Infinity Pool Hike and Tai O

Sorry again for the delays. Somehow I got out of my writing groove, but I will make it a propriety to get back in it. I will have lots and lots to write about with Halloween celebrations coming soon, so keep a look out!

Last Sunday, Drew and I along with a ton of other people, friends of friends and such, went on a really nice hike. First, we took the MTR to the Chung Tung stop on Lantau Island. Lantau Island is the largest outlying island of Hong Kong, holding the airport, the Big Buddha, DisneyLand, and lots of other touristy things. But, it also has a ton of nice hiking. From Chung Tung, we took an hour long bus ride to the small fishing village of Tai O.

The trailhead was just outside of the town, and after 30 min of flat walking, then 30 min of steep hiking we were there. The pool is part of the reservoir system, so it was man made. But, you can swim in the water, and there is a waterfall nearby. Very nice way to spend an afternoon. The only problem this time was that the water was absolutely freezing. Not as cold as Lake Huron, the your lips will turn blue after 30 min cold, but it was pretty close. Half of the fun was just sitting on the side watching people's shocked expressions as they jumped in. As you can see, very busy this afternoon. Normally it is not that crowded.

There was also a friend of a friend who is an incredible slack liner. He was the same guy doing hand stands on the junk boat from my last post. Anyways, this guy rigged a slack line about the pool, about 15 feet high. He had to hang upside down and slide out to the middle, then flip over and stand up, using only his leg strength and balance. It was incredible to watch.

From the pictures above, you can see a lot of the hikers were young people, mostly exchange students from HK University. Several times Drew and I were asked if we were really married and told that we seemed to young to be married. Haha. These kids probably assumed we were their age of around 20, not 29/25 as is the truth. We immediately bonded to the only other older/ married couple who were there. The husband actually worked for a flight robotics company, and as a first day on the job present, they gave him a quad-chopper, or a helicopter with four propellers. Attached to it was a video camera, so as he was flying it around, he got some great shots of the area. Check out the youtube link below to see the short video he put together of it. In the video, Drew is wearing bright blue shorts standing on the left side of the screen. Pretty easy to pick him out. (Fyi, the guy is holding the quad sideways in this pic)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALBWhOiuhmA&feature=youtu.be 

After the hike, Drew and I walked around Tai O a bit, just to see it, since it's not the closest thing to get to. The town is all about fishing. 

Most if it is built on stilts over the water, and it's quite pretty. Lots of street stalls, selling smelly things, lots of boats zooming about. 

This is also a place where you can buy a short cruise to see pink dolphins, a naturally occurring species that is pretty famous around here. 

And we couldn't pass up the chance to try some homemade bean curd. It's a dessert. Drew and I actually tried this last spring at that flower festival. But this time, we got to put on as much sugar or ginger honey (yum) as we wanted. Score. Chinese sweet is not American sweet, so we needed to add a little something something to make it worth the calories. 

We also passed a little park bench where the roof was totally made up of leaves and branches from this one twisty vine thing. Very cool. 

And, finally, a beautiful flower that I am guessing is related to a bleeding heart. Any help here Mom?

Sai Kung Junk Boat

On Saturday, Drew and I were invited on another junk boat trip. It was very last minute, but we couldn't say no to probably the last junk boat trip of the season. Instead of leaving from the heart of the city, we left from the smaller fishing town of Sai Kung, known as access way to great hiking (including Tung Lo Wan where we camped a few weeks ago) and to great seafood.

Our junk boat took us to a tiny little beach, only accessible by boat. I don't even know what the beach was called. You can see one half of it behind that other junk boat. The water was nice, clear, and still warm enough to enjoy comfortably. The sand was soft and white, so there wasn't much to complain about, except for maybe the lack of waves. Some company was having a company picnic on the beach as well. It was obviously a Western company, all middle aged people with families or older. It was so funny though. They would come in on the large junk boats, then have a smaller boat shuttle them to the beach. But the small boat could only go to within 10 feet of the shore, so these people had to get into water at their knee height (thigh high if they timed it wrong) and try to scamper to shore without getting soaked. Who comes to a secluded beach only accessible by boat and wears clothes that are not ok to get  wet? Rich executives, that's who.

On the boat were alot of local Hong Kongers as well as a group of Germans who were quite fun. Maybe it was just our English, but we bonded fast and hung out all day. Unfortunately these people will only be in Hong Kong for a few more months, so else we'd probably be seeing a lot more of them. But, tis the nature of Hong Kong. People are constantly coming and going. 

This was how I spent a large portion of my day. It's funny seeing all of the snowy Colorado pictures while I am bobbing about in the ocean on a giant floaty. 

 

A lot of the Hong Kongers on the boat actually didn't know how to swim well. I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I would be going on a boat into the ocean without knowing that seemingly vital skill. Anyways, they would venture out if they had floaties, but they wouldn't stray very far. 

This junk was also fun because they had a speed boat with which we could go wake boarding. They took people out in three groups of 6, for two hours apiece. We went in the last group, and our time got cut a bit short, so no wake boarding for me. I didn't mind considering I've at least done it before, while none of the Germans had before. 

Drew was the last person to go for the entire day, so our boat driver had some fun and took us in a circle around the main junk, hence why someone on the boat was able to get these shots of us. Drew by far had the most experience of the group, so it was fun watching him take some big jumps and some big falls :) 

The Germans apparently met each other through slacklining, a club they made up that meets every Tuesday night down by the ferry piers. This guy below I am betting is incredibly good at it. We will have to go soon, perhaps this Tues, to get in a few go's before they all head back to Germany. 

Junk boating is always a nice, relaxing time. 

It's also really nice just to get outside of busy Hong Kong and get back to nature a bit. We were lucky the day was so nice. We also got a great sunset as we headed back to Sai Kung. 

Thanks Frank for inviting us and Athena for planning everything!

Cheung Chau

Apologies, again, for the delayed posting.

We just had another 3 day weekend due to a holiday on Monday. It's unbelievable; Hong Kong gets like 15 public holidays. Anyways, on Saturday, we decided to go to Cheung Chau, one of the outlying islands surrounding Hong Kong. It takes only a 30 min ferry ride to get there, so it makes for a nice day trip. From our ferry, we saw another high speed ferry which was impressive. It had these fins on the bottom of the boat, one at the front and two in the back. They somehow lifted the boat completely out of the water, so the main hull wasn't even touching. Consequently, it went really fast. I've never seen a ferry like it.

We went with our friends Mike and Tina and had a wonderful time. The island is known for hiking, beaches, seafood, and a relaxed atmosphere. We didn't do too much hiking, as Tina is about 5 months pregnant, but we had a blast doing everything else! First on the to do list was to snack it up. This is Mike eating some fish balls. They are much better than they sound and look. Basically they grind up fish and add some flour, so the inside is all white with a smooth texture. Then they fry it and add different spices, such as spicy, curry etc. Not my favorite snack, but not bad either! Mike loved them, however.

Tina's favorite snack (and mine too) were these mini tarts, straight out of the oven. They were about the size of a silver dollar, so you couldn't feel too bad eating them :)

We also tried what I call chips on a stick. They aren't individual slices of potato, but one continuous twirl, which made it fun to break apart and eat. Also added were spices and salt. Not sure what is more unhealthy for you, chips on a stick, or chips in a bag? Maybe chips in a bag because there are more of them? 

We didn't try this snack, but the island is actually famous for its large buns filled with things like red bean paste, lotus seed paste, water chestnut, or corn. Every year in May, the island has their own bun festival, where they build a tower made from these buns and young men from the local village climb the tower to see who can reach the tallest bun. We are going to have to go back next May to see this in action!

After our insufferable snacking, we decided to show off our food baby bellies and go to the beach. There is a main beach right in town, which is where we went, and there are a few other smaller ones you can hike too. The beach was not very wide, but it was nice and long, so lots of space to find a place. The water was still warm enough to get in without much hesitation. Who knew I'd be swimming in the ocean in October! The water was interesting here as it got deep really fast. You were over your head within 15 feet of getting in. But, there is a shark net here, and docks you can swim to (which is what Drew and I did) so I wasn't worried. No real waves though.

After a few hours at the beach, we decided it was time for our big seafood dinner. We went to one of the most popular restaurants on the island, got 5 seafood dishes and veggies, and the total bill was only $300 HKD, or about $40 for all 4 of us. Incredible! Our dishes included two helping of crab, sautéed shrimp, stir-fried clams in a black bean sauce, honey lemon fish (divine!) and broccoli. I plan on taking every family member who ever visits us back to this place, as it's the best valued seafood we have found so far! Thanks Tina for discovering it for us. 

I have to say, eating crab with only chopsticks was interesting though. We were told to simply bit into it, suck out the meat form the shell, then remove the shell from your mouth using the chopsticks. After almost choking myself twice and swallowing more shell than meat, I decided to ditch the chopsticks and just use my hands, which is also acceptable, but not as proper. I like crab too much to sacrifice a meal of it just to improve my chopstick and meat-shell separation skills. 

We also got to walk around the local town a fair bit, which is always a blast. They had lots of small shops selling all sorts of things. Every kind of dried seafood you can imagine (those stalls smell like death). Fruit stalls, snack stalls, toy stalls, everything. It was nice being in a place where they tallest building was only three stories.  

We also got to watch lots of other entertaining day visitors. This included a bunch of Filipino helpers hanging out at the beach drinking from a box of Franzia. They were shwasted, and it was great fun to watch them make their own fun, such as covering each other in sand, dancing congo lines etc. We also saw this lady carrying her mini poodle in a baby carrier on her chest. The dog seemed perfectly content! But that is not a little dog to carry around all day. Why can't the dog just walk you ask? Nobody knows. We faked like Drew was taking a picture of me to take a picture of them, hence my lovely smile.

Also in the town was a little park with a foot massage walkway. The stones were place on end, so they dug into your feet as you walked on them. The stones were loosely spaced at the beginning of the walkway, and very tightly spaced by the end. Mike was in agony. It did hurt. I needed to use the railings to make it. The funny thing was, only a day prior, my language partner had asked me what the English word for this type of walkway was. Ha! This is a good example of something lost in translation. One word simply doesn't exist to capture the essence of this walkway, because foot reflexology is not a popular concept in the US. You can describe in with a really long name such as "A stone foot reflexology and massage walkway," but one word? Nope. 

Thanks love for giving us this wonderful adventure. And for carrying the pack all day :)

Aliens with Blonde Hair

One thing that was particularly funny about Guiyang was how unaccustomed the locals were to seeing white people. Apparently a lot of Chinese people visit the place, but westerners don't get that far inland. Think about it. Most people when traveling to China make it to Beijing, Shanghai, and maybe Xian. And that's about it. This is one thing I am really grateful for while living over here. We get to go to less popular places that are still very much worth seeing.

So, basically, we got a lot of stares, a lot of double takes, and a lot of puzzlement. Are those real people? Am I imagining something? This actually happened to me one time in Anchorage, AK. We were graciously given a ride to a trailhead by a bi-racial family. The mom was white, the dad was black, but he must have also had some white ancestry, because, somehow, their children were black with red hair. I kid you not. And I stared at those kids; I couldn't help it. If I was being rude, I didn't mean to be. But I had honestly never seen anything like that before in my life. It was beautiful and mind-blowing at the same time. I imagine that's how they thought of us in Guiyang. Except instead of beautiful, they probably thought we were awkwardly large and frighteningly white. :)

The end result is that we had about 20 different groups of people openly ask to take pictures with us over the 4 days. And those are just the people that asked. A lot more just took pictures of us without us knowing. Drew thought it was hilarious to walk slightly behind the rest of us and watch people's reactions as they passed up. "Shock and awe, boys, shock and awe."

In our group of 4 people, each of us had particular characteristics that were foreign. Luke is over 6'3'', so that was amazing to them. I looked up some average national heights, and it is quite shocking. The average Chinese male is only 5'5'', so Luke must have been a giant to them.

On a side note, the average Filipino woman is only 5'0'', and the average Indonesian women is only 4'10''! The vast majority of helpers in Hong Kong are either Indonesian or Filipino. I see them everywhere, and I always thought they looked tiny, but now I have statistical confirmation! Ha!

Anyways, to continue our super powers list, Luke is super tall, his wife Jill has super curly hair, I have super blonde hair, and Drew is super buff. All unique to them. Enjoy the pics.