Hiking again. I mean, yay, more hiking!

Loyal readers (Katharine) will notice that I haven't posted much recently - that's because nothing interesting happened. Believe me, I'm doing you a favour. The weather's been crap, we've been ill lots (which just goes to show that those surgical masks are a waste of gauze) and we haven't done much.

Stage 2 of the Lantau trail this weekend, which reminded me of just how very much I hate steps and or steep slopes, when you have no choice but to climb them for over an hour. We got the ferry to Mui Wo ("Plum Nest" in Chinese - aka Silvermine Bay) and then a bus for a couple of stops to a random middle-of-nowhere place called Nam Shan, which gave me an opportunity to practice my fledgling Cantonese on the bus driver. Of course there was the requisite toilet block, rain shelter and map board at Nam Shan, it being the start of a Lantau Trail stage. Also a large, empty rubbish bin surrounded by trash, which we very conscientiously picked up. Under the wooden arch, and onto the trail proper.

(I should point out that Stage 1 of the trail involves walking up the road from Mui Wo - if you are familiar with the standard of driving on Lantau, you'll understand why we won't be doing that one.)

The climb starts here. And goes on for the rest of your life. I didn't moan much, preferring instead to let my asthmatic wheezing do the talking. Let's just skip over this part.

So eventually you reach something worth seeing - a cool open plateau between the twin heights of Sunset Peak. Scattered across the plateau are about two dozen little huts. They are made of stone and concrete, and I'd be lying if I said they were visually appealling. They were built between the wars as a retreat for missionaries working in China. I'm sure at one time they had a lovely view over the little fishing island of Chek Lap Kok - as I've mentioned before, thanks to the world's most aggressive land reclamation, the island is now 10 times the size it was then, and home to considerably more aeroplanes. The huts are kind of sweet in a way - each one is different, and many have a little verandah, or steps down to what might be thought of as a garden (if you have particularly active imagination). There's even a little swimming pool, made by damming a stream.

We skirted around Sunset Peak, which at 869m is the second highest peak on Lantau. Ross was annoyed when we got home that we didn't actually go to the peak, but we were very close! On the descent we saw some beautiful views across Lantau to the typhoon shelter of Peng Chau, and the rather exclusive-looking beach and village of Pui O. We'll be heading there next time it's a beachable day. By the way, the descent was also extraordinarily steep - our legs were jittering uncontrollably by the time we reached the bus stop. And I do Pilates.

Back to Mui Wo on the bus, where we explored the beach (nothing special) and laughed at the little dogs pulling along a man on his trike. Obligatory lime soda at China Bear, and the ferry back to Central so that I could embark on another supermarket crawl in search of ciabatta.

We got the 6 o'clock ferry from Lantau, so arrived back in Central about 6.45. This is my favouritest time in HK, as the sky turns lilac, then darkens to purple as the yellowy lights start to burn out of the windows of the city. Soon the sky is inky blue, and in the contrast the lights flash a brighter white. A rare thing these days, as we've been immersed in cloud for weeks. But the temperature is on the up, and spring is coming.

And the "No Shit, Sherlock" prize goes to...

...Sina.com, which tells us that "Sea gypsies live nomadic, sea-based life".

The Run

On Friday last week we decided to go see some comedy with some Aussie friends. There aren't many comedy clubs in HK, but TakeOut Comedy seems to be one of the better ones - and, even better, they had a comic coming over from New York. Al Ducharme and his wife Bernadette Pauley were pretty good, although I think it was all old material - whatever, it was lots better than the local comics...

Anyway, at dinner beforehand we learnt that one of the Aussie friends, Jo, had a spare ticket for the Standard Chartered 10k run. There is a full marathon, a half marathon (both of which actually go through a road tunnel under the harbour for a mile or so!) and a 10km run which goes along half the north side of the island and back again. So, being a little crazy, Sarah decided to take up the challenege.

Sarah did a great time of under an hour. That's a pretty good time, and is fantastic given the crowds, and that Sarah had to stop a number of times while people in front stopped to have their photo taken, chat with friends, get out their mobiles etc... You can see it's still dark - the race started at 6am because it goes down the main island highway so they need to get it back open again before everyone wakes up and goes shopping.

Nei hou

Ross and I went to our first Cantonese lesson last night (after several false starts courtesy of the YWCA) so now I can say good morning, hello, my name is Sarah, and I am British. The good news is that the way to say UK (ying gwok) is very positive - ying has heroic overtones, while gwok means country. When you use the correct tones of course. America, (mei gwok) means beautiful country, and Australia (ou jau) means round-ish continent. New Zealand is a complex, almost transliterated one, which I won't even attempt to replicate.

I think (hope) we'll get the hang of the tones over time, they sort of make sense until you start trying to say something!

Kung Hei Fat Choi (again)

The Chinese New Year fireworks were, as you might expect, quite spectacular. Or at least, the first five minutes were, so I assume the rest were - it got somewhat smoky fairly quickly, so we couldn't see it all even though we had a stunning view of the harbour, kindly provided by Sisyphus and Bauble (and Benny). This video really doesn't capture the massive booms echoing up the hillside, but should give you a sense of the scale of the operation. For a longer (and frankly better) video, try this one on YouTube. It's pretty long...the last 2 mins are good!

Paying respects

Chinese New Year is a time to visit the graves of relatives, so we went over to the cemetary this morning, armed with a large bunch of yellow chrysanths (very festive, very bright, very Chinese) to cheer up Ross's great-gradfather's grave.

cough cough

This story is something of a worry, particularly today - the air pollution index is 112, or "very high". Here's what we can expect:

People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses may notice mild aggravation of their health conditions. Generally healthy individuals may also notice some discomfort.

Kowloon is hardly visible from HK island through the haze.

Year of the Golden Ox

Here's a personality summary of everyone who will be born between Monday 26th January 2009 and 14 February 2010:

Positive Traits
Responsible, dependable, honest, caring, honourable, intelligent, industrious, practical
Negative Traits
Petty, inflexible, possessive, dogmatic, gullible, stubborn, critical, intolerant, materialistic

Just realised that means that CNY will be on Valentine's Day next year. The year that has just passed was the year of the Rat; this means that Romilly and Astrid will be big fans of pork, peas and cabbage!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Well, that' s a bit early actually. Lunar New Year approaches, bringing with it the cultural minefield that is lai see. These innocuous-looking red packets are destined to be my downfall in the world of Chinese etiquette. However, I have extensively consulted both gweilo and Chinese colleagues, and come to a few conclusions. I'll give you the vague outline; if you want to read an amusing take on the whole situation, I suggest you mosey on over to Batgung, an awesome site kept up to date by two expats, Mr Tall and Mr Balding.

1. Married people are expected to give to unmarried people. Fair? I'll let you be the judge.
2. You are expected to give to any "subordinates" at work - I don't have any, so that bit's easy for me.
3. You have 15 days after CNY (which is Monday 26th Jan this year) to present the red packets.
4. Here’s the hard part – the packets have to be stuffed with money. How much to give? How to distinguish the red packets you’ve filled with $50 notes from the ones you’ve filled with $10 notes? New notes (the done thing) or used notes (the environmentally-friendly thing)? As I said, minefield.
5. Another issue is the recipient list – lots of people at the office, which really requires you to know whether all your colleagues are married. Not only colleagues, but other staff at the office. So that’s the super-friendly bin dude, the desk-cleaning lady, the aggressively smily loo-cleaning lady, and the surly vacuuming lady. And not only them, but also colleagues’ children, who will pay a lovely visit at some point. I’m ok with this bit, because people quite often bring their kids into the office, and everyone knows them already. Also lots of non-office service people – the (3) doormen at our building, our cleaner, the building cleaner, lift repair men, post man….

It’s tricky. Everyone’s getting reeeeally friendly this time of year, the doormen leap up to snatch the door open for you, and the bin dude has learnt to say “You’re welcome” in English. Actually, he almost certainly knew that before, just didn’t try it out on me.

It’s also a pretty austere time. While I’m not pretending that HK is as gloomy as the UK sounds, people are still tightening belts, or whatever the phrase is. So, it could turn out to be an expensive fortnight. Oh, and Ross and I both have to give packets to all the service people individually, we can’t give as a couple. Having said that, the service here makes life pretty luxurious so I am perfectly happy to hand over a few packets in return for the (almost universally) courteous and excellent service we get all over the place.

Photos

All our HK photos are on Flickr, here....

China Town given answers

Have a look at this BBC story about a public well-being survey. Cheating huh?!

Great Grandaddy

Between Christmas and New Year I had a few days where I was still on holiday but Sarah wasn't. I therefore took the opportunity to pop round to the other side of the valley and try one last time to find Granny's father's grave. I bumped into a historian there who was documenting people in the graveyard who came from Devon - quite a task! He was very helpful though, explained where I could look people up to find graves.

Suddenly everything was a lot more simple - a 10 minute wait while Norman Pope was looked up, and then I was armed with a map detailing the location to within 10 metres or so.



And so here it is, a very handsome grave stone of a fallen cross. The stone is quite difficult to read after 90 years of lichen, but here's proof it's the right one:
It's a lovely spot, although there is the noise of a road nearby (a Hong Kong hazard it's pretty hard to avoid on the island).

Chi Lin Nunnery and Kowloon Walled City

We headed over to Kowloon-side the other day to visit Chi Lin Nunnery, near Diamond Hill MTR. It's an incredibly peaceful place - as you step inside the huge wooden walls of the first courtyard, the traffic sounds start to fall away. Once you move further into the complex, you could almost forget you're in Kowloon. There's also a very peaceful garden on the other side of the road (just don't try to go in the out gate, or proceed in the wrong direction)

"The Chinese new-year exodus is the world's largest annual migration"

Just to give you an idea of the scale of Chinese New Year...

Panda nonsense

I came across this while I was looking for a video of one of the Ocean Park pandas attacking a keeper. Please look, it'll make you smile.