night.
After tea, we headed off to the horse races! Mark thought it was surreal that there was this giant track right in the heart of such a built-up city. All around, skyscrapers tower over the Hong Kong Jockey Club. We places a few bets and lost every time. We would have won if Mark would have listened to me on one race, but he didn’t hear me so we lost, but then when I did choose we lost anyway, so I guess we suck at picking horses. It rained nearly the whole time we were there and luckily I found a somewhat broken umbrella which had been abandoned right in front of us. It will be helpful if the rest of the week is going to be pouring. The rain was funny - when the horses lined up to race it would start chucking down, then stop right after the race was over. How does the sky know?
5.21.15 Visa day!!! Yeah, we have our visas for China! Everything was super easy, we just went over there and picked them up. Along the way we had 'Kimchili fries’. we just had to try them to see if they are anything like the ones we get back home in Austin. They were good but more chili than kimchi.
After Oscar got home from work, it wasn’t raining too much, so we went to the night markets. First he took us to the fish market where we saw almost every single fish you could imagine. It was so neat, like going to an aquarium, and here the fish were being sold to be pets, not dinner. The area was super busy with lights and people all around. So much shopping and we decided to join in when we went to lady street and temple street. Our anniversary is coming up, year number 2!!! So Mark bought me a special present, a sleeping short kimono! Oscar told Mark to let him know if he wanted to buy anything and Oscar would talk to them to get the best price. So Mark saw it and Oscar asked how much in Cantonese, then we walked away. The lady kept calling out prices and when Oscar heard the right number (a quarter of her first offer) he said “okay let’s go back”.. They had so much other stuff in the markets, and the clothes were so cheap. I wanted to buy everything, but we have a back pack so maybe next time :(
5.23.15, When we woke up it was pouring! I think this was the worst rain we had all week. So we decided to meet up for lunch with some new people we met online - Dixon, his wife Koie and their new baby (I was so excited about the baby!). Dixon took us to fancy Dim Sum. It was so good and we learned much more about how to eat it. I tried to eat a sticky rice ball wrapped in leaves, because I didn’t know what it was and guess what, you need to unwrap it. Sometimes it is so hard to figure out what you are supposed to eat whole and what you need to unwrap (we also encountered sweets that had 2 layers of wrapper and you were supposed to eat the inner layer, despite it looking and feeling just like cellophane). Dixon’s baby was so cute and very good all through lunch. We had the best time and really great conversations about the differences between Hong Kong and China and what it is like to live in Hong Kong. Afterwards we went to his house to hang out a bit more, out of the rain. They had a very nice “big” house. It had a living room, separate kitchen, bathroom, I think two bedrooms and a study. I find it fun to go over to people’s houses just to see what they look like and how they live. Each home is different, so it is very fun to see them all.
It was still raining really hard when we said goodbye to Dixon and Koie, so after Oscar got home from work we went to the market and grocery store to buy stuff for dinner and then we watched a movie on Oscar’s great big projector screen (that stretched across the whole apartment). Oscar cooked for us and the food he made from his little bitty kitchen was so amazing. Steamed Thai style crabs and salmon! I couldn’t believe it, when he brought out of the kitchen I was just so surprised. You made that in there?! It was so yummy. If Oscar ever needed another job, cooking would definitely be a good idea, nom nom nom!
5.24.15 Sunday Sunday! Our last day in Hong Kong :( We woke up early to go to church at the Vine. It was so perfect that Oscar only lived a 5 minute walk away from there. We went to the early service because it was supposed to be the more traditional quiet service, but when we got there, everyone was jamming, haha! It was really fun and there was a guest speaker that was very inspirational. On the way home we bought some lunch. I got a rice triangle stuffed with vege and chicken and Mark found some British pies he had been eyeing all week – chicken curry (yum) and strawberry rhubarb (a little too sweet for me, I think with ice cream would have been better).
After lunch, we had another date. This week one of Mark’s friends from college, Ian, friended him on facebook and we saw that he lived in Hong Kong (apparently Facebook’s helpful-but-creepy algorithms spotted we were in the same place and suggested we get in touch). So we went to meet him for afternoon tea! Mark had not spoken to him in over 10 years and what do you know, he lives not 5 minutes away from us in Wan Chai. It was really great to meet him and his wife. He is not doing engineering any more, but instead opened a tailor shop for the younger generation and it sounded like the business was going great!
Since it was our last night in Hong Kong, Oscar said we should go up to Victoria Peak, which looms over the city. We could take the bus from the end of the street and it would take us all the way up there. That was a little ******* my nerves but we made it and the adventure was worth it. When we first got there it was super foggy - we couldn’t see anything beyond about 15m - and I had a headache from the winding road. But then we texted Sarah and she said she could meet us there, so while we were walking around the top we ran into her. She and her friend Amy walked the opposite way around the top from us, so we said we could meet again at the end for dinner. While we walked, the fog cleared away leaving us with spectacular views of the harbour below.
Around the top of the peak we found so many frogs, weird caterpillars, snails and other bugs. The frogs were all gathering in a water drain. One started singing, taking advantage of the drain’s echo, and then others started to come. We stood around and watched them for almost 30 minutes and I think we saw about 20 frogs hop into that drain. It was so loud and very neat to hear them all singing together, even if they did sound a little bit like cows, haha! On the other side of the peak we were able to see the harbour light show again but this time from up real high. Again the buildings looked like they were dancing and this time we could see so much more. We had dinner and more great conversation with Amy and Sarah. Sarah said we should come see her in Australia when we go there, maybe she will be home by then and we could hang out again :)
Oscar said we could walk home instead of taking the bus, so we decided to give it a try. I thought that would be easier on my head, even if it meant hard work for my legs and our efforts were rewarded. We saw wild porcupines(!) and a lizard nest with eggs. Mark tried to chase the porcupines to get a good picture of them and I was so scared he was going to get poked. I am so glad we had one last wild adventure before we said goodbye to Hong Kong.
5.25.15 We all got up early today. Oscar is going to go hiking in Sai Kung (we had hoped to go there this week, but it rained too much) We hope it doesn’t rain for him today. After we packed up and left, we met Yee Shan on last time before she had to go to work and we left for Taiwan. We were able to take the free shuttle bus to Hong Kong station where we could check in our bags right there at the train station. It was nice to find another free place to leave them for the day - Hong Kong is very traveler friendly!
Yee Shan took us to our last Dim Sum at a very special traditional restaurant. You would sit where ever you could find enough space, so we stay with a single guy and a pairof couples at a table for 8. It was super crowded. Then you would order your dim sum off of a cart that would come around when they finished cooking it. Yee Shan would go get us the food when the trays came out, because we still weren’t sure how things worked and we didn’t really learn any Cantonese. She told us this restaurant was very traditional because they had the Chinese writing up on the walls, a bird cage, and heated the water on a stove in a big pot for the tea. She said people used to walk their birds around town, tied with a string, so the Dim Sum restaurant had cages for them to put them in while they eat. So neat! During lunch we used a tea pot, but other people used the more traditional tea bowl and little cups we saw at the tea ceremony. Quite an interesting experience.
After saying Goodbye to Yee Shan we headed off to the airport. We got there super early, our flight would be until 1600, but it was nice to relax before we head off to a new country and start our adventures all over again. We had to ride a bus to the airplane, which was in the middle of the tarmac. It reminded me a lot of Iraq, haha, only it wasn’t breathtakingly hot when we stepped out of the bus, just muggy. Taiwan here we come!