Hong Kong Day 11 -- Work and HK style cafe

We ate breakfast at the cafe in the building again.  Today I had fried eggs with baguette and mushroom soup with ham and pasta.  We headed to work, Ciara and I were able to meet with our sponsor and another Crown employee today so we were able to get a lot of information that we needed for our project.

For lunch we walked to a little Thai shop down the street.  I got panang beef curry and pad thai.  We took it back to the AOT building (across the street from the main offices, two people are over there working on a project) to eat.  Lunch was really tasty, and it was a pretty good deal too.  After we ate we headed back to work for the rest of the day.

Headed back to our apartments after work.  It seems like there are more people on the MTR this week and also more people out in general around our apartments this week than last.  The streets are pretty busy, looks and feels like more people, but it could just be that we are out at a different time than we were last week.  We went to a Hong Kong style cafe for dinner.  I ordered Malaysian Beef Brisket Curry with Rice.  It was good, but there might have been something that hit the spot better.  The menu for the cafe was huge, and there were quite a few things I was choosing from.  I wasn't sure what I felt like either, so I just picked this.

Breakfast

Lunch - Panang Curry and Pad Thai

A store near our apartment

Building near the apartment

Dinner - Malaysian Beef Brisket

Buildings and little shops near our apartment

Hong Kong Day 10 -- Sushi Dinner after work

Wednesday, half way through the week!!  We ate at the bakery on the ground floor of the office building again today.  I got a mushroom, ham and cheese omelet with a baguette and lemon tea.  It was good, the baguette was really fresh, the outside was a bit crispy and the inside was nice and soft.  After breakfast we headed to work.  It rained a bit off and on today, and was pretty cloudy for most of the morning and early afternoon.  Might have rained some in the late morning but we were in the office so it was hard to tell if it was raining or if the clouds were just dark and low

We headed out at lunch time to find some food to bring back to our work area on the 10th floor (where Ciara and I are).  Evelyn, Ciara and I had leftovers from yesterday's dinner so we ate those, and Yan and Kathy picked up some food.  We all ate together in the office and then they headed back to their building and floors.

After work, we did the normal MTR to apartments trip and rested for a little while before dinner.  I brought Modern Family DVD's along with me so I watched a couple of episodes.  That show never gets old...  We headed out for dinner, today was Japanese.  There is a little sushi restaurant near our apartments that we had noticed, so that was the spot for tonight.  It is VERY inexpensive.  We all ate for right around US$10 (HK$70-80).  I had soft shell crab & cheese roll, a pork hand roll, a corn hand roll, shrimp nigiri (no picture) and pork with balsamic glaze nigiri.  It was all around $75HKD, $10US.  It was REALLY good food, especially for such a low price.  I'm sure we will be going there a couple more times before we leave.  Can't get that much sushi (or food in general) for that good of a price at home.

After eating we walked through a couple of floors of a mall near us, and then headed back to our apartments.  Two more days until the weekend, we are working on planning out what we want to do this weekend.  It is supposed to rain this weekend, so we might do some indoor stuff.  There are quite a few museums near us, so we might check out a couple.  Some cultural museums, an art museum, an air and space museum, and others.  The cultural museums and art museum are probably what we would choose from.

Breakfast -- Mushroom, cheese and ham omelet, Baguette, and lemon tea

Soft shell crab and cheese roll

Pork hand roll on the left, corn hand roll on the right

Pork and Balsamic glaze nigiri

World Trade Center mall

One street corner in Causeway Bay.  It was a fairly busy night out.

Hong Kong Day 9 -- Rainy day of work

Not a lot extra going on today.  Normal MTR ride and walk into work.  Today we ate at the french cafe on the ground floor of the Mass Mutual Tower (the building the main office is in).  While we were eating it started raining, this is the first time that it has actually rained (that we know of) while we have been here.  There have been a few times that we went outside and it seemed like it had rained, but we haven't actually seen it raining.  Ciara and I had lunch separately from the rest of the group because we were meeting with our project sponsor at the beginning of lunch time.  We found a noodle place down the street for lunch.  It was really good, I had spicy noodles with pork belly.

After we finished work we took the MTR back to Causeway Bay.  Ciara and I walked over to the supermarket to get some snacks, and everyone else headed back to the apartments.  On the way to the supermarket we passed by a large demonstration that was on one of the bigger streets, in front of shops and an MTR exit.  We worked our way past the demonstration to the supermarket and bought some snacks.  We then walked back to our apartments, passing the demonstration again.

It started raining soon before we were going to head out to get some food for dinner.  This time it included thunder and lightning.  Not a lot to see from our apartments, but occasionally a flash of lightning could be seen.  It kept raining for a while, and didn't really stop so we decided to just go to the mall across the street and find some food instead of walking around the city.  There was a shop inside the mall that had really cute animal and character truffles.  Didn't buy any (didn't really want any, and they were also pretty expensive), but they were really cute so we took a couple pictures.  After we ate we headed back to our apartments.  This last week has been long, so it's nice to have a more relaxing day and an earlier night.

Demonstration in Causeway Bay

Demonstration in Causeway Bay

Demonstration in Causeway Bay

Lunch near the office

Wet, rainy Causeway Bay

Truffles

Truffles

Hong Kong Day 8 -- Into the 2nd week. Rubber Duck and Light Show

Today, on the way to work, we ate breakfast at the same noodle place that we at at last week.  This time I got spam instead of the sausage we accidentally ordered last week.  It was pretty good, not sure which one I prefer.  For lunch we walked around near the office and got some food from various shops.  I got an egg waffle and we stopped at a bakery where I got a meat roll (Pastry with a little bit of meat in the middle).

After work we took the Star Ferry across the harbor from Central Pier near Hong Kong Station to Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon Island.  There is a giant rubber duck in Hong Kong Harbor (http://www.florentijnhofman.nl/dev/project.php?id=104) right now.  It is 16.5 meters tall, and just about the same size around.  The duck has traveled around the world, since 2007 it has been to 11 countries and 12 cities.  There were a lot of people at the spot that you could see the duck, but it didn't seem too crowded because people would take a picture of it, with and without people, and then move out of the way.  After seeing the duck, we walked along the path next to the water to the Avenue of Stars.  There was a large version of an Olympic torch from the 2008 Beijing Games on the walkway.

The Avenue of Stars is the Hong Kong version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they have plaques in the ground for various movie stars.  Some of the plaques have handprints with names, others just have names.  The stars that have plaques include Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee.  There is also a Bruce Lee statue near the end of the walk.  We walked to the end, and then turned around and headed back towards the pier.  Every night at 8pm, there is a light show called "The Symphony of Lights," on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.  It is a synchronized light show that takes place on both islands and is connected to music.  Many buildings are included in the show, and it even has the Guinness World Record for largest permanent light show.  It wasn't quite as big or dramatic and some things make it sound, but it was still neat to see, and it was neat to see the buildings at night from a different vantage point then we saw from The Peak (opposite side, and on the ground).  The buildings reflect on the water, so there are a lot of streaks of color on the harbor.

After the show was over we took a ferry back to Wan Chai, and then took the MTR back to Causeway Bay.  On our way back to our apartments we stopped at a mall that had a few restaurants in it.  We went to a Thai place that was pretty good, but it wasn't "Thai" like we know.  I got a chicken dish, it was grilled chicken with Thai spices.  One day over the next few weeks we will ask the Crown people to take us to a really good, authentic Thai restaurant.

Hong Kong Island, walking to the ferry

Ferry to Kowloon

Hong Kong Maritime Museum and some of the pier

Hong Kong Maritime Museum

Giant rubber duck!

Hong Kong Day 7 - Lamma Island

Today we slept in a bit and then got on the MTR to Wan Chai to meet up with Ana to go to Lamma Islands.  On the way from the MTR to her apartment we stopped at Coco, a milk tea shop.  We picked up drinks and then went over to wait at her apartment.  We walked to a shop to buy a towel to use at the beach, and then got back on the MTR to go to Central/Hong Kong Station to get a ferry to the island.  We took the Star Ferry to Lamma Island.  It was about a 30 minute ferry ride.

The ferry arrived at Lamma Island around 12pm, and once there we started to walk through the town and stopped at a restaurant and had dim sum. There were a lot of shops on the island that were selling handmade items and other souvenir type things.  We looked in a lot of the shops and a couple of people bought some things.  After we saw the shops we walked across the island to the beach.  The beach and area around the beach was pretty and there were a lot of people there and on the island in general.  The water felt really good, but there was a lot of trash around so we didn't go in very far or for very long.  After the beach we headed back to the ferry terminal and then back over to Hong Kong Island and our apartments.

We rested for a bit and then went to get dinner in the food court of a mall near our apartments.  I got food from a Japanese shop.  I chose a fried pork cutlet that was stuffed with creamed spinach.  It also came with rice, cabbage salad with sesame dressing, and miso soup.  After eating we stopped at a store in another mall, and headed back to our apartments.  This was a long fun weekend, and we are back to work tomorrow.  We will still be doing things in the evenings after we finish work.

Sign on the ferry

Lamma Island

Lamma Island

Hong Kong Day 6 -- DISNEYLAND!

Today we went to Hong Kong Disneyland!!

We woke up, checked out of the hotel, and went back to our apartment (the gate was now unlocked) to change and let our phones charge.  We ate breakfast at a noodle place near our apartments.  After eating we went back to our apartments and got ready to head to Disneyland.  The MTR goes right to Disneyland and there is even a special line for the resort.  We took it from our apartment to Hong Kong station and then got off at Sunny Bay where we got on the line for Disney.  The MTR train for Disneyland has Mickey-shaped windows and the handles in the middle of the train are shaped like his head and are mickey colors instead of the silver and red handles on the on the regular lines.

We got off the MTR around 12:15 and started walking towards the main gate, stopping to take a picture in front of the Hong Kong Disneyland sign.  There was a really neat fountain between the gate and the entrance that we took a few pictures of.  We then bought our tickets and entered the park.  The entrance is nearly the same as "regular" Disneyland (Anaheim), and probably like every other Disneyland, with the train station above the Mickey made of flowers.  We walked inside and went down Main Street towards the Sleeping Beauty Castle.  It looks similar to Anaheim's, except it is much smaller.  The lines here are also much shorter (the longest posted wait time that we saw was around 25 minutes) and they even have "single rider" lines on some of the rides.  We took advantage of these many times during the day because we didn't mind being split up on the ride, and there was almost no line for those.  The rides here seem to be a bit more tame than at theme parks at home.  They aren't as fast and crazy, but by some of the reactions we heard from people next to us on the rides, you would have thought they were.

Our first stop was Grizzly Gulch.  We walked through Adventureland to get there.  In Grizzly Gulch we rode the Big Grizzly Mountain Runaway Mine Cars.  We went in the single rider line for this, the regular line was probably around 15 minutes, but by going as single riders we were on the ride within 5 minutes.  After Grizzly Gulch we walked into Mystic Point.

Mystic Point is exclusive to HK Disneyland, and has their version of a haunted mansion type of ride, Mystic Manor.  It has the same concept of entering through a house and sitting in chairs going through the ride.  It was a really neat ride, shows what happens when Lord Henry Mystic's Monkey opens a magic music box.

Our next stop was Toy Story Land.  It was a really neat area, everything in it are toys that you would see in Toy Story. There are tinkertoys standing up everywhere too.  We went on all of the rides in here, the Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop, RC Racer, and Slinky Dog Spin.  The Parachute Drop and RC Racer were really fun. Parachute Drop lifted us up really high and then dropped us down at various speeds before going back up again.  It was somewhere between 5 and 10 drops.  The top of the ride gave a really good view of the park, especially of Toy Story Land.  The RC Racer looks like a Hot Wheels car/race track set up.  It is a big U, and the car goes from one side of the U to the other, getting closer and closer to the top with each set.  On the last couple of passes, it was starting to tip over, and all that you could see in front was the track that we were about to go down.

We went to Tomorrowland after Toy Story Land.  We went on Space Mountain a couple of times, using the single rider line to get in quickly.  This line is why it was so easy to go on it twice.  We also picked up a FastPass for the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters while we were in Tomorrowland.  After we got our FastPasses, we walked over to Main Street to watch the "Flights of Fantasy Parade."  It was a neat parade but it also was very warm standing there watching.  We saw many different characters and they had people who were doing a lot of dancing and performing.  After the parade was over we went back into Tomorrowland to go on Astro Blasters.  We didn't have to use the FastPass because the line was really short since everyone was out watching the parade.  We went on Astro Blasters and then walked over to Adventureland.

In Adventureland we went on the Jungle River Cruise.  This ride did not have a single rider line, but they do have separate lines that you get in that depend on what language you want to hear during the ride.  We had about a 20 minute wait to get on, and took the cruise around the island.  It was neat, and they had similar things to LA, but also some sections that were different.

After Adventureland we walked over to Fantasyland and Ciara and I went over to Small World.  It has been a long time since I've been to Disneyland and on Small World, so I don't remember exactly what the LA Small World looks like, but it seemed like HK had some different things.  They had Hong Kong in the Asia section of the ride, and we got to see some of the buildings we saw from Victoria Peak.  The America's section also had the Golden Gate Bridge that we went under, so it felt like we were back at home!!

After Small World we did some shopping and then headed back to the MTR station to get back to our apartments.  Disneyland was really fun, a  lot of people had been telling us that it isn't worth the time and we shouldn't bother going, but we felt that it was worth it.  We did A LOT of walking during the day, and since there were no lines we didn't spend very much time just standing around.  We didn't eat while we were in the park, so we also did not sit much besides when we were on the rides.  It was really nice to not have to spend time in line, and we were able to see everything that we wanted in just a few hours.  We left the park around 6:15.

We can now check HK Disneyland off our list of things we want to see.  I have quite a few pictures posted here, but it isn't nearly all of the pictures I took, just chose a few of them.  I will upload more to Flickr or something and add the link here.

Picture of Mickey on the MTR

Mickey Shaped Handles

Outside of Disney MTR

HK Disneyland Sign

Hong Kong Day 5 - Victoria Peak

I am posting this a day after it all occurred.

Today we had instant noodles with eggs and sausage for breakfast.  We had a normal day of work, and some of us went to an Indian Buffet for lunch.  The food was really good and very filling.  Near the end of the day the Crown department on the 20th floor had their monthly party.  The last Friday of every month they have a little party in the afternoon to celebrate any birthdays or anniversaries (with the company) that occurred during the month.  After work we went with Ana (who celebrated her 10th anniversary) to buy frozen yogurt and to see if there were any shops to buy things.  We walked around for a   We then went with her to a nearby bar where another coworker and a friend of theirs were.  We spent some time at the bar and then decided to go to Victoria Peak.  It was a really clear day and our co-workers encouraged us to go because we would have a really good view and it isn't this clear all the time.

We left the bar went back to our apartment to change out of work clothes and to drop off some of our stuff, and then headed back out to go to Victoria Peak (known as just "The Peak" here).  We took the MTR and then walked to a bus stop to take the bus up to the top of the Peak.  On the way to the bus stop we stopped at a little shop for food.  I got Egg Waffles and Shu Mai.  The Egg Waffles were really good. The road to the top is one lane each way and is pretty long, steep, and curvy.  To me it felt like highway 17 on steroids, except at a slower speed.  We were sitting on the 2nd level of the bus, and this made the ride seem even more precarious.  There are shops at the top and a walkway.  The walkway is surrounded by trees so there isn't much of a view for most of it.  You can hear all the frogs on the hill and there were a bunch of big cockroaches and spiders.  We followed the path to a clear place with an AMAZING view.  All of Hong Kong was lit up and the skyscrapers and other buildings look amazing.  There are so many lights that the sky and the cloud are also very bright.  We took a bunch of pictures from the clear overview spot, and then walked back to the beginning of the path where the shops and other things are.  There is a tram that goes right up the side of the mountain, we decided to take the bus up and take this tram down.  It gets from one end to the other in 7 minutes.  You ride backwards when going down the hill, it's a crazy feeling, and it is really steep.  If we go to the peak again we will probably take the tram both ways. It is HK$28 one way and $40 round trip.

Now for why I am posting this the next day... After we got to the bottom of the hill we took the MTR back to our apartment, and got there around 11:30.  We walked up to our apartment and found a locked gate at the bottom of the store.  We did not know that this gate could close and lock, and we especially didn't think it would be locked this early, a lot of shops around were still open and there were still a lot of people out.  We tried calling our contact for the apartments but got no answer, and tried calling some people from Crown in the hopes that someone would answer and have a solution for us.  By this time it was around 12.  We talked to our professor, and after trying a bunch of different things, we called a hotel and made a reservation.  The hotel was close, it was just a couple of blocks away.  We checked in and got to our room around 2am and slept in quite a bit Saturday morning, it had been a long day and then having this extra stress made us exhausted.

Top of The Peak

Victoria Peak Sign

Hong Kong from The Peak

Hong Kong from The Peak

Hong Kong from The Peak