Chinglish....

So far, almost all of the signs we've seen in Hong Kong have been understandable, even if the English was a bit wonky. I guess that comes with living with the British for 150 years.

This time though, I have no idea what they could possibly have meant:

Any ideas?

(And yes, I'm fairly sure you can look it up online, but that would be cheating :P )

Chi Lin Nunnery

Saturday I was wandering around Diamond Hill with a bunch of friends (Gavin, Alex and Al), and we came a nunnery with a really nice garden next to it.

We managed to get a Dutch tourist to take this shot of us standing in the main courtyard.

Unfortunately, there were "no photos" signs posted everywhere in the courtyard and they had a guard there to enforce the rule, so that's just about it for photos from inside the nunnery...

The gardens were really nice though, especially considering the fact that it's all right in the middle of the city:

And they also had a pond full of koi. These fish are huge!

Awesome views from Victoria peak!

Adam and I went to Victoria Peak on Sunday for a bit of hiking and to enjoy the view: it's a hill located just south of all the skyscrapers on Hong Kong Island, you can see everything. Luckily, there's a tram which goes all the way to the top, so we didn't have to walk all the way. It's fairly steep as you can see though:

The view from the top was just amazing though, and would have been worth any climb!

We also managed to take a look at the local wildlife:

Luckily, that spider is not venomous: we looked it up afterwards :-)

And then we found a fountain you can stand under

Definitely a fun afternoon!

Yesterday afternoon the weather was absolutely wonderful, so I took some more pictures of the university area during a break between classes

Finally found a spot from which to take pictures of the halls of residence: I live in the one to the far left.

Another view over the sea :-)

This weekend promises to be fairly quiet; no major adventures planned (yet!) at any rate.

Hiking on Hong Kong island

I have Thursday afternoons off, so I decided to go for a quick hike on Hong Kong Island yesterday. The hardest part was actually finding the trail: I have yet to buy a hiking map of Hong Kong, so I was just following directions I found online. These were along the lines of "go to such-and-such station and then head upwards until you can't..." Needless to say, things weren't quite that simple! While I was looking for the trail, I did come across a couple of fairly cool sights though:

Here's the entrance to a Buddhist temple at the bottom of the hill I was supposed to be going up.

And here's a graveyard halfway up the hill...

And the waterworks right by the last set of stairs heading upwards... I have to say that the water was flowing down a lot faster than I was going up!

I did manage to find the trail at the end though:

And look back at the climb I had had to make

Yes, that's the cemetery again!

Unfortunately, just as I reached the ridge, the fog came down and reduced the visibility to about 20 m - plenty to walk along the trail, not so good for taking photos. I did manage to get one shot of the view over the bay at the southernmost part of the trail:

The air was still pretty hazy though, and it started to rain, so I didn't linger!

All in all a good trip though, and I'll probably go again when the weather is better. I'm also very glad to finally have needed my hiking boots: I was definitely feeling that it had been a waste to bring them.

That's all for now; have a nice weekend everybody! :-)

Beach!

The weather this Sunday was just amazing, so Gavin and I went to the beach at Stanley, on the southern part of Hong Kong Island. Adam was supposed to come along as well, but we couldn't wake him up when we left, so he stayed home. At the beach, we did what any sensible people would do and built a sandcastle:

Gavin, hard at work

The finished sandcastle - I swear, it was bigger than it looks!

The only thing more fun than building sandcastles is tearing them down, so of course we did that as well. We actually asked a group of little kids if they wanted to help us, but they said no... Either they were shy, or else we just seemed creepy. At any rate, once we started kicking at the sand, they were more than happy to join in!

We also found a small temple near the beach, which we explored:

Shrines + statues

Me standing in front of a tiger that was found in front of the temple in the 30s with a stupid expression on my face :)

All in all a good morning!

Dinner at Mr. Wong's; Opening beers with chopsticks

Yesterday was a national holiday in Hong Kong, so we decided to go out on Tuesday night. We went to a place known as Mr. Wong's (that's not the name of the restaurant, just the name of the owner). It's a pretty sweet place where you can eat and drink as much as you like for 50 HKD. There were some really nice French people who offered to take photos of our group, so we said yes. Unfortunately, they were so drunk that they couldn't hold the camera steady, and didn't notice the photos were blurred... Anyway, here's the best of the lot:

Clockwise, starting at the front left: Jonathan from Sweden, Peter from Germany, Søren from Denmark, me, Adam, Petter from Sweden and Gavin.

One of the nice tricks Mr. Wong does is opening beers with chopsticks: He holds the chopstick almost vertically with the top right under the bottle cap and then hits it upwards with the palm of his other hand. Obviously, we spent a lot of time learning how to do this: when you do it right there's a very satisfying pop and the cap flies into the air. When you do it wrong, the cap stays on and you have just hammered your palm into what is basically a blunt needle... Needless to say, some people were in a great deal of pain by the time we left.

University by night

I went around yesterday evening trying to take some shots of the university by night. Most of them were awful, but there was one that I liked:

This shows the university area from the waterfront. To the left you can see the sports area and football field (The really bright lights come from there). In the background at the far right you can see the hall I live in.

Ocean Park!

Hong Kong has a theme park which is a lot like Gardaland; Gavin and I went there about two weeks ago:

They have a fair number of rides as well as a panda exhibit and an aquarium:

Their fountain

 

Lots of fish! (Aquarium)

More Aquarium (Yes, it actually was that colour. Deal with it!)

Crazy man feeding sharks...

Panda!

Gavin looking over the bay

Me on the way down.

Gavin on the way down.

The amusement park seen from the lift.

Jie-Jie displaying herself...

Kam Shan Country Park: Monkeys everywhere!

Yesterday we (Adam, Gavin, me) went hiking in Kam Shan Country Park. Monkeys everywhere!

They have a no-feeding rule; partly because it stops the monkeys from getting too agressive... One man found out that out the hard way!

Trip to Macau! :D

Hong Kong is only about an hour away from the former Portuguese colony of Macau, so I went there for the weekend with my roommates.

 You can see how excited they both are to be going! (That's Gavin on the left and Adam on the right)

Macau has become something of a gambling hub with plenty of casinos (and then some). We went to one of the biggest ones first, the Grand Lisboa, which you can see in the background here, with Gavin in the front

This was where we learnt what to do if you have lots of gold leaf left over and nothing to use it for.

Or an elephant tusk

Or two

Or even a 200-carat diamond...

Opposite the Grand Lisboa, there's a much smaller casino where we went next. You can just about see Adam and Gavin at the far right of the picture.

Macau also has some areas where the Portuguese colonial buildings still stand; here we are walking down the main square next to the cathedral (which was nothing special).

We also managed to find a small Buddhist temple. It was being renovated, so there were tools and building materials everywhere on the outside. The inside looked nice though.

Finally, we were just about ready to go home. Here we are in a park next to the sea which happens to overlook the ferry terminal.

Student Society is SRS BSNS!

I just saw these posted all over the university campus. Apparently somebody managed to piss everybody off: