My 21st in Hong Kong

For my birthday, a close friend showed me around Hong Kong for a few days and took me to a great restaurant. We started out from Zhongshan on the morning of my birthday and took a ferry to Victoria Harbour, HK. When we arrived in Hong Kong, we secured our accommodation and then spent the day shopping in Mongkok (a shopping district on the Kowloon peninsula) where there are many camera shops full of rare stock and other nice things. I was very interested in getting a Leica CM or a Zeiss Ikon by Carl Zeiss. Of course, these cameras are several times my budget so I came away with nothing but it was nice to see them for a change.

That evening we went on a another ferry that took us around the harbour during the impressive Hong Kong Light Show. Eventually we got off and walked to a restaurant at Causeway Bay that was in the front of the Hong Kong Convention Centre. I was able to recognise the building because there have been a few Jackie Chan films that feature this building. In any case we had a great dinner and then a whole Haagen Dazs cake (bar one piece we gave to a child from a near by table). After dinner I was feeling "bao si la", (full to the brink of death) so we decided to avoid too much more food or activity after that.


This is the cake, it consisted of 1kg of icecream and needed dry ice to stay cold while we were aboard the ferry around the harbour.

The next day, we continued the quest to look at all the great things available in Hong Kong and walked through Causeway Bay (on Hong Kong Island). At one point, not knowing what to do next, we took a random tram just to see where it would go and for the experience of riding a tram. It ended up that the tram took us to some rather remote and industrial part of Hong Kong. We looked around the wharfs for awhile and then caught another bus. This bus went back to the very top of Tsim Sha Tsui, which was quite a long trip. We then took another bus back to Ocean Terminal, a huge shopping complex, and explored that for awhile.

After three days, we were to return to the Mainland but before that we looked around Tsim Sha Tsui and I had ordered a tailored suit. We would be back in a week or so to pick it up and meet other friends.

Our route back to China included a day trip to Macau which was quite interesting in comparison to Hong Kong. Hong Kong made me think of a Britain that does not rain all the time, where you can buy good local food and where there is an Asian drive for shopping. The public transport is great and most other public services are well designed. Macau, on the other hand, seemed a lot more like its father nation, Portugal. The roads are winding and city planning was done after all the buildings were built. The food is of course great because the fusion has had a long time to develop. I though that Macau felt a lot more European and seems to have retained more history. That said, we did not visit any casinos so perhaps my impressions could be skewed.


This is the Zeiss Ikon, probably my favorite camera.

Heading South

These are the friends that saw me off as I left Hangzhou. Younghee's Boyfriend, Younghee and Shemmy.

After returning from Beijing, I left my ATM card in Shanghai Airport and spent a long week back in Hangzhou preparing to head south. I was to go to a place called Zhongshan where the family of a friend of mine was from. We would stay there for about a week before starting off on an extended travel though mid-China.

Zhongshan was a rather small village but quite a nice place to rest as my foot was still healing. I was staying at the house of a friend's grandfather and essentially every day after Yum Cha, he would go off to play Mahjong for the rest of the day. We had a nice time not doing to much for a change.

After a few days it was getting rather close to my 21st Birthday so we across to Hong Kong. We would return to Zhongshan a few days later before meeting other friends and leaving for our travels.

Bejing and No Great Wall

Upon arriving in Beijing, Morgan and I started a search for our hostel. This took only a little while so we had the rest of the afternoon to walk around. After putting our stuff down, we decided to go see Tiananmen Square and see if we could get into the Forbidden City. It was quite nice and completely unlike a city in south China. One thing I noticed in particular was that the buildings, though not that tall, were just enormous in grandure. Beijing is not studded with sky scrapers like Shanghai - instead it just has a lot of really big buildings, perhaps a large city block wide and 10 or 15 stories tall.

After walking for a short while, we ran into a girl who was interested in practising her English and exploring Bejing with some companions. So she showed us around for the afternoon and pointed out some of the more famous restaurants. That evening, we met up with some other friends.

For the next few days, we travelled inner Beijing and looked at a lot of the sites including Mao’s body which was quite interesting. We then went to visit the Summer Palace which was rather impressive though quite similar to Hangzhou - there was an artificial lake which was designed to be pretty and pleasant to be near.

We were interested in going to the Great Wall but we planned things poorly so we ended up not having enough time to get all they way there and back before our flight left.

I thought Beijing was quite a lovely place and although I was ill almost the entire time with some strange stomach problem I find that I recall the food as being great. One particularly memorable restaurant was a very traditional Tibetan one we drank yak wine of some description and ate food I had never imagined.

Here is a gallery of our trip.

Beijing and Morgan's Visit

Morgan and a Train to Beijing

Soon after recovering from not being able to walk, it was time for summer vacation so I only spent a short time back in the lab before leaving town.

As part of the vacation, an old friend of mine, Morgan, came to visit. We started in Hangzhou and I showed her around with a few friends. Then we went to Shanghai to visit some of the more famous sites. We spent one night there before returning to Hangzhou for a few more days. We had planned to take a sleeper train to Beijing to meet up with some other friends but I failed to get train tickets in time so we were forced to postpone our trip a few days and take hard seats on the 16 hour train.

The train ride was quite interesting as it was full of people - so many that more than half the people in the carriage could not sit down. We were seated opposite two mothers with their two young boys who did not sleep well, which added to the interest. I was sitting next to a girl from Hangzhou, Eve, who later became a close friend. We started talking because her English was not too bad. Her family were sitting near by and they gave us food during the trip. We also talked about the soccer because that night was the final in the World Cup. A friend who was watching the game back in Hangzhou sent me frequent updates on the game via SMS and we were all sad when we found out who won.

That night many people did not sleep and just stood there or slept laying on the floor of the train. It was a surreal experience.

The next morning atendents came around with boiling water for tea and instant noodles. For obvious reasons I was quite nervous about this activity.

Eve, the girl I was sitting next to, got off about an hour before Beijing. We decided to stay in contact.

When we arrived we found somewhere to stay and something to do.


This is some mountain we passed in the train.