Christmas at home

I'm supposed to be studying for a project management exam so this is where I procrastinate and blog instead. This post is long, long overdue. For some reason, I always think that when I go home, I should have a lot of time to blog and catch up on other things. But it never happens. So here's a post about spending my first Christmas at home in a long time.

I was home for about 2 weeks. I managed to redeem some miles from Singapore airlines for a one way flight home. 

Snowball hogging all the slippers:

So many presents! I basically brought home a suitcase full of presents for everyone. Both of my cousins are also back for Christmas so we had a feast at our house and a really great time opening presents. Just like the old days when we were all still living at home and going to school.

Victor sleeping with a huge bear:

Snowball sleeping in his "tent". We got a dog toy for Snowball since the dog dogs are all much bigger than cat toys. He didn't seem as enthusiastic about the toy as we thought. Maybe cats are just not that into big toys...

The weekend after Christmas, we went on a snow trip to a ski resort in Lake Tahoe. We joined a tour group that basically took a bus full of us from the Bay Area up to Reno on Saturday. On the way, we stopped by Lake Tahoe. It's really beautiful. My mom, brother, and I went with my aunt, two cousins, grandma, and my brother's friend's family. There were 12 of us in total. The next day, we got up really early to go to the ski resort to go skiing. We got beginner ski package tickets that included rentals and lessons. The resort became packed with people really quickly and the lessons took forever. At some point, my brother, his friend, and I got bored of the lessons and we were itching to go up the ski lift. It's the boys' first time going so I warned them about getting on and off the lift. We managed to go up and down the slopes twice without any incident. The third time, my brother's friend fell and got soaked near some melted snow. He managed to walk down and we got him back inside. Then my brother and I took our cousin up the lift for one last run. We lost her on the last part down the slopes and waited for a while before she showed up. She said she literally rolled down the last hill. Anyway, incidents aside, I think we all had fun.

New Year's Eve dinner from Sushi House! I think American sushi places are really creative with the sushi, especially the rolls. You don't really find rolls with all the different toppings and such in Asia. I find that my American friends are always after "authentic" and "recommended" places to eat. I'm always skeptical when someone says something is "authentic". What makes something authentic? Does good food have to be authentic? Or is good food just a category by itself?

I got this snowman cake making kit from Muji and made it with my brother. It took us forever! The pieces were tiny and it was so hard to keep the chocolate melted so that we can decorate the snowmen. There's a toothpick on the bottom of the first photo for scale. Anyway, not sure if this all got eaten. We made it the day before I left.

Happy 2015!

2015 should be another great year. I'm expecting a lot of life decisions to be made this year along with some big adventures.

Midnight hike to see sunrise

I'm still not sure what made us want to do this but we decided to go on a midnight hike up Lantau Peak to see the sunrise. It all started with a whatsapp conversation about what to do for one of Xiaodi and Albert's last weekends in Hong Kong. One of their coworkers suggested this hike to see the sunrise. With the help of modern technology, no plans were fixed until the day of. On Friday, I was chatting with various people to see if I was going to sleep that night or go on a hike. I wasn't too enthusiastic about this midnight hiking business and would have rather do a sunset hike. But Sally wanted to do it enough that I went with it. Xiaodi abandoned us at the last minute.

It was really cold that night. Temperatures dropped quite a bit that day and hovered around 10 degrees Celsius. It is usually colder on Lantau so I dressed up in many layers and filled a thermos with hot tea. We left our apartment at around 12:30am and took a night bus to Lantau. We "picked up" Albert on the way and napped during the bus journey. I was surprised that we managed to wake up and get off at the right stop. We nearly went all the way to the airport. We hung around the empty mall spaces in Tung Chung and waited for Albert's friends. One of them has done the Oxfram Trailwaker (100K hike) and another guy has done this hike before. Another of their friends came along. So all in all, we had a total of 7 people on this hike.

Usually, for this hike, you can take a bus from Tung Chung to the start of the trail. But there were no buses when we arrived and we didn't want to get to the top too early. So we walked along a paved road for nearly 2 hours to reach the trailhead. We checked the time a lot to make sure that we wouldn't arrive too early or too late. The actual trail was pretty steep. But I think we paced ourselves pretty well. I used to think that you should just keep going steadily the whole way to avoid being too tired out. But the guy in front had a different idea and walked maybe 20 steps, stopped for 3 seconds, and then continued. I thought this was pretty good for going up as it allowed us to rest a bit and not strain ourselves too much. We had longer breaks for snacks and water but we got up pretty quickly as it was cold. Along the way, we saw other groups ahead of us and passed a few groups on their way up.

At the top, we saw some people camped out. I was surprised that they managed to pitch a tent in such high winds. There is also a small man made shelter thing in case you got stuck up there in inclement weather. It was so cold up there that I couldn't even get my own phone out to take any photos. We huddled around and ate food to keep ourselves warm. Even after 5+ hours of being in the cold, my thermos still had warm tea inside. The sun came up slowly up the gray skies. Albert has one of those nice cameras that was able to capture more light than our eyes.

After a while, we really couldn't take it anymore and started our descend. There were some big rocks along the trail down that provided us shelter while we saw the rest of the sunrise. We ended up at the Big Buddha, which was pretty quiet since there was not tourists about. We narrowly missed one bus and had to wait an hour for the next one. Luckily, there was one place opened that served us food. I don't think eating greasy instant noodles was all that great for my stomach though. Should have just stuck with something light. Anyway, we made it on the next bus and I managed not to throw up on the way down. Lantau roads are very windy and I always feel a bit nauseous.

By the time we got back home, it was nearly noon the next day (Saturday). We were still bundled up in our coats even though people on the streets were wearing one layer. With our 12 hour adventure completed, we quickly showered and went to bed. I had thought we would be able to get up towards evening and go see the fair in Victoria Park. But that turned out to be more than we could handle and we just basically slept the entire day. I got up in the afternoon to eat and watch some TV. Got up at normal time on Sunday morning feeling refreshed. It's amazing how much difference it makes to get properly rested.  

Happy Holidays!

It's almost Christmas! I can't believe I didn't manage to write a single thing for all of December. I'll make it up in the next few days. I'm home for Christmas this year. The first time since I went to Hong Kong. This year, my cousins are back too so we're getting together like the old days. I got lots of presents and planning to make lots of food. Should be a fun time.

Recent weekend activities: hiking and touring

The weather has been really nice these past couple of weeks. It's been sunny and warm. I usually take a light jacket out with me in the morning but haven't really needed it. The only places that are really cold are indoor places due to the cold air from ACs.

After the strenuous hike up and down the 8 Immortals, I did another hike that was much more chill. This one was out in the Saikung area and the hike ended at a beach. I hadn't realized how long it's been since I went out to Saikung. When I lived in Kowloon, I used to go every now and then, sometimes just to wander around the town area. I think I blogged about this before. Anyway, it was really nice to get out there again and it was hot that day.

My roommate, her boyfriend, and I were joined by another friend when we got out to Saikung. We ate some noodles for lunch and then set off to find the trailhead. It always amazes me how many local people are out on hiking excursions. These outer reaches of HK are local vacation spots that are always very alive with people during weekends and public holidays. We hiked for less than 2 hours on trails with slight inclines and declines and then found ourselves at a really nice beach.

The beach is also a camping area and we saw some tents pitched on the sand. It was generally really nice and quiet there. The beach was not crowded at all since it's a trek to get out there. We jumped in the water but didn't go too far out as the waves were really strong. I definitely felt myself being carried around by the waves. I just stayed near the shore area and floated around. I fell asleep on the beach afterwards and we made a collective decision to head back rather than to keep going on the trail. I think this was a good decision as the sunset was complete by the time we got back out to the road area to wait for the bus. We got dinner in Saikung before finding that there's a minibus that goes right to where we live. So convenient!

Last week, Sally had some friends visiting. They were moving from France to Australia and this was part of their layover. We took them out to dim sum and they said that this was their first or second time having dim sum. Chinese food is not so easy to find in France. We also took them to see the Occupied staging area. It was also my first time out to the main one in Admiralty. It's really amazing how they've managed to cut off a central thoroughfare in the middle of the city. We approached the blockade from the eastern end and walked for a while on an empty multi-lane expressway. There were kids on rollerblades and bicycles just clearly making use of the free space. We walked around the camp areas where people were putting various prints on blank t-shirts, making speeches, and studying. There are designated areas with tables and chairs for students to study. Places were really well organized with makeshift steps and stairs. I wonder how this is all going to end.

Hiking the 8 Immortals

Long overdue post about another hiking adventure. This hike was really an exception one. I'm pretty sure this is the most challenging hike I've ever been on. This was compounded by the fact that I don't think I'm in very good shape these days. The hike that we decided to do was Pat Sin Leng, which is means The Ridge of 8 Immortals. There are supposed to be 8 peaks in this ridge but I really think there are more.

The hike up the first peak was the most challenging and I was really out of breath. But we made it up the top, pretty satisfied with ourselves. The trees fell away as we went up and there were no trees in sight.

The view was really nice. It was a clear day. 

The long road ahead:

See, no trees:

A large reservoir can be seen in the distance. Our end destination is down near the water.

This is what we hike. Pretty sure there were more than 8, count them! 

Towards the end, I honestly didn't think I could go up any more peaks. The hike took us about 4-5 hours. I've never felt so tired walking uphill. The descent took a while as well and we were totally exhausted when we finally reached a big road with a rest station. We washed up and refilled our depleted water supply. I was hoping for some tofu dessert place at the nearest village but all they had were BBQ places. We sat down at a little convenience store selling American goods. I quickly finished two cold drinks. I was sore for a week afterwards. 

Hiking weekend

Last weekend I really felt the need to go away from the craziness of the city. I tried to get people to go hiking with me on Saturday but no one was available so I decided to go somewhere close by myself. I went out to Cape D'Aguilar, which is a marine reserve park near Shek O. I've seen the bus stop for it many times on the bus to Shek O but didn't know what it was. I got off and started on walking down the path. 

The entire hike in was on a paved road that actually had a good amount of traffic. I think there's some kind of construction going on so there were big trucks coming in and out. There were some people on motorbikes and others in private vehicles. Not sure where all these people ended up since I didn't see any of them at the end. At one point, I was going to give up and turn back but then I checked my location on GPS and it seemed like I was almost at the coast. So I kept going until I got to the gates of one of the radio station towers and the road ends. 

I didn't really know what to do at this point but an older guy who was walking in front of me told me to take the footpath to the side of the fence. I went on the path and it took me around the radio tower. But I didn't know what to do at the end of that and was turning back when the guy came by showed me the way down. He said that he grew up in this area back when it was a station for long distance telephone services and other utilities things. There were several houses built for the people who worked out here and the families thrived on catching fish and planting their own vegetables. He said he spent his childhood swimming and playing out in the area. All the houses that were out there before have now been demolished. The entire area has been made into a marine reserve and is kept by HKU as a research station. There are some student housing for the researchers.

  Rock arch

Real whale bone

The research station

He took me around to see the lighthouse and rock arch and left me near the whale bone. The entire area is really, really nice. You can look out to the sea and climb onto the rock outcrop. I think most hikers are really respectful of the area and there's no trash or other random things left behind. There weren't a lot of people around but the guy said that there's usually more people.