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Museums and late night drinks.

"Scientists are complaining that the new Dinosaur movie shows dinosaurs with lemurs, who didn't evolve for another million years.  They're afraid the movie will give kids a mistaken impression.  What about the fact that the dinosaurs are singing and dancing?"  --  Jay Leno

*note -- I actually wrote this on Thursday (June 21^st) but because of xanga downtime, I couldn't post it until today!  Argh...*

Okay, I'll admit, this time I've actually had free time (and plenty of it), but just haven't been updating.  Giant apologies loyal readers!  Rather than the typical boredom at my desk, these past 2 weeks I've had the luxury of swimming in the school pool for hours upon hours every day.  I really can't complain about this situation at all!  How often do you get paid to play around in water instead of roasting in a hot humid office?  Saturday was particularly fun too...for James birthday, Ayumi (his girlfriend), Seiko (one of his Japanese friends), Jim, PK and I headed to Shiga to climb Bunagatake (it's a mountain, don't confuse it with Bukkake which some of my students did when I told them what I did on the weekend...and also note, the link on Bunagatake goes to some Japanese guy's photos).  Great fun but very tired legs were the unfortunate result!  We hit an onsen in Fukui before finally returning home.  Please check out my photos from that adventure on Facebook...  Anyway, on to my last Saturday in Hong Kong...

Hong Kong and Macau Day Eight - Saturday 5 May 2007

After a typical nice big breakfast prepared as always by the diligent Yoshie, Colin and I headed to Hong Kong Island to check out the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence.  Not exactly the most amazing sounding name for a museum, but wow, this actually was a really great spot!  Definitely a guy's museum as it was all about Hong Kong's military history (primarily under the British, although, there's a very unintentionally amusing Chinese propaganda section about the glories of the People's Liberation Army) and was built in an hilltop old fortress with buildings still half destroyed by Japanese bombings in World War II, lots of old canons here there and everywhere, 60 year old torpedoes, and even some modern tanks and police vehicles.  We spent a surprisingly fast 3 hours there and both left the spot feeling very impressed. 

Gun at the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence:

One of the buildings destroyed by Japanese bombing in 1941:

Old Louis Brennan torpedo station below the museum:

Tank at the museum:

Feeling a craving for good real English style fish and chips we headed back to Central as I had noticed in my book a strong recommendation for a small Fish & Chip shop called Chippy and being ever so close to a recurrent nickname of mine (Chappy), I figured that it had to be good!  Perhaps it was the nearly 3 years in Japan without proper fish & chips, but man did that deep fried beer battered fish, home cut fries, and even baked beans taste ever good!  I don't even normally like baked beans...

Fish & chips:

Happy and full from lunch, we decided to visit our friend Elaine (the girl that Sarah had introduced us too earlier in the week) at the Zee Stone Gallery (where she works) as it was very near to Chippy.  Elaine was of course on lunch break at the time we stopped by, so we decided to go for a walk and come back later.  We started wandering with one of two destinations in mind - either an old church or the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens...the latter won out (mainly because it was the first of the two we discovered).  For being a free, it was really quite impressive!  We didn't take the time to explore the entire park, but we walked around for the better part of 45 minutes watching orang-utans, lemurs, tamarins, macaques, sakis, etc all play in their various cages.

Lemurs (I think?):

Back to Zee Stone, we met up with Elaine who was greatly surprised and happy to see us again.  She gave us an extended tour of the impressive collection at the gallery and then we made plans to meet up again later that evening.

We inched our way back to Yoshie & Seiichi's place stopping at a few stores along the way.  When we arrived back at their place, they took us out for a huge Cantonese meal.  Food, food, and more food were brought out for most of two hours.

Yoshie, Seiichi, and Colin at our huge dinner:

Totally full, Colin and I headed back to Central to meet up with Elaine and her co-worker Jennifer.  We then headed to Insomnia, Elaine's favourite night spot and as she was friends with the bouncer the 4 of us were able to bypass the wait to get inside.  It's all in who you know!  The bar was pretty cool with a great live cover band churning out everything from old REM & U2 to Gloria Gaynor to some of the latest hip-hop and dance music.  I was rather impressed by their range of songs!  Hours of dancing later, 2am hit and we decided that we should probably get going.  Conveniently Elaine had to change buses at the very stop that Colin and I had to get off at for Seiichi & Yoshie's apartment, so we were able to hang out a bit longer.  After saying a nice "see you" to her, Colin and I headed back to the apartment for some much needed sleep.

Elaine & I:

Mosquitoes everywhere...

"In a sense, each of us is an island.  In another sense, however, we are all one.  For though islands appear separate, and may even be situated at great distances from one another, they are only extrusions of the same planet, Earth."  --  J. Donald Walters

Wow...apologies on the delay.  Work has been INSANE these past 2 weeks.  Last Monday I gave a midterm test which literally took me all week to mark because there were just so many spelling mistakes.  Grammar and whatnot was fine, but I've never seen such much continuously bad spelling in my nearly 3 years of teaching.  This week I've been busy playing mentor of sorts to the 10 student teachers that are visiting Toyooka High School right now.  They were here last week, but I was really far too busy (and they were a bit shy).  This week though we've been able to connect a bit better.  One of the student teachers is on her university's ultimate team which is awesome having someone here that knows how to play (and she's freaking amazing at it too).  We spent yesterday afternoon teaching it in a PE class actually!  During my free time at home I've been busy watching a Japanese drama recommended to me by Elaine called Pride.  I finished off all 11 episodes in a week.  Insane.  It was a great show though!  Still found time to play ultimate, visit the Kinosaki Yosakoi Matsuri, Carly's birthday party, and the beach on the weekend too.  Anyway, since I have little to do today, I shall continue with my trip instalments (more than a month late)...

Hong Kong and Macau Day Seven - Friday 4 May 2007

Agreeing to meet Sarah at the pier for boats to Cheung Chau Island around lunch time, Colin and I took our time getting up and getting ready that morning for a change since we had plenty of time.  After catching up with Sarah, we hopped on the ferry to Cheung Chau and sailed for around 50 minutes before finally reaching the island.  On the island we were greeted by a festival of sorts - loud clanging gongs, drums, men shouting, and a small shrine being carried around.  It probably would have been better still if it wasn't raining!  We could immediately tell that Cheung Chau had a very different feel than the rest of Hong Kong.  No cars at all were on the island - people take bikes or walk to most places (except for construction, police, firefighting, or hospital purposes which used absolutely miniscule motorized vehicles) which made the island have a very rural Chinese community feel (minus the McDonalds and the convenience stores at the ferry pier).

Part of the long procession:

With grumbling stomachs we headed for a restaurant that one of Sarah's friends recommended to have a traditional lamian with fish-balls.  It was nice having the real thing after eating only Japanese ramen for such a long time (don't get me wrong though, I love Japanese ramen...)!

Our stomachs feeling better, we set out to watch a bit of the lion dancing and then headed to a couple of the small temples on the island.  In the middle of the public square in front of Pak Tai Temple (Pak Tai is the god who takes care of fishermen) giant bamboo structures were being built for the upcoming Cheung Chau Bun Festival, Hong Kong's most important and famous festival.  We unfortunately missed the festival by a few weeks (it was held May 23-24), seeing the large bamboo structures and later photos of previous years' festivities were impressive!

Lion dancing:

Pak Tai Temple:

Photo of a photo of the Cheung Chau Bun Festival (the men climb up these giant towers of buns to retrieve them):

After buying some ice cream, we headed toward Cheung Chau's popular beach, Tung Wan Beach.  The beach was quite nice and the water was lovely, but since it was raining none of us really felt the urge to swim.  Sarah and I however did go out as deep as our knees while holding onto our umbrellas...

Why did it have to rain?  *sigh*  ...at Tung Wan Beach:

Deciding it was time to explore, we started walking around a pathway called the "Little Great Wall" stopping at a small Buddhist temple, a couple smaller beaches, a few ancient rock carvings, and a whole heck of a lot of mosquitoes.  Wandering a bit longer we finally found ourselves back to the town part of the island where we proceeded for some traditional local desserts and a chance to relax and enjoy the sea view under a giant umbrellaed table.

View from the Little Great Wall of Tung Wan Beach & the town at Cheung Chau:

Boats galore!:

Texture like Japanese mochi on the outside, peanuts on the inside, anyone actually know it's name?  Whatever it was, it was good!:

After relaxing for the better part of an hour, we decided to wander a little bit longer before sunset at which time we headed to a seafood restaurant as seafood is extremely famous on Cheung Chau.

A mistake by our waitress brought us this sweet and sour fish dish, which was nonetheless delicious:

My first experience eatting pigeon:

Lots and lots of crab:

Nice and full, we watched a little bit of Chinese opera being performed on a makeshift stage that had been built and then caught the boat back to Hong Kong Island and the ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui from there.  In Tsim Sha Tsui, we headed to a couple of bars for some drinks and a good chance to relax and talk since this would unfortunately be the last time we would see Sarah in this trip.  The rest of the evening passed by rather fast and we then parted ways.  Colin and I returned to Seiichi and Yoshie's apartment exhausted and were soon fast asleep.

Just before going, me, Sarah, and Colin:

Chinese Portugal or Portuguese China?

"I don't care if you are Chinese, Indian, European, you are supposed to go to the buffet."  --  Stanley Ho (casino magnate in Macau)

Man these past few days have been messed up.  I had to work on Saturday and in turn received Monday as a day off.  Played ultimate frisbee on Sunday and climbed up to Takeda Castle for an absolutely beautiful view on Monday.  I'll post photos from that climb whenever I finish my HK & Macau stories.  I've been strangely busy at work a lot too lately.  I've been preparing a listening test for Monday and I'm really hoping that all goes well with it.  It was rather amusing yesterday though recording it and listening to the playback.  Always after listening to recordings of my voice, I ask myself "Do I really sound like that?" 

Hong Kong and Macau Day Six - Thursday 3 May 2007

Getting up early was a little difficult after a late night the night previous, even still, Colin and I were both excited to visit Macau.  Yoshie prepared us a nice big breakfast as usually and then we quickly found our way over to the Central MTR to meet up with Sarah.  From there, we headed to the Sheung Wan MTR station to catch a ferry to Macau.  Ferries to Macau are quite frequent and only take 50-60 minutes...but it's kinda funny that although both places are owned by China, we still had to go through immigration both in Hong Kong and Macau.  Strange!

Having found our way through immigration, we walked over to the bus stop having to fight off a dozen touts trying to convince us to take their taxis.  Very annoying.  Touts are really something that can bring a good day down.  I wish people wouldn't actually fall victim to them because then there wouldn't be a business to warrant the touts from annoying travellers!  But anyway, I digress.  We found our bus and were soon headed to the old city centre.  We weren't really sure when to get off though...the announcements of where we were located were rather muffled and were in Cantonese and Portuguese (as such, Colin and I were useless).  Hearing and seeing Portuguese everywhere made for a really great and unique experience.  I'm so used to being in Asian places where the second (or in a couple of occasions first) language is English so it really added to the uniqueness of the experience seeing Portuguese everywhere.  Thank God for my reasonable understanding of French so that I could actually read some of the Portuguese signs and guess their meanings with relatively decent accuracy since they're both Latin based languages!

We finally just randomly decided to get off the bus and were surprised at how close we were to where my book had suggested we get off (only a short block away).  From there we wandered into Largo do Senado (Senate Square), a central public square in front of Leal Senado (the Loyal Senate) and enclosed by several beautiful old Portuguese buildings including the historic General Post Office, the Santa Casa da Misericordia (the Holy House of Mercy), and a similar smaller square around a corner at the end, the Praca de Sao Domingos (St Dominic's Square).  The main reason to visit the Praca de Sao Domingos is of course to check out the beautiful bright yellow and green Igreja de Sao Domingos (St Dominic's Church).  In both squares, even the ground was impressive having been "paved" in the traditional Portuguese wavy style creating an almost hypnotic effect.

Largo do Senado:

Leal Senado:

General Post Office:

Santa Casa da Misericordia

Praca de Sao Domingos:

Igreja de Sao Domingos:

After wandering around the area for a bit, we then headed up one of the old Portuguese streets to Cathedral Square and the Macau Cathedral Church.  The massive cathedral was once upon a time was the main Catholic church for all of East Asia.

The street up to the Cathedral:

The Macau Cathedral:

Admiring many more beautiful old Portuguese buildings we finally came across a former hospital that today is the Portuguese Consulate in Macau.  From there we walked up a very steep hill to Fortaleza do Monte (Mount Fortress), a large Portuguese fortress built to help defend Macau from any potential sea attacks.  Today at the very heart of the fortress is the Museum of Macau a nice museum whose air conditioning was definitely welcome on such a hot day!

The Portuguese Consulate:

Colin, myself, and Sarah inside Fortaleza do Monte:

Walking down the large steps of the fortress, we proceeded to one of Macau most famous landmarks (probably THE most famous), the Ruinas de Sao Paulo (the Ruins of St Paul's Cathedral).  Destroyed by fire in 1835, today the gorgeous ornate front facade of the church is all that still stands, which interestingly enough was carved by Japanese Catholics in the early 1600s who were exiled out of Japan.  You can still visit the relics in a sort of holy museum that is place under where the altar once stood.

Ruinas de Sao Paulo:

Catching a brief view of the Na Tcha Chinese Temple beside the old cathedral, we then grabbed a few snacks at a souvenir store and then headed back toward Sao Domingos Square and Largo do Senado to head down a street on route to a very famous temple, the A-Ma Temple.

Before arriving at the temple, we took a few short detours to admire the Igreja de Sao Agostinho (the St Augustine Church) and accompanying public square, the Teatro Dom Pedro V (Dom Pedro V Theatre), Igreja de Sao Lorenzo (St Lawrence Church, which was unfortunately under repair when we visited), the Macau Moorish Barracks (where the Portuguese housed their the Indian policemen they hired to patrol Macau in the late 1800s), and the tiny Lilau Square.

Jesus the more than slightly creepy (okay, not the real name...inside Igreja de Sao Agostinho):

Finally reaching the A-Ma Temple, we were pleasantly surprised to see very Chinese architecture after a day of pretty much nothing but Portuguese styled buildings.  Built in 1488, the temple is the oldest of the main Chinese temples in Macau and it is said that the temple's name lent itself in the naming process of Macau (the bay in front of the temple is known in Cantonese as A-Ma-Gau). 

Part of the A-Ma Temple:

After Sarah and I got our fortunes told in the temple (I'm apparently a "rising dragon"), the three of us crossed the street to visit the Macau Maritime Museum, a small but interesting museum on the history of seafaring life in Macau and much of southern China.

We next decided that we wanted to see the view from the top of Macau Tower.  The 338 metre tall tower has gained international fame as being home to the world's highest bungee jump.  While we didn't have the nerves to give it a try (nor the money, man was it ever expensive!), when we arrived at the tower, a guy had just finished jumping, and while we were in the tower we were lucky enough to watch another guy jump!  Having complete the loop around on two floors, we soon decided to have a seat on a bench in the tower facing west to watch the sunset and then get some photos of the city below at night.  Beautiful view.  It's easy to see what Macau is expected to overtake Las Vegas as the most popular casino destination in the world...there were literally dozens of casinos completed or being built that we could see from the tower and the lights coming off them were fantastic.

Sarah and I on Macau Tower's glass floor:

Colin on Macau Tower's glass floor:

Bungeeeeeeeeee:

Brave girl:

Even Buddhist monks enjoy the view:

Sarah & the setting sun:

Macau (or at least part of it) from above:

Back down on the ground, we caught a taxi and then later a second taxi in search of a small Portuguese restaurant recommended to us by one of Sarah's friends whose name unfortunately eludes me (if you're reading this Colin or Sarah, what was its name?!).  The food was amazing!  If I can ever remember the name, I will definitely pass it on because I highly recommend it.  We were supposed to have reservations, but as luck would have it, they had one table available after waiting about only 10 minutes.

Macau Beer at the Portuguese restaurant we dined at:

Outside the restaurant there were these random great exercise machines lining the coast.  We were surprised by that and decided to have a little bit of fun on them before finally catching a bus back to the ferry terminal and back to Hong Kong quite late at night thereby ending a great day in a great place!

Hong Kong's National Pastime is Shopping.

J. Jonah Jameson:  "Parker?  Parker?  Where are you?"  [looks at a girl with a camera]

J. Jonah Jameson:  "Hey kid you wanna job?"

Girl with Camera:  "Why would I wanna job?  I'm just a kid."

J. Jonah Jameson:  "How much for the camera?"

Girl with Camera:  "A hundred bucks."

J. Jonah Jameson:  "A hundred bucks?"  [looks up again]  "OK."  [gives money to the girl and gets the camera; tries to shoot, but the camera's empty; looks at the girl]

Girl with Camera:  "Film's extra!"  --  exchange from Spiderman 3

I finally decided to join the Skype bandwagon.  I'm amazed at how cheap it is to make long distance phone calls with it!  I can call anywhere in Japan, Canada, Hong Kong, whatever for only like 2 yen a minute.  I can't complain at all at that kinda fee!  Speaking of Hong Kong...

Hong Kong and Macau Day Five - Wednesday 2 May 2007

Same morning ritual as the past couple of days - wake up about 10 minutes before Colin, read my Lonely Planet book a little, got cleaned up, ate a nice big breakfast prepared by Yoshie, and then caught the subway.  Like yesterday we got off at Tsim Sha Tsui.  We had made plans the evening before to meet up with Sarah for the day there.  First she took us to her bank since both Colin and I were running a little short on cash.  Since it was her bank though, Colin and I gave her our money to change because then we could avoid the bank fees.  Hurray!

Following that we hopped on the KCR (Kowloon-Canton Railway) bound for Sha Tin to visit the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.  It was a great little museum with lots of fun interactive computer terminals everywhere to teach you more about history or culture.  One computer even scans your face and then you can dress your face on the computer screen as one of many different Chinese Opera characters.

My face as a Chinese Opera's General (sorry it's not so clear...problem with taking a photo of a computer screen!):

On the way back, after briefly getting lost thanks to construction, the 3 of us headed over to Central on Hong Kong Island to meet up with Elaine for lunch at a pizza restaurant just off the world's longest escalator called Pepperoni's...mmm pepperoni!  Pepperoni is rather difficult to find in Japan, and more specifically Toyooka, so I was rather excited to have it again!  We also ate some really great BBQ ribs and deep fried calamari besides our pepperoni pizza.  After lunch, we briefly met up with another one of Sarah's friends (whose name eludes me at this moment while writing this entry of mine) before walking around both Central and Causeway Bay travelling between them by the traditional Hong Kong street trams in search of a watch for Colin, a bracelet for Colin's special someone, and some Ben & Jerry's ice cream. 

Lunch with Elaine (who is clearly enjoying the pizza), Sarah, and Colin:

World's Longest Escaltor:

Travelling around Hong Kong by Tram Part I:

Travelling Around Hong Kong by Tram Part II:

After having searched high and low for the 3 aforementioned things, we found them all and then caught the subway for Tsim Sha Tsui to check out the Avenue of Stars (Hong Kong's answer to Hollywood's walk of fame) where we say many famous stars in the HK film industry's handprints and/or names (Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Stephen Chow, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, and Michelle Yeoh, just to name a few).  Being dark though, my photos unfortunately didn't come out so well.  After walking for a bit we found a fence to lean up against for a little bit in anticipation of the famous 8 o'clock Symphony of Lights.  I had seen it last year, but I wanted to check it out again - the city lights from Hong Kong Island flash and change design all timed to music that's played on the Kowloon waterfront.  Fantastic show but again, I wish my camera could have captured it better!

Jet Li rocks!:

Symphony of Lights (okay, a couple of minutes before it started...):

The Peninsula Hotel:

We then headed to a shopping complex near to where Sarah lives called the Wonderful Worlds of Whampoa with a building built to look like a giant cruise ship that’s actually just a Jusco department store from Japan.  There we did the Japanese traditional art of purikura (photo stickers - figuring that Colin and I needed to teach Sarah something about Japan!), and then headed to the cinema to check out Spiderman 3 at the late show.  Sarah had some way to get us in free, so Colin and I definitely weren't complaining!  The movie was pretty good.  Not great, but pretty good.  I was impressed with how they handled Eddie Brock/Venom, but still not completely happy with how the movie turned out.  Spiderman 1 and 2 were much better products.  After the movie, Colin and I caught a bus back to Mong Kok to get some much needed sleep as the next day would be a very long day in Macau!

Spins a web, any size:

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