Today is our last day in Hong Kong. Time flew by so quick­ly. It seems like only yes­ter­day that we were busy pack­ing to leave for the trip. Today we’re busy pack­ing again to return home.

In the past week we tried to squeeze in as many sights as we could. We went to the Hong Kong muse­um of his­to­ry on free Wednes­day. There were tons to see, and even on reg­u­lar days the admis­sion is only $10 HKD. I was most fas­ci­nat­ed by the exhib­it about the boat-dwellers.

This tea­house look strange­ly famil­iar…

After the muse­um my sis­ter took us to a 13-sto­ry mall, where we scram­bled down some ramp along with Pep­per­mint Pat­ty and the gang.

The next day we went to the Kowloon Walled City Park. It was a place we real­ly want­ed to vis­it­ed because we heard a lot about the Walled City from a friend who used to work with the peo­ple liv­ing there before it was demol­ished and con­vert­ed into a park. Zumi took some pic­tures of the parts that were pre­served, like the bureau­crat’s office…

… and rem­nants of the south gate.

The Walled City looks noth­ing like the way it was, when peo­ple used to live there. There was a bronze sculp­ture in the park cap­tur­ing the state of the area moments before it was demolished.

I’ve actu­al­ly nev­er seen the Walled City in per­son while grow­ing up in Hong Kong. I would nev­er be able to ful­ly com­pre­hend what it was like to have only 3 run­ning taps and 3 ele­va­tors serv­ing thou­sands of peo­ple liv­ing in small quar­ters. It feels a bit iron­ic to walk through art­ful­ly designed court­yards with mini water­falls and arti­fi­cial ponds while think­ing about the strug­gles of the peo­ple who once walked these grounds.  Thought I do believe that the park is def­i­nite­ly a pos­i­tive trans­for­ma­tion. I won­dered what the for­mer res­i­dents think about the park and whether their lives were a bit eas­i­er now.

Yes­ter­day we vis­it­ed my uncle’s fish farm, which could only be reached by boat. My lack of swim­ming abil­i­ties and poor sense of bal­ance made the boat ride and even time on the fish farm a bit nerve-wreck­ing (as you can see, there’s no rail­ing or rope or any­thing to hang on to while walk­ing on those planks! : S), but we had good fun nonetheless.

Under­neath the planks were nets inside which the fish live. It feels a bit sur­re­al, just because it was qui­et and not a high-rise in view — it’s hard to believe such a place exists with­in the city!

After the fish farm we went to the local fish mar­ket, where peo­ple where sell­ing seafood and such from their boats off the pier.

From one of these boats I bought some suc­cu­lent dried cut­tle­fish floss :D

This lady was sell­ing some starfish. Not for eat­ing, I hope. For aquar­i­ums, per­haps? While walk­ing around the pier I over­heard that some­one bought hun­dreds of dol­lars worth of live fish and oth­er sea life to set them free.

And so that was pret­ty much the end of our adven­ture. We’re now get­ting ready for anoth­er 15-hour plane ride home, where real life awaits. While feel­ing sad, I’m remind­ed of a Calvin & Hobbes com­ic strip Mike once gave me, in which Calvin laments the end of fall and play­ing in the leaves and Hobbes said, if spe­cial things last for­ev­er then they would­n’t be spe­cial anymore.

I wish I could find that com­ic strip online and post it here because it’s so fit­ting. The 20°C Hong Kong autumn is indeed end­ing for us and we’re about to return to that sub-zero Cana­di­an win­ter. But if I were to stay liv­ing in Hong Kong I prob­a­bly would­n’t appre­ci­ate it as much as I do now. Life is always more fun as a tourist. Real life in Hong Kong is def­i­nite­ly not peachy keen all the time, and snow can be fun some of the time. If only the TTC can be half as effi­cient as the MTR. Seri­ous­ly, I’ve tak­en the MTR dozens of times while here and haven’t expe­ri­enced one sin­gle delay, where I run into at least one delay per day while tak­ing the TTC. Sheesh.

Any­way. I digress. Will write again when I’m on Cana­di­an soil! Take care!

Greet­ings! It’s been a while! My fam­i­ly and I joined a bus tour to Malaysia, so I’ve been away from the inter­net for a while, which was a rather refresh­ing expe­ri­ence, actu­al­ly! I did­n’t miss the com­put­er one bit through­out the trip because our sched­ule was packed with so many places to go and so many things to see! Here’s Malaysia, viewed from the giant met­al bird!

But of course, with a bus tour we only went to touristy places and I wish I had expe­ri­ence more of the cul­ture… but here are some mem­o­rable moments from our short trip!

Impres­sion #1: food!

We ate three square meals every­day of deli­cious Chinese/Malaysian food, with var­i­ous local food-tast­ing tours in between. This is our first meal in Malaysia. The orange plate with the banana leaf in the top left is grilled stingray :S and in the beer mugs are lime and sour plum drinks.

Anoth­er day we had a trop­i­cal fruit and dessert buf­fet at the zoo.

Impres­sion #2: beau­ti­ful architecture!

In the city…

… and on the river.

Many build­ings we went in had beau­ti­ful floor tiles!

Impres­sion #3: love­ly beaches!

Here’s Jorge, hav­ing a Kodak moment at the beach while I went beach-combing.

There were lots of buried trea­sure to be found at the beach! Though I was wor­ried that I could­n’t car­ry corals onto the plane, so I had to leave them. But I took many pic­tures of them and picked up lots of love­ly, colour­ful rocks! Will have to show you those later.

Zumi took this amaz­ing pic­ture of a beau­ti­ful piece of coral.

Impres­sion #4: trop­i­cal plants!

I was par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to these fuzzy red ones…

… and these pink flow­ers that grow on trees.

Our tour also includ­ed half a day in Sin­ga­pore. It was at the end of the tour and at that point I was too tired to prop­er­ly appre­ci­ate it (plus we had to get up at 5am to cross the bor­der from Malaysia). And so I real­ly did­n’t see much of Sin­ga­pore, but I’m rather pleased with Zumi’s pic­ture of the Sin­ga­pore landmark/symbol, the Merlion.

Actu­al­ly, the high­light of Sin­ga­pore for me was find­ing the giant Peeps in Sen­tosa!

It was sit­ting in front of a giant can­dy store, where I also found the marsh­mal­low peep bun­ny plush! It’s so fluffy I’m gonna die!!!

So I brought it home :D

Last but not least, I want to show you this video I took of a sea tur­tle swim­ming at a zoo we vis­it­ed in Malaysia. Though I’d rather see him swim­ming in the sea, he looked rather con­tent behind the glass. Hap­py, even. And so very graceful.

That’s it for Malaysia! Would love the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it it again, and Sin­ga­pore as well! And final week in Hong Kong! I think I’m going to miss it when I leave.

Until then, more sight­see­ing! Will keep you posted!

Hope you are well!

Gone swim­ming with my grand­par­ents a cou­ple of days ago. They go swim­ming in the ocean every morn­ing at 6am! Jorge and I were too busy col­lect­ing and watch­ing the sun­rise and for­got to take a pic­ture of Jorge at the beach, but here he is with our boun­ty of treasure!

And behold, the sunrise!

There was an over­whelm­ing amount of sea glass (note that they’re real sea glass, not beach glass from the lake!), I could hard­ly con­tain myself. This appears to be a bot­tom piece of a bot­tle, but not yet fin­ished tum­bling, so I put it back, but not before tak­ing a pho­to of it :D

I even found a piece of ceram­ic with blue pat­terns on it (look for it in the pic­ture with Jorge!). The shells I found were big­ger than I expect­ed. When I vis­it­ed 9 years ago the shells were the size of my fin­ger­nails, if any. But this time they were at least an inch wide. I do hope that it means pol­lu­tion’s been reduced a bit in recent years.

Rocky shore! (The sand was smooth in most parts of the beach though.)

 

Amongst the rocks we found bar­na­cles! They looked strik­ing on the red stone.

 

Algae dressed the rocks with threads of emer­ald green.

 

Grand­pa caught 2 crabs under­wa­ter and brought them out to show us. I took a video of them shuf­fling away. A lady walked by and start­ed watch­ing them with us, say­ing “Run! Run! Run!” in Chi­nese near the end of the video clip.

I’m a bit sad that I might not get a chance to go back to the beach dur­ing this trip. But I know that I will think of this place when­ev­er I go near the ocean, with the bar­na­cle-cov­ered rocks and the salty ocean air.

Will be trav­el­ing to Malaysia and a bit of Sin­ga­pore for the next 5 days! Not bring­ing my com­put­er, so you won’t hear from me for a while… but there will be many pic­tures when I return!

Until then, take care, friends! :D

While shop­ping at the super­mar­ket with my grand­par­ents the oth­er day, saw mount of drag­on­fruits! 4 for $9.90 HKD. That’s like 4 for around $1.30 CAD!!

Me: WHOA! You know in Cana­da they’re like $4 each? *stuffs drag­on­fruits in gro­cery bag*

Grand­ma: Oh. That’s expensive.

Me: I mean $4 Cana­di­an, that’s like $28 here!

Grand­ma: WHAT?! Then we should buy 4 more! *stuffs drag­on­fruits in gro­cery bag*

 

So we’ve been eat­ing lots of drag­on­fruits in the past few days. We still have one left I think. They’re deli­cious! Del­i­cate­ly sweet with a con­sis­ten­cy sim­i­lar to that of straw­ber­ries. “Like straw­ber­ries with a bunch of kiwi seeds thrown in,” reports Mike.

My grand­par­ents have a large banana tree and numer­ous papaya trees in their yard, plus a man­go tree and a star­fruit tree. Yay trop­i­cal fruits! :D

 

It was mes­mer­iz­ing… I could sit there and look at them all day (despite how crowd­ed the exhi­bi­tion was — you can hear all the peo­ple talk­ing in the back­ground). Reminds me of Miyaza­k­i’s movies, espe­cial­ly with the music. So magical…

Hel­lo! Jorge here, tak­ing the cable car across Ocean Park.

 

And here we are, at the aquar­i­um, with all kinds of sea crea­tures swim­ming around serenely.

Zumi took this pho­to of the aquar­i­um, with splash­ing colours!

High­light of the trip was the jel­ly fish exhi­bi­tion! Here I am sur­round­ed by jel­ly fish, or “sea jel­lies” as they were called at Ocean Park. I also took some videos of the jel­ly fish with Zumi, will be post­ing it next!

 

This is one of the play­grounds inside my ele­men­tary school; I’ve played hop­scotch there count­less times. The school is just out­side the vil­lage where we used to live. It’s been closed for sev­er­al years now. They kind of just left it there, emp­ty. I could still see kids’ art­work in the win­dow. It was gat­ed so I could only stick my cam­era between the met­al bars to take pic­tures. It real­ly reminds me of the show Life After Peo­ple. I’m quite sad­dened to see it aban­doned like this.

This pic­ture was tak­en with Zumi. When I first got Zumi in the mail I wor­ried that it might be a waste of mon­ey, but now I’m so glad I bought it! I’m total­ly in love with the pic­tures it takes — the colours and tex­ture are just amaz­ing, espe­cial­ly scenes in the city.

When I tell peo­ple that I used to live in a vil­lage in Hong Kong, peo­ple often seem kind of con­fused. Isn’t Hong Kong a city? It sure­ly is. But there are also vil­lages in a few out­skirt areas. I’ll share more pic­tures of my vil­lage soon!

 

Jorge: Good morn­ing, Hong Kong! :D

Hong Kong: grrrrrr.….. bzzzzz.….. honk! honk! honk!  (con­struc­tion sounds mixed with traf­fic noises)

 

 

Adven­ture begins today!