Even More Fun Signs

Even more signs that made me laugh.

How to deal with monkeys

Health promotion in action

In Kowloon

In Tokyo. It never occurred to me that trash could be sorted into these 4 categories.

Macau

An hour's ferry ride away from Hong Kong is Macau, China's other Special Administrative Region. Macau is a former Portuguese colony that, like Hong Kong, was a hub for trade with Europe back in the day. After the Opium War of 1841 when Hong Kong became a British territory, most foreign merchants left Macau and it has played second fiddle to Hong Kong ever since. Nowadays it is mostly known for its numerous casinos.

I went to Macau last year and left thinking that it was the most bizarre city I have ever visited. You can walk down a street, and see beautiful old Portuguese buildings, then backstreet Chinese restaurants, and then you turn the corner and you feel like you are in Las Vegas. It is an interesting city, worth seeing, but in my opinion it isn't worth more than a day trip unless you are into gambling or colonial history.

This trip, I went to Macau again to show my friend Tim the sights. It is really easy to get to Macau from Hong Kong, you have to go though immigration but the lines are short and Canadians don't need a visa. The ferry ride is cheap, quick and scenic. And if you are lucky, the ferry is actually a hydrofoil which doesn't make much difference transportation-wise but it is really cool to say you have ridden a hydrofoil.

Our first stop was the Macau Tower. The views from it were great. Macau is so small that you can see pretty much all of it from the 233m observation deck of the tower. As an added bonus you can also see mainland China because only a narrow stretch of water separates the two small islands that make up Macau (Coloane & Taipa) from the mainland. 

Other than the views, the Macau Tower is also popular because it has the highest bungee jump in the world. We saw three people jump while we were there. It was somewhat tempting to try, but seeing as I couldn't even walk over the glass floor without cringing I don't think I could have willingly jumped off the top. 

Senado Square

 After our visit to the tower we wandered to Senado Square which is in the heart of the old Portuguese part of Macau and is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is really strange to know that you are in China but to look around and feel like you are in Europe. We walked the streets around Senado Square, briefly toured St. Dominic’s Church and then saw the Ruins of Sao Paulo.

Ruins of Sao Paulo

Sheet meat

In true Macau fashion, during this historic walk we stumbled upon a road which I dubbed 'sheet meat street'. Sheet meat is just what it sounds like, printer paper sized sheets of meat sold in varying flavours of animal. The street is lined with vendors of said sheet meat, who give out samples to the hoards of people that crowd the road. Tim and I tried some and to our amazement it was actually delicious. It is like a more spiced and less dry beef jerky. 

Venetian canal

Once we had had enough of historic Macau we ventured to Macau's other island (Taipa) so that we could see the Venetian Hotel and Casino. I had heard it was one of the nicer casinos but I definitely wasn't prepared for what we found. The whole place just exudes money and elegance. Inside is a huge mall that is made to look like the streets of Venice, complete with a domed roof that looks like blue sky. All of the shops are high end, places for the big rollers to blow their wins. Within the mall are two different canals, complete with gondolas and gondoliers that serenade the crowd. To go from the mall to the casino you can take a curved escalator. The casino floor itself is huge, full of every game imaginable. We played the slots for a bit but neither of us walked away richer.

MGM Casino washroom

Tim & I at the Macau Tower

Even if you aren't in Macau to gamble, the casinos have their perks for tourists. All of the big casinos offer free shuttles to and from the ferry terminals. Therefore, when you arrive in Macau from the ferry, you just figure out what casino is closest to where you want to go and you hop on the bus. The casinos also have some of the most amazing washrooms I have ever seen. Seriously. Picture glass chandeliers, 10' x 5' mirrors, big stalls, hardwood, glass sinks, the list goes on. The only problem that I had with casino washrooms is that elderly Chinese ladies DON'T LOCK THE STALL DOOR. Which made for some really awkward moments for me. Yes, that’s right, moments as in it happened TWICE. The second time I even made sure that it was a stall with a door that was open a few inches, thinking that surely that was a good indicator of a vacant stall. Not so. By the third washroom that I tried I had definitely developed a bit of a complex and was seriously considering waiting until I got back to Hong Kong. Tim convinced me otherwise (probably to see if it would happen to me a third time). This time though I found a stall with a door all the way open and thankfully vacant. I checked, and the stalls definitely have locks, I'm just not sure why old ladies prefer not to use them, and then act shocked when I walk in on them.

Funnily enough, Tim also had an unfortunate bathroom experience of his own. He naively decided that using the bathroom in an old fortress would be a good idea. He emerged a few minutes later, looking a bit disturbed. Apparently every surface inside was wet, like they had cleaned it by hosing the place down. But in the humidity of Macau nothing dries, so the bathroom was in a perma-wet state, and smelly. Probably due to the toilets only had sub-par functionality. The highlight for him that was that there was soap in the dispenser, which was more than expected, given the state of the rest of the facilities.

Overall we had a fun, if slightly bizarre day in Macau. 

More Fun Signs

The more I walk around, the more fun signs I see.

On the door at a tailor's shop in Western Market:

At Macau Tower

All of the garbage cans in Mui Wo warn against the shaft

What fantastic illustrations!

Flora in Hong Kong

Pineapple plant

After having worked at a nursery for two years I have quite an affinity for plants. This makes travel all the more fun because there is always new and exciting plants to see. Hong Kong has a sub tropical climate so things that grew in the tropical greenhouse at the nursery grow wild here. On one hike to Mui Wo I spotted pineapples growing in someone's front garden.

Banana tree laden with fruit

Speaking of fruit, bananas also grow in Hong Kong! It is not uncommon to see small stands of banana trees during hikes on Lantau Island. All of the ones that I have seen produce really small bananas, only about 3-4 inches long. They have a different flavour than the ones we are used to in Canada but they are delicious.

Flowering plants in Hong Kong are also a pretty spectacular sight. They seem to come in every shape, size and colour. Bougainvillea in particular seen everywhere. They come in the common pink and purple colours, but also red, which I had never seen before traveling to Hong Kong.

Bougainvillea in Mui Wo

 

 

Red and pink bougainvillea growing around a tree

I don't have an extensive knowledge of the common or Latin names of tropical plants so I can't tell you what the following plants are. All I know is that they are exotic and beautiful.

I think this is a cotton tree

Japan Trip: Food

Last weekend I went to visit my good friend Tak and his wife Hitomi in Tokyo. It was a wonderful trip that we packed a lot into in 72 short hours. One of the highlights of the trip was all of the delicious Japanese food that I had while I was there. The first day Tak and I went on a tour of the city and we got sushi for lunch in the Asakusa area of town. We had several different kinds of fish as well as squid and octopus. That evening Tak cooked a hoemade Japanese meal. It was very tasty and challenged my chopstick skills.

Sushi

Miso soup, rice, meat with sweet potatoes and pickled vegetables

On Friday night we headed up to Tak's cabin near Mount Fuji. The next morning the three of us went to a German bakery and picked up some delicious pastries and breads for breakfast. This breakfast was also my first experience ever eating a fried egg with chopsticks. It went surprisingly well, the trick is to just eat it in one mouthful.

German pastry and fried egg breakfast

Hotpot

Saturday night was one of the most memorable meals of the trip. We had Japanese hotpot with mushrooms, leafy greens, seafood, thinly sliced beef, dicon and leeks. The veggies and meat are cooked in a pot of simmering broth in the centre of the table. Then you pick the food out of the pot using chopsticks, dip it in ponzu (a sour soysauce-like substance) and eat it. It was a really fun and social meal, it lasted for a good three hours, followed by sake (rice wine) and green tea.

 

 

Fruit tea at a cafe in the mountains

Tempura

The final night the three of us went over to Tak's parents house and had dinner with his family and Hitomi's family. We had tempura shrimp, sweet potato, broccoli, leafy green and mushrooms. We also had takoyaki. They are balls of a pancake-like batter with octopus, cabbage, leeks and pink ginger inside. They are cooked in the middle of the table and everybody helps to put the fillings in and flip them over when one side it cooked. It was a delicious end to a weekend filed with tasty Japanese food. I'll definitely need to take a trip to the T&T Asian Grocey store when I get home so that I can try and recreate these meals.

Takuyaki

Shanghai Street Kitchen Market

Today I went to the  Shanghai street kitchen market in Kowloon. Normally I would not consider kitchen shopping a highly amusing activity but in Hong Kong it is. For two or three blocks on both sides of the street most of the stores sell stuff for both home and restaurant kitchens (the rest of the stores in the kitchen market sell gold buddhas). I saw rice cookers the size of big tree stumps and pots that I could easily have been boiled in. There was also industrial sized meat grinders and woks. 

For a place that doesn't really do cakes in their traditional cooking, the market also had a surprising number of cookie cutters and cake decorating paraphernalia. Cookie cutters come in many more shapes and sizes than Canada, there were many in the shape of Chinese symbols. 

After the kitchen market we stumbled upon a food market that sold fresh fruits and vegetables, raw meat and live seafood. Many stalls had a wide variety of fish in shallow bowls with the price written on a white card. When someone wants the fish they simply scoop it into a bag for the customer to bring home. The raw meat stalls have pieces of meat hanging all over the stall. I even saw one that had a whole pig hanging from a door. There was also a stall with live chickens and lets just say they were not being sold as pets . . .

Fresh seafood being sold in the market

Fun Signs

In the two weeks that I have been in Asia I have seen some amusing signs. Here are some of my favourites:

At the Tokyo Tower

I'm not quite sure if this sign is meant to scare or reassure tourists

Bizarre starters and very fancy main dishes for kids

Apparently 'Awafull' is the company name. Unfortunately it doesn't translate well into English

Stanley Market

One thing that Canada is really lacking is street markets. Sure, in the summer months there are farmers markets and flea markets but they don't compare to the street markets in Hong Kong. Here they are plentiful and they sell a wide range of things including clothing, food, art, jewelry and Chinese souvenirs. Stanley market, located on the southern coast of Hong Kong Island, is an outdoor market, but in the narrow lanes, pieces of plastic and metal have been placed over the stalls to create a makeshift roof of sorts.

Some stalls are the size of a normal store whereas others hardly have enough room to swing a dead cat. One of the most noteworthy stalls was really just a narrow staircase with bathing suits hanging from the walls all the way up. I didn't buy much at Stanley but I had hours of entertainment by poking through all of the stalls and people-watching.

 

The region of Stanley has stunning views of the South China Sea. We had lunch overlooking the harbour and in the distance we could watch all the container ships go by. The view was appreciated all the more because it was the first warm sunny day in Hong Kong in quite a while. 

The bus ride to and from Stanley is just as entertaining as the market itself. The narrow windy roads of southern Hong Kong Island seem too small for double decker buses but somehow they manage to navigate it at seemingly high speeds. It was a bit harrowing to be within a foot of the mountainside on the left and the passing traffic on the right. Many times I found myself leaning and ducking when it seemed like the bus was going to hit an overhanging tree branch or oncoming car. Luckily we ended the day unscathed.

Tiger's Head

Discovery Bay

Yesterday I went on a hike from Discovery Bay to Mui Wo with my parents and their hiking friends. The first 3 km were pretty steep, but well worth it for the views. At the top most point of the hike Lo Fu Tau aka Tiger's Head we had ascended 465m and we could see all of Discovery Bay and we could have seen Hong Kong/Kowloon if it had been a clearer day. On the descent to Mui Wo there were some great views of Tung Cheung and the Hong Kong airport. At some points the airplanes taking off weren't that much higher up than us. 

Mui Wo

The terrain for the hike was forever changing. It went from grassy hills to steep rocky inclines, staircases to narrow jungle paths and paved walkways to dirt tracks. 

Grassy hills

 The last little bit of the hike was along the Hong Kong Olympic trail which was dedicated to the Chinese Olympians for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Every few hundred metres there was a paving stone with an Olympic sport depicted on it. 

Tsing Tao beer on the restaurant patio

The Olympic trail ends in Mui Wo, a small little town filled with bicycles. Many people grow fruit in their front yards, I saw papaya trees, banana trees and pineapple plants! We ended the hike by grabbing a beer and some lunch at a restaurant on the coast. The perfect end to a great hike.