My first year in HK

Between Toronto's own Chinese community and keeping in touch with my relatives, I was somewhat familiar with HK and the culture here. And after living and working in the city, I think I have a better understanding of the people here and how they live. But sometimes I'm still baffled by how people react to certain things. Like wieners--for some reason people here really love them. Rather than treating wieners as a cheap street food like hot dogs, it's usually found in trendy restaurants and kinda costly too (~50-85 HKD).

The move to HK was a relatively smooth transition (except for the unexpected flood from a broken toilet pipe last August), and looking back my first year here it's has been filled with fun and eye opening experiences.

After learning somethings the hard way (like backtracking through Wan Chai to cross the road), here are my 5 top tips about living in  HK:

#5 Flag down the bus driver
Multiple bus lines usually stop at the same bus stop. Unless there's already a queue of people waiting for the bus, it's a good idea to stick out your hand to get the driver's attention so he knows you're waiting for him to pull into the stop.

Flagging down a minibus driver is even more important as they typically zip in and out of lanes much faster than buses do (Photo: CathC)

#4 Buy a bucket for storing flushing water
HK uses seawater flushing. This means nearly 100 litres of salt water flowing through your pipes (usually ceramic coated iron pipes) every day. So don't be surprised when there's a temporary shutdown of flushing water to your unit. Most residential buildings will schedule period tank cleaning (to remove the scale/salt buildup) or have "emergency repairs" (pipe bursting from corrosion).

Photo credit: HKIE

#3 Look for the skywalk
The road is for cars--people walk on Skywalks and footbridges. According to the HK Department of Transportation, the city has over 400,000 private cars alone--excluding all the taxis, buses, and minibuses. Considering the narrow city streets, all these vehicles makes for a very busy roads. So it's not surprising that pedestrian traffic is moved upwards, onto the skywalks. So most busy areas (Central, Wai Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui, etc.) the roads are lined with cement blocks on either side-meant to deter you from jaywalking. So if you want to cross the road and not near a traffic light, just look up--there's usually stairs leading up to a skywalk nearby.

The Tsim Sha Tsui promenade skywalk (Photo: CathC)

The skywalk at the Mid-Levels near LKF (Photo: CathC)

#2 Sightsee on the public bus

If you're not in a rush to be somewhere, taking the bus (e.g. KMB, or Citylink) is a great way to see the city. The view looking down from these double-decker buses is fantastic. Stops are automatically announced, usually near popular sites and stations, you can get an economic tour of the city on the bus.

A view of the old Kai Tak airport near Kowloon Bay (Photo: CathC)

A city tour on the 98C through Mong Kok (photo: CathC)

The bus is fantastic, unless you happen to be stuck in traffic--the only highway out of TKO (Photo: CathC)

#1 Re-energize with a weekend getaway

In a bustling city like HK where OT-ing is just part of the workday, a weekend getaway is the perfect way to rest up and re-energize for the week ahead. Just an hour ferry-ride from HK, Macau is the ideal getaway for the weekend (or even day trip). The ferries run nearly 24 hours so there's no need to buy tickets in advance. But the seats are usually filled, so arrive at least 30 minutes before your ferry boards to make sure you can get a ticket. The tasty snacks are definitely worth the crowds at the ferry terminal. See my post on Macau for photos of some of the delicious food that the city has to offer.

Top-Macau's ferry terminal Bottom-HK's ferry terminal (Photo: CathC)

Wrapping up the Lunar New Year

My first Lunar New Year in HK wrapped up with a fun night at the New Territories East Lunar New Year Lantern Carnival (新界東元宵綵燈會). This is a traditional event which wraps up 15th day of the Lunar New Year celebrations. Traditionally it's an opportunity for families and especially the unmarried guys and girls to get out the house and having a fun night out.

The entire event was setup around the Tseung Kwan O Po Tsui Park. There were numerous lanterns on display throughout the Park depicting different traditional Chinese New Year themes. Like this lotus like lantern surrounding by the fortune idols (福祿壽).

I was impressed by the height of these lanterns. (Photo: CathC)

Animals were another common theme for the lanterns. These bunny lanterns are so cute!

Lots of cute animal lanterns at the festival (Photo: CathC)

Here are some lanterns showing traditional Chinese toys and Lunar New Year activities.

The kids playing with a top was one of my favourite lanterns (Photo: CathC)

Since the 15th day of the Lunar New Year fell on the same day as Valentine's Day, romance was a big theme for the lanterns this year. This lantern of the loving couple at the centre of the park was my favourite.

The beautiful couple at the centre of the festival (Photo: CathC)

Aside from enjoying the beautiful lanterns, another traditional activity is the guess riddles known as (猜燈謎). Typically the riddle describing the word is hung underneath a lantern. Everyone gathers around the lantern and tries to guess the word the riddle is describing. At tonight\s festival, this was all done on a stage with the MC reading out the riddle. In the end, I was only able to get a couple of the riddles targeted at the kids, but everyone seemed to have lots of fun guessing also.

Another cultural part of the festival was the arts and crafts exhibition where exhibitors showed off their various talents like silver jewelry-making, embroidery, lantern crafting, and paper.cutting.

The traditional Chinese crafts exhibit (Photo: CathC)

I was really impressed by how quickly and freely the artist could cut these patterns. She demonstrated her skills right on the stop (Photo: CathC)

My first Lunar New Year in HK was a fun time. Hope you enjoyed the celebrations as well-Happy Lunar New Year!

Eating my way across Macau

The great thing about Hong Kong being a port city means there are many options for quick get-away. Like yesterday, I went on an impromtu day-trip to Macau with some friends. There are ferries that leave for Macau at least once every half an hour, so there was no need to book tickets in advanced. In fact, it wasn't too difficult to buy tickets just 1 hour ahead of our desired departure from the Sheung Wan ferry terminal.

Macau has delicious street food and local specialties, and other international favourites--like this Taiwanese Peppered flavoured pork bun. It was so juicy and meaty!

Photo: CathC

I didn't try this Ottoman style hand made ice cream, but the vendor put on a great show while he served it. He kept teasing the kids by pretending to hand over the ice cream, yet always putting it out of reach.

Photo: CathC

The popularity of Macau's almond cookies among tourists kept the numerous pastry stores in business throughout the city. There are dozens of stores almond cookies, peanut candy, and other pastries like egg rolls on every street. There must be at least 10-15 of such pastry stores along the road leading up to Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral (大三巴牌坊). The awesome thing about these tourists-y places is that there are free samples everywhere. Even though these are pastry stores, they also sell pork jerky, dried squid and, nuts even. And they offer samples of various jerky and pastries to draw in the crowds.

Photo: CathC

After getting our fill of jerky and pastries,we went over to O Santos for a traditional Portuguese lunch of roasted pig, dried codfish, baked duck rice. The food was ok and this well known restaurant has drew in a lot of famous HK actors in the past (according to the photos on the wall). But I didn't like they refused to serve anything but bottled water and drinks/juice--effectively "forcing" you to buy something to drink.

The eating continued after lunch at a local Chinese Dessert shop specializing in steamed milk pudding. This restaurant was pretty unique, and consists of 3 floors. So to facilitate the ordering between the kitchen and the different floors, they use an elevator system. I normally don't like ginger and milk pudding, because it's too milky but this bowl had a nice mixture of both flavours. Yum.

Photo: CathC

Over on the Taipa (氹仔) side, I tried lots of Macau specialties like pork chop buns and Portugese tarts.Just like HK, the restaurants in Macau are small, and can be difficult to accommodate large groups.So the 10 of us just ended up eating our buns/tarts literally standing outside of the restaurant (we got a lot of stares but attracted a lot of passers-by too). The bun was surprisingly tasty without being too oily and the buns were fresh and crunchy too!

Photo: CathC

What a satisfying trip to Macau--eating my way around the city! Looking forward to coming back and trying more local favourites...

Traditional CNY activity-新年行大運

It's been a few months since I was last in Sai Kung. But today's breezy and sunny weather made it a great day for a hike. There are a lot of interesting plants along Tai Mong Tsai Road (大網仔路), like this cinnamomum camphora (Camphor Tree). I often see deodourize/bug repellants being sold at local the homestores using this as a natural alternative to moth balls. Oddly enough, I didn't smell too much of the typical camphora scent even after walking right up to the tree.

It was a busy day in Sai Kung, with lots of people walking their dogs and playing on the beach. There were even a lot of boaters the water--lots of old wooden boats for fishing.

A view of Inner Port Shelter from 大網仔燒烤區(Photo: CathC)

BBQ forks are sold pretty cheaply in HK, about 8HKD each. but I was still surprised to learn that they are typically thrown out, rather than reused, by most people afterwards. At least at this camp site, bbq forks are disposed of separately from other litter. I wonder if they are reprocessed or simply just cleaned and resold?

A random bbq site (大網仔燒烤區) along Tai Mong Tsai Road (大網仔路) (Photo: CathC)

The weather is still a bit cool and many shops were closed for the Chinese New Year holidays, so I didn't see many people canoeing today.

Look at all the neatly stacked canoes at Surf Hong Kong (Photo: CathC)

Aside from local residents walking their dogs, there were lots of sightseeing visitors as well. Guess I wasn't the only one to think that today was a beautiful day for a trip out to Sai Kung. It was a long wait heading home--I ended up waiting half an hour for the mini bus back down to Hang Hau in the evening...