Off again!

I'm off to Borneo today. Quite scared as me and Rachel have booked everything online, a little haphazardly, so it'll be interesting to see if all our plans actually work out. It seems very strange to be leaving Hong Kong for a holiday when I still quite often feel completely confused and foreign in Hong Kong!

The last week of school was quite fun. We had a Speech Competition where the kids were given a topic and then had to stand up and try to talk about it for a minute without any preparation time. The students who took part did really well so I feel like maybe me and Rich have made a small difference to their confidence, if nothing else. We also had to do our own performance in front of the school yesterday. It was Christmas Activity Day and we were asked to do half an hour on 'Introducing the Western Ways of Celebrating Christmas.' We did a little powerpoint presentation with lots of pictures of Christmas decorations and lots of talk about Christmas lunch, and then we taught them to sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer! I'm sure the school took photos of me singing and Rich strumming his guitar like a little folk band, so I'll try and upload one after the holidays.

I don't know if I'll get a chance to get online whilst I'm travelling so for now...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Santa-hatted Shenanigans

My parents have returned home to the frosts of Scotland. Monday was a school holiday so I had one last long day with them where we hiked along the Dragon's Back on Hong Kong island and then hopped on a bus to Shek O for a chilled out lunch and a spot of relaxing on the beach. The hike went along a ridge with some pretty impressive views of the coastline and, with a sneaky bus journey at the start and the finish, wasn't very strenous at all.

Mum and Dad go paddling in the South China Sea

The week at school has been pretty hectic -Rich and I have been running lots of Christmas activities and on Wednesday there was an Open Day for prospective students and their parents so the whole school was on red alert. Understandably they wanted to show off their native English speaking teachers, but my timetable on Wednesdays didn't fit in with the open day schedule, so I had to teach a class that I don't normally teach in front of about 20 primary school students and a collection of parents, which was just a little scary!

Busy at the Christmas Cafe

The weekend has brought lots of Christmas celebrations as most people are jetting off home or to exciting holiday destinations next weekend. On Friday I watched Love Actually with a bunch of girls and a lots of chocolates before we headed on to a flat Christmas party to dance to some cheesey Christmas classics. Last night was the official Chatteris Christmas event, which involved take away pizza and santa hats on Repulse Bay beach. The boys who organised it did a great job, they'd decorated the trees with tinsel and fairy lights and brought along some Christmas music and made party bags for everyone so that we all wore our free Santa hats and even provided a Christmas carol book so we had no excuse not to sing along. It did feel kind of festive singing 'Jingle Bell Rock' at the tops of our voices, but Santa hats and sand between your toes is a strange combination!

Singing Christmas Carols on the beach!

Song sheets and santa hats!

5 more days of school and then it'll be time for my Christmas holidays! I'm off to collect my washing and try to decide what to pack!

A busy start to the month

It's finally December, but the weather is now similar to Scottish summer. Yesterday I was out in a short dress and a wrap for the whole day and I was only really chilly in the evening. I haven't written for a while because my life out here has suddenly got hectic - I've started 8 weeks of volunteering on a Social Welfare programme on Wednesday evenings, I've joined a musical society and now have rehearsals on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays AND my parents have been in town so I've been tour guiding them around!

Last weekend I took them to Stanley for a leisurely lunch on the promenade and a wander round the market, and we went to visit the Chi Lin Nunnery and Wong Tai Sin temple. The nunnery buildings are really impressive, made out of dark wood and held together without a single nail, but the atmosphere there is very quiet and austere and, aside from the visitors kneeling to say a quick whispered prayer, you don't really see anyone actually worshipping the big buddha statues that they have there. I think the contemplative atmosphere was good for my jet lagged parents, but I much prefer the hustle and bustle of the temples I've visited here, so we popped in to Wong Tai Sin temple at the next MTR stop so they could experience that too. Wong Tai Sin is one of the busiest temples in Hong Kong and the day we visited the courtyard in front of the temple was packed with people laying out offerings (including a whole chicken and a huge chunk of ham) and burning incense and shaking tins of fortune telling sticks. After 10 minutes or so taking in the atmosphere we retreated to the left side of the main temple, where we discovered a lovely garden with pagodas and covered walkways and a HUGE waterfall feature and a pond full of technicoloured carp.

All that wood and not a single nail at Chi Lin nunnery

The hustle and bustle at Wong Tai Sin

Dad and Mum in the Wong Tai Sin gardens

I've also been taking advantage of the visiting parents to do some slightly classier activities. Rather than watch the nightly Symphony of Lights show from the Avenue of Stars with the masses (I've already done this about 3 times!) we hopped aboard the Aqualuna, a big wooden junk with red sails (although it relies on motor power) and colonial style furnishings, to take a tour of the harbour and enjoy the light show from the water. The rattan seats are surprisingly comfortable and it's all very elegant lying back with your 'complementary' drink, although the best bit of the experience might just be the jealous looks on other peoples' faces at the pontoon!

Me and Mum on board the Aqualuna

For our luxury highlight this weekend we decided to take in the Peninsula, a historic hotel where the Brits officially surrendered to the Japanese during WW2. It's so posh that the bathroom attendant actually hands you a cloth to dry your hands on and then produces a wicker basket for you to discard it in. Sadly, the Felix bar on the 28th floor doesn't open till 6pm so we couldn't take in the views, but we had drinks in an elegant lounge bar and admired the subtley shimmering Christmas decorations in the foyer.

The Peninsula foyer, decorated for Christmas

We spend the rest of Saturday wandering around Hong Kong Park, where I finally got to see inside the conservatory. The plants are pretty and the displays are nicely set out, but only in Hong Kong would you find fake plastic reindeer and Christmas decorations in a hothouse! Christmas make take longer than usual to arrive here, but once it's December people really seem to get into it. It'll be interesting to compare Hong Kong's efforts with whatever I find in Borneo over the holidays.

Christmas in the Conservatory at Hong Kong Park

A week in the wilderness

November weather is nice and cool, making it a very good time of year to go exploring the 80% of Hong Kong that is still an undeveloped, mountainous wilderness. However, having noticed that my blog so far is full of pictures of beaches and parks, I'll endeavour to include some pictures of buildings in this entry!

Last weekend I went on a very leisurely hike from the Wan Chai Gap to... Aberdeen! The (mainly downhill) walk went past the Aberdeen reservoirs which look very odd. You get wild, jungley greenery growing down to the sides of the reservoir, but then the water levels were quite low and the baked orange coloured rocks that line the sides of the reservoir look like they've been carefully sculpted by people. Aberdeen itself has a nice waterfront promenade to stroll along, although it's not the most peaceful stroll due to the old women offering rides on their sampans.

The waterfront at Aberdeen

Me and a reservoir

On Monday at 1pm I set off in a bus full of orange and black tracksuited teenagers to school camp. We went to Sai Kung country park, in the Eastern New Territories, where we stayed in the Lady Maclehose Holiday Village (me for 1 night and the students for 2 nights - the teachers were on a rota!). The holiday village was quite similar to the 'camp' that we stayed at when we first arrived in Hong Kong, but this time there were individual bungalows instead of blocks of dorm rooms, so we had our own teachers bungalow where we could hide from the kids. On Day 1, we went on a boat trip to see some corals. Instead of having an expensive glass bottomed boat, the students were equipped with plastic buckets that had glass plates stuck in the bottom. They pushed these against the surface of the water (leaning over the side of the boat) so they could see the seabed quite clearly. It's a great idea, but sadly the corals we were looking at were disappointingly grey and lifeless. We then returned to camp for dinner in the canteen and the poor students had to sit for 2 and a half hours watching an episode of Blue Planet (they dubbed over David Attenborough with Cantonese!), a presentation on coral environments, a video about mangroves and a presentation about creatures that live in the mangroves. I don't think the environmental instructors who were running the programme had done much work with school groups before!

The boats speed back to land

Day 2 at school camp was sunnier than Day 1. In the morning we went a wee walk beside a mangrove. The instructor kept stopping and explaining interesting things about the plants we were seeing, but the student didn't seem that interested and the explanation was in Cantonese. At the end of our walk we got to scramble on a beach that the mangrove was slowly reclaiming and look for crabs under the rocks. Then it was back to camp for lunch, which we needed as fuel for our afternoon hike. We walked up a hill and down the other side to a BEAUTIFUL, rugged, isolated beach. There were warning signs about dangerous undercurrents, but that didn't stop me and a few of the boys having a paddle!

Girls on the beach

Boys on the beach

The rest of the school week was comparably uneventful. The students were still at camp on Wednesday but I had to go in and lesson plan for 3 hours, and on Thursday we all had a day off to recover, but I didn't do anything unusual.


On Friday Cat arrived in town for the weekend. We had a nice dinner in Knutsford Terrace and then took a quick stoll along the waterfront en route back to her hotel. She's been busy with her dad's business aquaintance's family for the rest of the weekend but we'll hopefully have dinner again tomorrow before she jets off home.


Since I wasn't required to tour guide Cat around, I went off on another hike today. This one came from 'The Serious Hiker's Guide to Hong Kong' so it was a bit more strenous. We climbed up from Tai Wai MTR to Amah Rock and then on to Lion Rock, which is about 500m high and is part of the ridge that forms a natural boundary between Kowloon and the New Territories. The views on the ridge are pretty impressive - you can see the whole length of Hong Kong Island - but the haze means that cameras don't really capture it too well. We could tell it was a 'Serious' hike when the concrete path disappeared. Up near the top we had to scramble amongst the rocks. I'm hoping my legs won't ache too much tomorrow!

Elise, Scott and Sarah hold up Amah Rock

View of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island

The scary ridge.

Buddha, Baking and Birds

In the Christmas break I'm going to Borneo, where I might (if the tour company confirm our booking)be climbing Mount Kinabalu! So when Scott suggested a little hike last Sunday I decided I ought to go along. We took an MTR to the end of the orange line on Lantau and then a minibus to a little village called Shek Mun Kip (I think) where the trail began. The start of the trail isn't very well signposted, but it gets better as you get higher up. The path is all concreted so it's strangely like walking on a pavement through the jungle, but the noises and the butterflies whirring past your nose help you to feel like your really out in the wild.

The expedition crew

Temple roof hiding in the jungle

The hike up the hill isn't too steep and there are lots of little distracting monasteries and temples to stop at on the way, as well as 'an audible stream' (that's how it's described in Scott's hiking guide) where we stopped to sit in the shade and I dipped my feet in the pool. After two hours moving uphill in the Hong Kong sunshine it was rather nice get to the top and walk along the flat plateau towards the Buddha. This time I paid bit extra and went for a meal in the vegetarian restaurant. The food no doubt tasted extra good because we'd put in such an effort to get to it!

The 'Audible Stream'

Reflected Buddha

The rest of my week has been quite un-touristy. On Wednesday I went for a few quiet drinks in my local (literally right next to my block of flats) bar. It's called Co Co Duck and is part of a chain. It feels a bit like an old men's pub in Britain (only with that traditional smoky atmosphere) and has tartan fabric on the seats. After our drinks we went for some food in Langham Place, which is the big shopping mall in Mong Kok and discovered that Christmas has officially hit Hong Kong.

Christmas in Langham Place

Yesterday I went back to Hong Kong Park, on the island, for a proper explore. The park is right in the busy part of Hong Kong Island so you have the surreal feeling that your in a giant tv set and either the lush vegetation or the shining sky scrapers has been superimposed on a blue screen. To add to the surreality, the park also contains a marriage registry so the main paths are full of just-married couples queing up to get their photos taken in the most picturesque spots! If you can wind your way along the paths without tripping over the trails and tripods, you can also visit the Museum of Tea Ware (exhibiting a variety of tea pots) and a huge aviary containing around 600 birds before taking in the conservatory (which I didn't have time for) and the waterfall!

Where did the skyscrapers go?

The Aviary

The Bank of China tower from behind the waterfall.

This morning I woke up to the sounds of bagpipes! It's not the Fair day... but there is some kind of celebration going on in the sports ground that my windows look over. I always thought that when I live abroad I would start to get nostalgic over the sound of bagpipes but sadly that effect hasn't kicked in yet. I don't think the pipers were particularly experience - they seemed a bit out of tune to me!

Bagpipers out my window!

I'm going on another hike this afternoon so need to go and get my suncream on, then it's off to school camp tomorrow which should be interesting.

Intrepid adventures in the New Territories.

My students had tests this week, so the whole school officially finished at 1pm on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On the Wednesday, 3 of my first year girls invited me to go and have lunch with them. I asked if Mr Macauley (Rich) could come too, and so we all went to McDonalds! The girls are really good at English, but also REALLY hyperactive so it was quite hard work keeping track of their conversation for more than an hour, but then they took us on a wander through Tin Shui Wai Park which is really quite pleasant and not particularly far from our school. It was nice to see a bit more of the area we teach in.

Me, Kelly, Clarissa and Summayah in Tin Shui Wai park

On Thursday I decided to go on another Tin Shui Wai adventure, to the Hong Kong Wetland Park, which a pink signpost (they have LOTS of them in Hong Kong directing you towards tourist places) indicated was only 12 minutes walk from our school. The Wetland Park is man-made, but borders on a natural marsh reserve. It was partly built to compensate for all the wetlands that were drained to build new housing in the area, and to educate the local people about the value of the little protected parts that remain. My kids at school had told me the Park was boring and full of mosquitoes, but I was quite pleasantly surprised. The walkways around the park are carefully constructed so you don't really see all the other visitors (although you HEAR the visiting school groups!) and the different areas of the reserve look natural rather than man made. There was a mangrove section which you cross using a floating boardwalk and I got quite excited by being amongst a geography-textbook habitat! I also saw some of wildlife... although not necessarily the most exciting of species.

Little Egret

Crabs in the mangrove mud

Butterfly

Today was my third adventure in the New Territories. I went to the East side this time, to Clearwater Bay Second Beach. I've been meaning to go to a beach for a few weekends, but the weather wasn't too great, or I couldn't find anyone to go with, or I got distracted by going to Disneyland, so today when I woke up and realised it was going to be a bit of a scorcher, I decided to head out alone. I'd never been to a beach alone before, but it was a really relaxing experience. The only downside was that I had to leave all my stuff unattended on the beach while I went for my swim in the sea, but the worry was well worth it when I got to think 'It's NOVEMBER and I'm swimming in the sea!!!!' The beach was a really good place to chill out as it's not got any towns around it and the road is up the hill from the beach and hidden amongst the greenery. It was so lovely to just listen to the sounds of the waves crashing on the floor rather than the traffic and the car horns and the pedestrian crossing beeps that you get in Mong Kok. I must try to go back again before it gets too cold.

Clearwater Bay Second Beach

The soothing sound of waves on the shore

The intrepid explorer chills out on a rock

Disney!

Yesterday I went to Hong Kong Disneyland! It was a beautiful sunny day (you'd think that's normal here but actually it had been rainy for much of the week) which lifted our spirits right up, even before we'd reached Sunny Bay MTR station and got onboard the magical Disney MTR train with the Mickey Mouse shaped windows!

The Disney MTR

The park is smaller than the one in Paris (and much, smaller, apparently, than the one's in America) so it's not exactly a thrill a minute, but if you're excited by the thought of meeting Hong Kong-ers dressed up in Disney suits and trying on silly looking Disney hats, then there's more than enough to keep you going all day.

Fiona and a silly hat

Almost as soon as we arrived (after our first silly-hat trying on detour) we found ourselves outside The Festival of the Lion King show, so we popped inside and were just in time for it to start. I've never seen the Lion King musical, but I imagine the costumes and props were pretty similar, and I was rather impressed by them. The story seemed a little rushed, as they were trying to fit the whole of the Lion King into a half-hour long performance, but it was fun all the same. The opening number was Circle of Life, just like we sang it in the Rev concerts last year.

Hanna, Jenny, Alice, Me and Fiona

We managed to get our photos taken with Alice in Wonderland, Mickey and Minnie, and Woody and Jessy from Toy Story, which was slightly embarrassing but really good fun. Minnie even gave me a kiss on the cheek! My favourite ride would be a toss-up between the Winnie the Pooh ride (where you travel through scenes from various Winnie the Pooh stories and they do some very clever pretend rain for the one where 100 acre wood floods) and the Buzz Lightyear ride where you get laser guns to shoot at the evil Zurg and I scored more than anyone else and managed to reach Level 5, which makes me a 'Space Ace'! Sadly, when we went on it later in the day, my gun was malfunctioning and I got zero points.

Fiona and Hanna get the evil Zurg

After the fireworks behind Sleeping Beauty's castle, we had to hop back on the MTR and return to the real world...




... where not much is happening this week! The students are starting their Term 1 tests on Wednesday, so it's all a bit studious at school. Think I'll go back to the magical land of Disney!

Kite flying and Halloween

It's nearly the end of October and things in Hong Kong are starting to get more routine. I no longer expect to be cold when I leave a building and I'm used to people exclaiming 'waaaah!' when they're amazed by something. But there's still plenty to be explored...

Last weekend was lovely and chilled out. On the Saturday I went to the Hong Kong museum of history to get a bit of culture and then headed out to Stanley on the south of Hong Kong Island with Rachel and Scott. Stanley feels a bit like a Mediterranean seaside town, with a market in some winding streets and a promenade full of bars and restaurants. I had an expensive chilled cider outside a bar called the Boathouse whilst Rachel and Scott tested out their offer on fish and chips! The chips, sadly, turned out to be potato wedges, but were quite tasty nonetheless.

On the Sunday there was a Chatteris outing to a place called Tai Mei Tuk in the east of the New Territories. It's an area with a big reservoir and we were all able to really appreciate the clearer 'country' air, particularly since the weather's been getting a little cooler recently. We went rowing on the reservoir, attempted some fishing (no-one caught anything!), cycled along the reservoir wall and flew some kites before retiring to a quirky little pasta restaurant for a good feed. The views from the reservoir wall were beautiful and the breeze coming off the water is just perfect for kite flying. The cycling was a little more dangerous due to the large amount of bike traffic, including some interesting bicycle-buggy type things with stripey canopies that reminded me of Victorian beach huts. All in all a really lovely day.

My rowing skills.

The chaotic cycling route

Kites at sunset

This weekend Hong Kong is celebrating Halloween. Apparently trick-or-treating/guising is not a big thing here, but everyone still likes to get dressed up and party. Nicole (one of my teachers) invited me to a party at the Hard Rock Cafe last night as one of her friends had dropped out at the last minute so I went along. The restaurant was covered with spider webs, big furry spiders and spooky looking paintings in gold frames. There was free face painting, a special halloween menu and a show going on with a bunch of entertainers in crazy costumes. The show was all in Cantonese, but that somehow made the whole experience more chaotic and exciting, and Nicole and her friends (who are all trained English teachers) tried to translate things into English for me (when they understood what was going on!). The Hard Rock party finished around midnight and I took Nicole along to meet up with some Chatteris people at a party. I think she enjoyed it, although she may have been a little overwhelmed at the large number of people, especially as everyone was dressed up and looking even odder than usual!

Scary teachers at Hard Rock Cafe

Today shall be more relaxed day. I'm off to do some shopping as we got paid this week!

I bought a plant!

Beds and booking flights

My bed has (finally) arrived from Ikea! It's made my bedroom seem a little smaller, but at least now I can store stuff underneath it, and it feels a bit more like a home than a rented room now.

In other exciting news... I've booked flights to Borneo for Christmas! I'm going to Kota Kinabalu with Rachel and we might try to climb a mountain if we can get a permit. It'll be the rainy season when we're their, so we might not spend too much time sunning ourselves on the beautiful tropical beaches, but there seems to be plenty in the area to keep us occupied.

Other than that, I haven't been up to much since my last blog. At the weekend it was the Lan Kwai Fong carnival, which made the hectic expat area that is Lan Kwai fong even MORE busy than usual. It was nice to see such a mix of cultures there though, and especially nice to hear European voices that weren't British, for a change. The streets were all decorated with hanging, winged mannequins wearing sequinned, burlesque lingerie and street stalls with luridly coloured feather boas.

Getting into the carnival spirit

On Sunday afternoon I went out exploring to Kowloon Walled City Park. It's an area in the East of Kowloon that used to be a walled city, turned into a lawless ghetto and was eventually bulldozed to the ground and turned into a landscaped park. The park is all carefully designed (apparently in the Qing style) and is very relaxing and easy on the eye. You can almost feel the flow of the plants and pagodas improving your chi. I say almost, because, having appreciated the beauty of the part and explored all of its 8 different areas, I decided to sit in a secluded spot and read a book for ten minutes, and promptly got attacked by biting insects. The 12 bites on one leg (there are more on the other one) managed to shatter my tranquil state and sent me running back to my room in Mongkok with the aircon on full blast.

The Bonsai Garden

Peaceful Pagodas and Pools

Cheese

This evening I spent $100 making a cheese sandwich. It's not as bad as it sounds, HK$100 is around 8 pounds (Hong Kong laptops don't come with pound keys!) and I bought a whole baguette, plus a block of cheddar, a packet of chorizo and an entire lettuce, so I'll get at least 3 meals out of it. Plus, the sandwich was very tasty!

Jude and Fiona's visit went brilliantly, although it left me a bit exhausted! We spent Saturday on a 'junk boat' trip with everyone from Chatteris. Sadly, 'junk boat' is term applied to all sorts of boats out here, so we were on a modern speedboat rather than an ancient, red-sailed wooden one, but we did go off and moor (park, for the non-nautical) in a bay beside an uninhabited island and Jude and I went swimming in the south china sea.

Fiona and Jude on the boat

Chatteris overboard!

On Sunday I took Jude and Fiona to The Flying Pan in Central for breakfast. It's a 24-hour American style diner which does full fried breakfasts, pancakes, waffles and smoked salmon bagels. We needed a good breakfast to fuel up for our trip to the 10 000 Buddhas monastery in Sha Tin. The monastery is up on top of a hill, but the steep, winding path to get there is lined with statues of Buddha in various guises, so you have something to distract you from the climb, although the best statues are saved for when you get to the top. Eventually the path levels out and there's a beautiful big temple, the insides of which are encrusted with miniature models of Buddha, each one with it's own little spotlight. Buddhist temples are so rich and colourful compared to churches at home and this one looks quite decadent with all it's gold and red. We met up with Pollina, Rachel and Scott (more Chatteris people) at the monastery. They had come up by a different pathway (which wasn't lined with Buddhas) so we took it back down and managed to hear, and (eventually) spot two big monkeys on the way!

Jude takes the hike in her stride

The inside of the temple

(it's a bit blurry because there's no flash allowed)

Intrepid Buddha Spotters

On Monday, it was National Day, which meant a holiday from school for me... and MORE Buddha spotting with Jude and Fiona! We took the MTR to Lantau Island to meet up with Nicole (one of my fellow teachers) and go in search of the Big Buddha. The Big Buddha was built in the 1950s but is one of the biggest freestanding outdoor Buddhas in the world. It's a pretty impressive sight, and somehow a lot less ugly and Blackpool-illuminations-like than a lot of the Buddhas in Sha Tin. The Big Buddha is also on the top of a hill, so we were able to enjoy a bit of a breeze and appreciate the green countryside of Lantau, which is much less densely populated than Kowloon (where I live) and Hong Kong Island. Nicole also took us to visit the fishing village of Tai O where lots of people live in huts on stilts and the streets are crammed full of stalls selling dried fish. It's a little bit smelly but amazing to find yourself in an actual, traffic-less village only an hour away from the craziness of Mong Kok.

Big Buddha on the hill

Drying fish

Tai O stilt houses

Jude and Fiona left on Tuesday morning and it was back to school as usual for me. We're slowly getting more out-of-class activities going on in school, which is great.


I took a break from tourist activities last weekend, after being a bit buddha-d out, and spent it trying to pay rent, buying 2 new t-shirts and going for a swim in Kowloon Park instead. The outdoor pool closes in November so I only have this month to experience swimming in the warm, musky air of a Hong Kong evening surrounded by the city lights (and the Hong Kong Scout headquarters!).


Can't believe we're nearly a third of the way through this school term already! I really SHOULD start learning all the kids names...