The Sauna

On Tuesday, it poured rain all day, so Jake and I decided to do some indoor things. We started by having a really nice Thai lunch at a place in Wan Chai. A lot of the restaurants around here will have a set lunch, where you get a drink, main, and dessert for around $10. Jake tried pad thai, to see how it compared to what he was used to in MI. Apparently the spices used were very different, so it wasn't an apples to apples comparison. But he still liked it. I got a seafood soup with a coconut milk tangy broth. It was fantastic, and exactly what I was looking for on a chilly rainy day. 

After lunch, I took Jake to a traditional Chinese sauna. I had never been there before either, so I wasn't sure what to expect. You walk in and immediately jump in an elevator. Guys have one floor and girls another. So I unceremoniously dumped Jake on his floor and said good luck, see you in a few hours. I went up to my floor, and immediately this old Chinese lady greets me and asks what I want. Sauna massage? Sauna massage? I nod vigorously. She gives me a locker, robe, and towel, has me change, then immediately sends me to the shower to wash before going into anything else. After the shower, I head to the steam room, which had so much steam I couldn't see. I managed to stay in there maybe 7 minutes before having to bail. It was just so ridiculously hot.  I must have come at an unusual hour, because I had the place to myself. All I could think of was "i am going to pass out in here, and noone will know for hours until the tiny little Chinese lady comes looking for me. And when she finds me, she wont be strong enough to pull me out...." Next was the sauna, which was less hot so I managed to stay in there longer. They even had a TV in there behind glass.

After the steam room and sauna, you take another shower. This time you want to because you are so covered in sweat. After that, you walk into the lounge room that is filled with leather recliners. You sit in your robe, they bring towels to put over your feet, tea to drink, even a bowl of noodles if you're hungry. Then you can hang out indefinitely, watching Chinese soap operas, which is what everyone in there seemed to be doing, or read the paper which is what I did. When you have had enough lounging, you tell the little Chinese lady you want a massage and she goes and gets a room ready for you. I walk in, and really no one closes the door. I guess I am used to everything being private in the US, but considering this was an all women floor, I don't think privacy was a main concern. 

The following 45 minutes of my life was torture. I think this is the plan. They butter you up into complete relaxation in the sauna and lounge room, only to kick your ass in the massage rooms. The massage was a traditional Chinese one, meaning a lot of acupressure with a Chinese lady standing on your back. No long smooth motions we are used to in a Western massage. She knew exactly where every pressure point was, every gland, every node, and she would go to town. Several times I had to use deep breathing just to keep from yelling out in pain. It was never relaxing. But, I guess that is the point of this type of massage. They are working out the toxins and junk in your system. That evening I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I had bruising all over my back. All I wanted to do was sleep. The scene below is Lucy Liu from Charlie's Angels.

Jake's experience was a bit different than mine. Maybe I am a wimp, or maybe he had a gentler, lighter lady, but he enjoyed his massage. Afterwards he was relaxed and not under the weather. Plus, the guy's floor has a jacuzzi while the women's does not. I am still deciding if I ever want to go back, or bring anyone else there in the future. Overall, the experience was a unique one, something you could certainly never find in the US. But, at the same time, I couldn't subject anyone else to what I went through. Do I feel fine now? Sure. 

After the sauna, we walked through the Wan Chai wet market to show Jake a bit of local culture. We tried some of the funny looking fruits you cant get back home. He even tried an egg tart! 

For dinner, we all went out for dim sum at one of our new favorite restaurants. Then we got mango pancakes for dessert. Drew and Jake went to the Peak to see the view of the city as the rain had finally cleared. They then went out, as Jake likes to enjoy the nightlife. I stayed home and crashed. 

Lamma Island

Yesterday, Jake and I took a little scenic walk on Lamma Island, about a 25 min ferry ride from our Central pier. The allure of the island is that it's populated by only two small fishing villages and is very lush with jungley vegetation. It's a good place to escape the hustle and bustle of the city. 

We took the ferry from Central to the larger of the two fishing villages called Yung Shue Wan. As soon as you get off the boat and onto the pier, you see bicycles along the entire length of the pier. This explains the "how can people still live and survive on this island" question. There are still a few fishermen by trade, and we saw a few, but the rest ride their bikes to the pier every day and then take a ferry to jobs off the island. Also, other than some four wheelers, there are no motorized vehicles on the island.

Next, we walked through the little Main Street, which was quite cute, selling all kinds of trinkets etc. This town actually had a hotel and an ATM, so you knew it was legit.

Disclaimer, and I should have come clean about this long ago. I did not take the above picture. In fact, I didn't take any of the photos in this particular post because I forgot to. But, they are completely accurate in what we saw. I apologize in advance to the takers of these pictures. If you, picture taker, want me to cite your pics, I will. 

 To get to the trailhead, you walk through the little town, then at the end there is a fork in the road. Left is the trailhead, right goes to an athletic ground and a temple. I must have really wanted to show Jake the temple, because I overlooked the turnoff completely, and after visiting the temple, continued on in that wrong direction. We weaved our way through people's homes on this sidewalk, and it was very evident the people here were living very simple lives. Eventually, the sidewalk opened to this parking lot area, which is funny with the no cars thing. To the right was what looked like a hiking path with fallen trees on it, to the left a larger road leading somewhere we couldn't tell. We go to check out the trees on the path, and, as we are in the midst of climbing over and around the trees, spot this. 

BLAHHHhHAaaaaaaaaAaAAA. Jesus! was my response to seeing this thing. As we backed out from the fallen tree, we look around and literally there were 5 more of these guys all around us that we had just never noticed. I'm honestly surprised now we didn't run into one of the webs. It was as big as it looks and in our minds must be poisonous. In reality it's a Golden silk orb weaver spider, genus Nephila, that is poisonous but not lethal to humans. Oh, that makes me feel better. The cool thing about these guys is they have been around for MILLIONS of years. Cray cray. 

Needless to say, after I got us unlost, we still noticed these guys everywhere on the island, especially dangling over our heads in the trees along the hiking trail. If I grew up on this island, I think I would leave because of these spiders alone, let alone the economically depressed villages with nothing to do. 

The hike itself, or scenic walk rather, was lovely, with views of the coast line going through dense vegetation in the "mountains." Ha! Mountains.....

After about a hour on this scenic walk, you end up at the other fishing village called Sol Kwu Wan. This one was made up of only fishing boats, houses, and restaurants, but very picturesque. We actually saw people on the beach, as it was low tide, digging for clams!

The "docks" we just boards nailed to each other haphazardly. The boats were all small with single props, but they must get the job done. We saw a dog leaping around on these docks totally at home. A salty dog. Ha! 

At this point I made my second major mistake of the day, in addition to getting us lost and almost eaten by giant spiders. The ferry to the larger village comes every half hour. The ferry to this smaller village comes ever hour and a half, and we had just missed it. Oops. We decided to spend the time drinking Jack and Coke (from a glass bottle) in a small cafe by the water, so not a bad way to kill some time. Luckily Jake was a good sport about it all. Funny thing was, all of the restaurant owners knew all of the ferry times exactly, and they would use it as a tactic to get you into their restaurant. "Ohh, next ferry not til 7:30, you eat here and wait...." Clever!

Also along the trail we saw a kamikaze tunnel where the Japanese would hide speed boats during World War Two to use for suicide attacks on Allied ships. If I didn't think there would be giant spiders ready to pounce in there, and if I had a headlamp, we might have gone exploring.

We also saw several beaches with nice bbqing areas. Both of them would be lovely to spend an afternoon on, but both are within sight of a large coal fired power plant that kinda ruins the mood. The power plant provides electricity for Hong Kong Island, but Lamma Island gets to house it. And apparently after heavy rains, the waters get polluted. Considering that it rains heavily everyday, I don't think we'll be coming here to swim any time soon. 

Overall, it was a fun adventure, made more adventuresome by my planning mistakes. Adventure's out there! 

Friends! I'll be there for you...

This weekend the lovely Tina and her dashing husband Mike Lin are in town house hunting. Mike is a coworker of Drew's, going back even to his CT days. They are relocating from Seoul, South Korea to Hong Kong, hopefully in August. More friends to hang out with! This is the same couple that is graciously showing us around Seoul next week when Drew visits for work; I will tag along for fun. 

The four of us went to dinner last night at a Spanish tapas place. The food was great, but even better was a guy serenading tables on a guitar, playing 90s hits including A Whole New World from Aladdin. :)

After dinner, we went to this awesome dessert chain called Hui Lau Shan. They specialize in mango desserts, and it was wonderful. We tried a platter with nine different mango variations. Fantastico.

Needless to say, we are very excited that Mike and Tina will be joining us in Hong Kong :)

The next friend part of the night was the arrival of Jake Morrisroe, Drew's longtime friend from high school. Jake is wrapping up a multi week, multi country tour that included Amsterdam, Barcelona, Rome, Florence, and Singapore. He is our first visitor, and we can't wait to show him all the cool things about Hong Kong. This picture shows just how far back Drew and Jake go; he's known Drew way longer than I have. Jake is the guy in the black shirt with dark hair. He is not the demon looking fellow located to Jake's left. 

Hiking the Peak

Last Thurs, Drew had a long night of work calls ahead of him, so I decided to get out of the house to hang out with my friend Jill and her friend Anne. We decided to hike to the Peak, which is the highest point on the island with commanding views of the city below. Lots of people go to the Peak just for fun; you can ride an old tram up it, then there are lots of restaurants and even a mall of sorts at the top, this is Hong Kong after all, along with the circular path to see the views. 

The weird mall/restaurant area at the end of the tram.

I brought Trig along for the exercise. To get to the starting point, I had to take a cab with Trig. It was actually must easier than it sounds. The first cab turned me down, but not the second. Trig sat on the floor right by my feet with his head in my lap the entire ride. You could see he was thinking "I trust you mom, but this cab driver is a bit jerky and I wish I knew where we were going." :) 

The first half of the hike was straight up. Seeing as I try to walk Trig everyday, and there are lots of hills in our neighborhood, cardiovascularly we did fine. My calves were certainly feeling it though. The top half was much milder, with great spying opportunities of all the rich people's houses that live up on the Peak. 

The best part was obviously the views from the top. We started the hike at 6:30, got to see the sunset while we were hiking, and then by the time we got to the top, it was dark and we had some great views of the night skyline. If you are ever visiting us here, chances are I will take you up here. 

Last but not least, the other day I went grocery shopping and they were handing these out at the register for free. After reading the description, now I know why they were free. Ham and corn oatmeal? Bleh. 

This is the Song That Never Ends

Yes it goes on and on my friends....some people started singing it, not knowing what it was, and they'll continue singing it forever just because...

So, just outside of our MTR stop is a giant Forever 21 store. Literally (and I mean literally, not exaggerating here) EVERY time we walk past that store it is playing the EXACT same song. To be specific, it's the song daydreaming by lupe fiasco. It's almost as annoying as me using CAPS to emphasis how I feel. I really hope, for the poor store workers' sake, that they are only playing that song outside the store and not inside of it. For I would go insane within the first 10 minutes of working there. Ironic that the same song is being played forever at a Forever 21. Ha! 

We have booked our flights back to the US. We will be in MI from 8/11-8/18, where we will be spending lots of time with both Drew's fam and my extended fam, as well as going to Jill Hemming and Ben Anderson's wedding in Traverse City! Yay weddings! Drew will then head to Philly to work from 8/18-8/24 while I go to Denver. It's very exciting to have this trip to look forward to. The only bad thing is, and this is going to sound super snobbish, but we will have to fly economy both ways. Once you fly business and you know what it's like up there for a 15 hour international flight, economy seems like a nightmare. But then again, things could always be worse. My friend Heidi is flying back with her 3-year old and 5-year old in July. Could you imagine trying to keep kids quiet and occupied for 15 hours straight? A melt-down is guaranteed at least once during that span of time. My first instinct when we were talking about it was, "why don't you give them some zzz quil or something and knock them out for a few hours?" :) Don't judge me. Ok, yes, judge me, it's quite terrible, but you were thinking it to. It could always be worse. 

After our five beautiful days of sunshine, it has since gotten very cloudy and humid. So much so that if you are wearing glasses indoors that is cool from ac, the moment you step outside they fog up completely, forcing you to stop and wait for the glasses to warm up before continuing. Ahh, science. 

Last but not least, I am waiting outside of Drews work so we can go to lunch. There is a pole there that reflects the street behind me and makes all of the cars look like little clown mobiles. It's quite hysterical. 

Frustration Abounds

This morning I got a talking to from one of the Mandarin teachers, saying I must spend more time outside of class practicing Mandarin because it was clear I was not remembering vocab from former lessons. He is right, of course, so now I feel very disappointed in myself. I currently have two problems. 

1. I have no one outside of class to practice Mandarin with. 

Solution: find a Mandarin buddy to trade Mandarin help for English help. Not sure how realistic this is, but let's see if I can find someone.

2. I am not using Mandarin in day to day situations. I currently feel like I don't know enough to get across what I need, but, of course, I still need to practice what I do know and be ok with trying and failing. 

Solution: grow a pair and always use Mandarin when I can in public. 

These are the types of problems that I hate the most. I know the problem exists, I know I know what the solution is, and I know that I am still avoiding the problem. The result is I feel really disappointed in myself, and unfortunately the majority of my life right now is this type of problem. I want to lose weight, but don't have the energy to work out. I need to work four hours a day, but I can't find the time to do it. I want to learn mandarin, but I'm too scared to practice it in the real world. 

Of course, the real problem is not that I dont have enough energy or enough time for these things. I have so much time it's silly! There is no excuse for what I am doing (or not doing). The real problem is without someone telling me to do something, without having a deadline with consequences otherwise, I have no motivation whatsoever. 

The funny thing is, I never knew this about myself until now. I was always very productive and achieved alot as a kid because there were always motivations. I was only good in school because I wanted to impress my parents. I only worked out when I was forced to because of softball. 

So, how do I get self-motivation? Anybody got a solution for that? 

Sad puppy.

Ok. Sorry for the depressing existential crisis I'm having over here. Let's move on to something more lighthearted and interesting.

On Sunday, it was another hot and sunny day, so Drew and I went back to Shek'o Beach, this time to actually go swimming and enjoy the sunshine. As you can see from the pics, it was super crowded. When you walked up to the beach, a little lady dressed like a bee keeper would ask if you wanted an umbrella and chairs for rent. If yes, they would worm through the existing umbrellas carrying yours until they found an opening, claiming your spot for the rest of the beach to see. Luckily, we were meeting Heidi, Rob, and the kids there, so they had already staked a claim. The people watching was fantastic. Some women were more dressed up than I get to go out, wearing beautiful sundresses and high heels. Obviously, they had no intention of getting in the water. Also, more guys there wore briefish bathing suits than board shorts. Weird. You had the flirtatious teenagers, the serious swimmers, the normal families burying a kid in the sand, and the drunk bachelors rowing rafts about aimlessly while drinking a beer. Drew and I had fun bobbing about, swimming to the netting and back, playing with the kids, and snoozing in the sun. The only downer was there were zero waves, not like we would have been able to ride them anyways because it was so crowded. Our next adventure is to find an equally nice, less crowded beach with bigger waves. Overall, a lovely day though.

Last but not least, on my walk home today I saw a miniature version of trig. It's not him, I swear!

Girls Night In

While in KL, Brian brought me like 10 bags of Ghiradelli chocolate chips from the states, as requested. When he gives them to me, he asks what am I going to do with them? Bake some cookies? Ha! He obviously hasn't  spent enough time with me in my natural habitat to know I eat chocolate chips on their own, as a chocolate dessert fix. Well, I thought about it later, and realized he had a point. Anyone who wants to eat 10 bags of chocolate chips straight up probably should be sent to the funny farm. So, tonight Drew is going to see a rugby game with a bunch of guys from his work. I, on the other hand, stayed in and made chocolate chip cookies from a favorite family recipe using said chips. I think I had the better evening of the two. However, I stole a move from Karen's repertoire and saved Drew a small bowl of cookie dough. Not that I plan to eat all the cookies before I get back, but the dough is the best part. Yes, Dad, I realize  the risk of catching salmonella is probably higher with a Chinese chicken egg. 

A few other funny moments from the past couple of days. Below is a picture of a mini bus, which we ride daily, with a pineapple on the dashboard. Can you think of a quicker, better way to ripen a pineapple?

Also, a while ago, I watched a construction crew take down bamboo scaffolding from a building's face. They were all perched about 10ft apart on the scaffolding. The top worker would unstrap a pole, then pass it vertically down to the next worker and so on, until one worker at the bottom dropped onto a truck bed. What if the worker on top drops one? It would look like plinko. Anyways, it was fascinating to watch. 

Finally. We've had three days in a row of beautiful sunshine, a record for us since we've been here. To celebrate, Drew and I went to the pool and sub-sequentially fried ourselves. Apparently, the normally cloudy weather here made us forget our sunshine etiquette.  

Last finally, Drew showed me a SNL skit the other day (see link) which was quite hysterical. Trig does this move daily, which accurately captures the theme of the skit. "And kick, and stretch, and kick. I'm 50." http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aiehDcVZ-vA