Saturday 24 October 2009

Visit to Hong Kong and Macau

I arrived to Hong Kong in the middle of the day which great as it allowed me to see the whole city as I got into it by bus. The first thing that surprised me was the high of the buildings, the mountains and the fact that everywhere was so green.

I stayed in Hong Kong with Kristen. I had to seen her since she left London, about a year ago, and I was very lucky she had a few days to show me around before starting her new job.

Kristen and I in Kowloon's waterfront


Hong Kong is a fairly small island, limited by the sea and hills, it really makes sense that the only way to expand is up. Everyone lives in flats and the higher the better.... and more expensive, of course.

Hong Kong is a much easier place than China, most people speaks English and all the signs are in English and Cantonese. The place is very lively and it has quite a Europen feel to it. I couldn't help but notice the big amount of foreigners that seem to live in Hong Kong.

I think that Hong Kong is definitely the shoppers paradise, though I didn't find it to be as cheap as I was expecting. Long are gone the days where HK was the place to go shopping. You find huge shopping centres, full of international brands. There are also small local shops all over in the streets. I visited the night market at Temple street, which is full of suveniers.... I controlled myself and only bought a watch for $18 (around £1.5).

The skyline is stunning, specially at night. On my first night, Kristen and I took the Star Ferry to Kowloon. From Tsim Sha Tsui you get a great view of Hong Kong's skyline. Then we went to Felix, the bar on the top of the Peninsula hotel in Kowloon, where it was interesting to find the best view in the toilets!

From the water front at Kowloon


From the bar at the top of the Peninsula hotel


What I enjoyed the most in Hong Kong was the food. It was great to go out with a local to try lots of different dishes. What I didn't know is that Hong Kong has a great variety of desserts, the mango soup was delicious(made with mango juice, "pearls" of sago and bits of grapefruit and mango).

Mango soup


Sesame paste and tofu are used a lot in desserts. The weirdest thing I tried was a soup made with shark fin, fish maw and sea cucumber. We had it in a restaurant in Macau, one of the very few restaurants that are chinese, as Portuguese restaurants seem to take over the place. This is a very popular place for their soup.

Macau's famous shark fin soup


Other dishes i had in Hong Kong include: jellyfish, ox tongue, egg whites, Peking style lamb, Pekin duck, preserved duck eggs, fried tofu, goose, fried spare ribs and more!!

The day in Macau was great.... who would have thought that you could find a place in Asia that look so European? You can definitely see the Portuguese influence everywhere in the buildings and all the signs are written in cantonese and Portuguese, which really helped me as it is so similar to Spanish.

Macau's main square


The old town is great to walk around and get the portuguese taste! The one thing that every visitor to Macau buys are the boxes of very nice almond biscuits. On the south of the Macau mainland, and in the south island, you find the asian Las Vegas. Huge casinos are built and more are being built. This seems to be the main attraction for the Chinese. What is different in these casino's is the lack of noise. I have never been to Las Vegas, but from other people's experiences I can imagine it is a buzzing place with lots of noise, music, voices, etc... The capacity of the two casinos I went in (City of dreams and The Venetian) is more than I could ever imagine, yet you don't hear a noise. You see groups of Chinese gather around the tables, some with coupier, others managed automatically, and all the concentration is in the game and the bet. It's not by far the lively place i imagine Las Vegas to be. Interesting fact:: Macau's casinos have already overtaken Las Vegas' in revenue.

Going out in Hong Kong is great. There are lots of bars to visit. Lan Kwai Fong is one of the most popular bar areas. On a Wed and Thursday, lots of bars have Ladies' nights, which means free drinks for the ladies. We visited a few of the most popular bars.

One of the best views in town is the one you get from the top bar at Wooloomooloo, where Kristen and I caught up with Marco who happened to be in town... the world is such a small place!

Me with the Italian boys (Marco y Andrea)



My last day in Hong Kong I did tourism on my own. The one thing that was missing was to take the Peak Tram for an inclredible view of Hong Kong. I went up my tram and down walking, it takes about one hour, but got some really great views on the way down too.

View from the top


I'm going back to Hong Kong after Vietnam for one more day. I hope to have the chance to go to Lantau island to see the big Budha.

I hope you enjoyed this! Until next time!

Thursday 22 October 2009

First stop - China


I can't believe I'm already in Hong Kong after two weeks in China. I was in Beijing, Xian and Shanghai.

From London I flew to Beijing where I stayed with Lucy. She moved to Beijing to learn mandarin and had been living there for about a month before I arrived. This made my life very easy as she could show me around and teach me about how things work in China. Not many people speak English, so it would have been a lot harder to do it on my own!

Lucy and I having my first Chinese dinner in Beijing! Delicious!


The best thing about Beijing was visiting the Great Wall of China. It was amazing being there and i was very lucky with the weather as it was a bit cloudy, best conditions to walk! I went on an organised tour, and decided i wanted to do the long hike which starts in Jinshanling, 3 hours from Beijing. Therefore I had a super early start.... pick up at 6.30am! The hike lasted around 4.5 hours and it finished in Simatai. Though i spent a couple of days afterwards with pains in my legs, it was totally worth it!

Me in the Great Wall... it really makes you feel very little  

My second highlight of Beijing, and a lot of people would probably disagree with me was the Olympic village, i really enjoyed being there...... but then, hey! I'm an Olympic fan! I even managed to go into the Water Cube were all the water competitions took place.

Inside the Water Cube


From Beijing I travelled by train to Xian..... 11 hours in an overnight train that I almost missed. Never underestimate rush hour in Beijing, specially when you need to travel across the whole city. I travelled to Xian in soft sleeper (you would have never guessed it was soft!) and shared the room with 3 chinese men that didn't say a word to me (I wonder why!) nor between them (very strange considering how loud chinese can be).

I spent two days in Xian. Where the first thing I did as soon I arrived was to sign for a tour to see the Army of Terracota Warriors. It was a very rainy day but it didn't spoilt the fan as the warriors are all covered. There are three pits to visit, and they rightly advice you to start with Pit 3, the smallest of all, to finish with Pit 1 which is the very impressive one with lots of warriors. The main challenge was to find the best spot to get good photos and to avoid the masses of tourists all fighting to get their picture taken with the warriors.

Terracota warriors


I stayed one more day in Xian, a much smaller city than Beijing, but still bigger than Madrid! The Muslim Quarters was particularly interesting as I got to see many interesting foods (uncooked and cooked). It was quite an experience to see how people treat food in China! I also managed to get a bus to see the Great Goose Pagoda, the biggest pagoda in China. It was probably very funny to see me talking to the driver and explaining to him where i was going and to let me know where i needed to get off..... It worked! and I'm glad I went to see it as I got a great view of Xian from the top.

Next move was Shanghai.... my initial plan was to go by train, but I had already tried the chinese trains and time was more important. In Shanghai I stayed with Ole (my norwegian friend), who happened to be there for a training course with his company. He was staying in a lovely apartment on the west side of town. The culinary adventure started here! First night we ventured ourselves to a restaurant that didn't have a menu in english, thank you to those menus with lots of pictures we managed to have a nice meal.

Shanghai is an impressive city and has a very different pace and feel to Beijing. In Shanghai everything is fast and modern... there are only a few old building left gathered around the Bund and the old town. My highlight of Shanghai was the old town, though not necessarily the commercial part, but the hutong style one where you see how people really used to live. They have very knitted communities and spend a lot of their lives at their door step, either selling food, washing clothes or just sitting and watching the world pass by.

The other highlight is the Yuyuan gardens, such a gem in the middle of such modern city. It's simply beautiful and I was lucky when i went as there weren't too many people.

I will tell you more about China in next entries, and will send more photos too! Let me know if there is anything in particular you would like to know...... there is so much to say about China.

From Hong Kong (last day) until next time!


Monday 5 October 2009

Leaving London

If someone is last minute, that's me. I have completely underestimated how long it would take me to pack all my house! So there are still lots of things lying around in my bedroom and living room. Poor Piers he's going to do a couple more trips to manage to take it all to his house.

It's amazing the amount of things that we accumulate over the years, when in reality it's very few what we use on a day to day basis..... de-cluttering is the word!

The good news is that I have all i need to take with me, and possibly more than I need (not a surprise there!.. just in case!). I haven't packed it all yet, so I'm not sure what the weight of my big backpack is going to be!

First stop: Beijing. My flight leaves at 16.40 today (how exciting, i'm finally going to Terminal 5 in Heathrow!) and I arrive at 9.30 tomorrow morning. I can see it's going to be a long flight! In Beijing lovely Lucy is picking me up at the airport. But more on this later!

I better stop procrastinating and continue packing.

Big hugs from very cloudy London.