Final bits of Hong Kong

When we reached the end of our seven days in Hong Kong we were absolutely exhausted!  We managed to see every single highlight on our list, and quite a few that weren't.

We had a great trip to the Big Buddha and Po Lin Monastery, which was a 30 minute train ride from the central Kowloon Station.  The Big Buddha is the main attraction at the Monastery, which is on top of a mountain.  It is possible to walk the seven kilometres up the mountain, but it is much more enjoyable to take the gondola.  We paid up for the glass bottomed car, which makes for wonderful views of the forest below your feet but is a rather unsettling experience!

The trail up the mountain, through the glass-bottomed gondola

 

 

Once we arrived at the top of the mountain, it is a short 5 minute walk through a little village with shops and restaurants to the base of the Buddha Monument.  The monument itself is reached by climbing 268 steps (which would be rather daunting after walking up the mountain!)



Village at the top of the mountain

Big Buddha Monument

 

Even though the monument steps and village seem crowded, the monument itself is quite serene and has lovely views of the sea below.  It is very close to the airport, but incredibly quiet.  It was a great thing to do and see on our last day in Hong Kong.

 

Big Buddha

Stanley and Cheung Chau

We really did try to get around to as many places as we possibly could when we were in Hong Kong.  Two of the day trips we took were to a very popular tourist destination on Hong Kong Island called Stanley and to a small island southwest of Hong Kong called Cheung Chau (truthfully, they were more like half day trips, but we were trying to not exhaust ourselves!)

Stanley is on the northern side of Hong Kong Island and has beautiful beaches, markets and architecture.  We didn't know until we got there, but it is the location of one of the big battles in World War II, when the allies were trying to hold the island against the Japanese invaders.  We visited a graveyard that has the remains of many of the Allied soldiers who died in the battle and the citizens who were held in camps or died in the bombing raids that preceded the surrender in December 1941. 

 

Stanley Harbour

 

 

Stanley Harbour

 

WWII Cemetery

 

Cheung Chau is a fishing village on an island that is about 10km southwest of Hong Kong.  The village is full of narrow, winding streets and the only vehicles there are mini fire trucks and emergency vehicles.  There was a beautiful temple with ornate dragons and the harbour was full of all kinds of fishing boats.  It is a very small place and only took a couple of hours to cover the harbour and many of the small streets.  Cheng Chau is known for its seafood and there were dozens of small restaurant, as well as stores selling dried seafood.  As soon as the catch comes in, it is hung out to dry.  This was definitely one of the most unique places that we visited on our trip!
 

 

 

Cheng Chau Harbour

Cheng Chau Cat

Pak Tai Temple

Drying fish

More Hong Kong

There are a couple of things that everyone says you must do in Hong Kong: have some clothes made and visit the street markets.  We did find a place to make us clothes and it is just as fast as they say it will be.  We went to the tailor in the morning to pick fabric and get measured, then returned late in the afternoon for the first fitting.  We went back 24 hours later to pick up our perfectly tailored clothing.  It was that easy!  We got our tailoring done on the Hong Kong side which is a bit tamer.  Whenever we walked anywhere in Kowloon we would get hassled to get some tailoring done.  Mostly they target men and we literally would hear "Tailoring, sir?" five or six times per city block.  Oddly, they don't really cater to women for this service.  Maybe there are too many variables in fitting women or maybe women would rather try on the clothes before they buy.  Regardless, JT got chased and hassled all over the streets of Kowloon.

 

Ladies' Market, Kowloon

 

Flower Market, Kowloon

 

Rock 'em, Sock 'em...no idea what this was about

 

Street in Kowloon

The open-air markets are interesting to see and they can get incredibly crowded.  There is a ladies' market, a flower market, an electronics market and a market with everything that is busiest at night, called the Night Market.  The markets are okay but the really fun part is just looking at all the little things, making small purchases and haggling.  It is very un Australian (and un North American) to haggle on prices, but we had to try.  We managed to get the prices down by about 15%, which still means that we paid about 35% more than we should have, so good thing we weren't spending a lot of money!

Hong Kong!

We just returned from two weeks in Hong Kong and Singapore.  This was a first trip to anywhere in Asia and we absolutely loved it!  We started with 8 nights in Hong Kong, split between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon.  Out first 4 nights were in Hong Kong and it completely blew us away.

We didn't really know what to expect so we hadn't done much forward planning.  We really just wanted to experience the city and we loved every minute of it!  This is a trip that we will do again and would encourage everyone to visit Hong Kong.

Out first day there we took the cable car up to Victoria Peak and the amazing views of Victoria Harbour.  The ascent takes less than 5 minutes in the cable car, but there is a staircase for the crazy/fit/cheap people.  It is incredibly steep and at some points the angle is so great that it is like you are lying on your back.  We couldn't imagine trying to climb up.

 

Victoria Harbour from Victoria Peak

 

 

Original Gatehouse going into Victoria Peak Gardens

 

 

We walked around the tourist area at the top, then set off for Victoria Peak Gardens and the views out to the South China Sea.  This was an area that was quite posh back in the day, with its glorious views and cooling summer breezes.   There are still some very smart homes up there and we certainly saw more than one Bentley and Rolls Royce driving around.

 

 

Gardens

 

 

Looking out to the South China Sea

 

 

 

The most surprising part of the visit was how different the city felt from any other place we have been.  It is an amazing combination of primarily Chinese and Western culture, made of so many different components that the feeling is just so hard to describe.  In what other city do people commute to and from work on an escalator that goes up a mountain!

 

 

Riding the 800m escalator



 



Spring!

Spring has arrived in Australia, and with it we have slightly longer days, higher humidity and a new Prime Minister...although that last one isn't really related to the season.  After 9 months of on and off campaigning and all the debates, name-calling and outrageous promises, Australians finally went to the polls yesterday and ousted the Labor government.  Because the voting system here involves ranking the parties in the Senate, we don't know exactly what the government will look like, but we do know Tony Abbott will be the Prime Minister.  For the three years that we have been here, there have been constant battles over personalities and a great deal of name calling.  Hopefully we will now get some governing.  The hottest issues of the campaign were refugees and the carbon tax...two very different topics.

Big Pink Bunny on Queen St Mall

Big Pink Bunny on the Brisbane River

Spring also brings festivals to Brisbane and we are in the month long Brisbane Festival, which is apparently sponsored by Big Pink Bunnies.  We have no idea why, but everywhere we go in the city there are big bunnies...as far as we can tell, other people see them, too!  Regardless of the potential hallucinations, the weather has been so nice for early spring that we were able to sit outside yesterday afternoon, staring at the river, listening to live music and contemplating bunnies. 

A Beautiful Spring Day on the Brisbane River

Three Years!

Yesterday we marked the three year anniversary of our arrival in Australia.  The time here has absolutely flown past!  We are spoiled by the weather and the travel opportunities, and still can't believe how lucky we are to be here.

This winter has seemed to drag on a bit, although it might just be the acclimating to a new style of winter.  We were in Melbourne last weekend and have been to Adelaide and Sydney in the winter months and can tell you, with no hesitation, that Queensland is the place to be in Australia during the winter. 

 

Melbourne City from our hotel on South Wharf

 

Friday Night Game at the MCG

Melbourne was really fun.  We went to the Monet Exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria and then to a football match at the celebrated Melbourne Cricket Grounds, or MCG.  The MCG is legendary as the place to see a footy match and we didn't just see any footy match, we saw a Friday night match between Collingwood and Hawthorn, two of the big Victoria teams.  It was a great game and there was a massive wind storm that uprooted trees going on while we were in the stadium, so it was a pretty exciting time.

 

Wacky Arm Flailing Inflatable Tube Man at the Milton School Winter Festival

 

 

Last Days of Winter in Milton

 

Here in Brisbane the winter has been pretty mild and we are happy to be in the time of year when we can walk to work in the morning.  There are lots of winter festivals going on, because Aussies seem to the think that 20C is so miserable and cold that the only way people will venture out in the winter is if they are bribed with a festivity of some sort.   Three years in and we still laugh at the people who call 20C cold, although JB suffers when it gets below 25C, so one of us is an almost Aussie.  We can't help but think back to when we got here and the end of winter here was warmer than the summer we just left!  We are just about out of winter though, so the sun is rising at a fairly reasonable time of 6:00am, rather than the 4:15am that we get in summer...for the record, North American birds chirping away have nothing on the squawking beasts that we have here! 

Order Restored

When we moved here almost three years ago, it was shortly after Kevin Rudd, the then Prime Minister, had been replaced as leader by his party in a back room coup.  Julia Gillard was installed as party leader and, after a quick election campaign, was elected by Australians as Prime Minister (as in Canada, we do not vote for the leader, only the party...she was leader of the party that won).

For three years we all watched as Kevin Rudd was closely watched to see if and when he would make the move to reclaim the leadership.  About 18 months ago he held a press conference from an overseas trip to announce that he would return to Australia to challenge for the leadership.  Julia Gillard and her supporters met him head on and he lost.  After the election was called earlier this year, one of Kevin Rudd's supporters called for him to stand for leader of the party.  Kevin Rudd declined to stand for the leadership and everyone moved on.  Last week, after a great deal of speculation, Kevin Rudd challenged for the leadership of the Labor Party and won!  Three years later and he, according to his supporters, is right back where he should be!  The big problem now is that we are seven months into an election campaign and Kevin Rudd is not bound to hold the election.  We could have just gone through the torture of a seemingly endless election campaign, only to have it extended to last even longer.

Kevin Rudd getting mobbed at an AFL game we attended in 2011

Kevin Rudd is a Queenslander...a very popular Queenslander.  His successful coup happened on the same night as the second game in the State of Origin.  The State of Origin in an annual "best of three" series between the Rugby League players of Queensland and New South Wales.  Queensland has won the series for the last seven years in a row, but they actually lost the first game that was held at the beginning of June.  People were losing their minds over how such a travesty could occur but on Wednesday night the stars were aligned as they should be and Queensland beat NSW...handily.  It wasn't just a win it was an old-fashioned beat down.  So by Thursday morning Kevin Rudd was back as PM, the Queensland Rugby League players had shown total domination and once again Queensland was ruling Australia.  Order has indeed been restored.

Winter

Winter arrived in Australia on the first of June and once again we were reminded of just how lucky we are to be living here.  Other cities have some fairly miserable winter weather (not miserable by Canadian standards, but certainly not pleasant) but it is one of the nicest times of the year in Brisbane.  The weather is dry (humidity less than 85%, so plenty of good hair days!) and the highs are still in the 20s.  Depending on how tough you are, this can still be shorts weather.  It will get cooler as we hit mid-July, but it is still perfect for sitting in one of the many open-air lounges near our house and enjoying a glass or two of wine.

Bright blue sky for the first day of winter

View from our neighbourhood outdoor lounge

We have realized that we have one long weekend in June, then one in mid August and nothing in between.  We have decided to go to Melbourne in August for a weekend that is both sporty and artsy.  We will go to an AFL game at the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Grounds, the mecca of AFL in Australia) and then see a Monet exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria...something from each end of the spectrum!

The nice thing about winter this year is that it means we only have another 3 months left in the Federal Election campaign, which was announced in January.  Nine months is a very long time to listen to campaign speeches but someone has introduced the "Truth-o-meter", which is a dial display that is shown after a political speech.  So far almost every reading has been "Liar"!  As much as all of us have had it with campaign speeches, we are sure the politicians are getting pretty tired of it too...how many babies can one person kiss?

Greek Festival

This weekend we went to the Paniyiri Greek Festival, the largest Greek festival in Australia.  It was cool and windy when we were walking over, but once we were in the park it was absolutely perfect weather.  For us, this festival is all about the food.  Sure, there were rides for the kids, dancing demonstrations and live music, but our stomachs were in charge!  As soon as we walked into the grounds, the smells of charcoal cooking engulfed us.  We had different types of souvlaki, grilled haloumi and the very famous, and very sweet, loukoumades, or honey puffs.  The honey puffs are the star of the festival and people make plans around devouring plates of them!  Honey puffs are deep fried dough, coated in honey and sprinkled with icing sugar.  Anyone with a sweet tooth would go crazy over these!  We struggled to share a small plate but we saw lots of people packing away the large plate without any hesitation.

Honey Puffs

This is a great time of year in Brisbane, right before the start of winter.  The days are warm and the nights are cool.  It is lovely to get up in the morning and have the humidity less than 90% and be able to walk into work and arrive not looking like a sweaty ball of hot goo.  We seem to be much colder right now than we were this time last year, but we are in a tough position when it comes to complaining about the cold.  On one hand we need to be able to mock the Aussies who think that 18 degrees is nippy by claiming that we walk around in shorts and t-shirts in Canada when it’s -18 degrees, but on the other hand, because there isn’t any proper insulation in the houses, it really does feel cold and we need to be able to wear our jumpers with dignity. 

Festival Goers

Not a cloud in the sky

Mosman Trail

We just spent a beautiful 4 day weekend in Sydney, taking advantage of having Thursday off for Anzac Day.  The highlight of our trip was a 10km hike we took on the north shore, in the suburb of Mosman. 

We started by taking the ferry from Circular Quay to the Taronga Zoo.  We walked NE, past the zoo, and headed along a trail that took us to Bradleys Head and then Chowder Bay.  The walk is really well laid out, with stairs cut into the pathway and nicely cleared with no spider-infested branches hanging across the trail at face height!  The scenery along the pathway is beautiful, with views of the city, lots of little harbours and beaches and trees and flowers everywhere.

The Opera House on Anzac Day (note the planes in the upper left hand corner)

The city

 

On the loop back we cut through some fantastic parts of the suburbs of Clifton Gardens, Mosman and Cremorne, to get to the Cremorne Ferry terminal and back to the city.  These suburbs are quite stately and homes with ocean views are positively estate-line!  The strange part of the walk was that the official pathway actually involves walking more or less right up to a house and then veering off onto a hidden path.  We actually missed a couple of turns at the first pass because we thought we were being too cheeky about walking up to these houses.  Apparently, that is just how it is done.

Bay View along the pathway

Entrance to the Harbour

Chowder Bay

We enjoyed this trip and walk so much that we are already planning to walk from Manly to the Harbour Bridge and back into the city on our next visit, a hike that will take us at least 6 hours, and that is only if we walk on a straight a route as possible, with no wandering off the sea at any point.  This may take more than one visit to complete but luckily we are more than happy to spend as many weekends as possible in Sydney!

Footy galore

Australia is truly a sports-mad country.  It seems like everyone has a sport, or sports, they they play on a regular basis.  Not just kids but adults of all ages, swimming, cycling, running, playing tennis or netball and, the most popular sport, Australian Rules Football.  The part that gets confusing with the sports is that Aussie Rules Football, Rugby League, Rugby Union and soccer all referred to as "footy".

Of the 18 teams in the Australian Rules Football League (AFL), 10 are in Victoria.  Anyone from Victoria will mean AFL if they say "footy".  In Queensland, there are two AFL teams, but there are also both Rugby Union and Rugby League teams.  Rugby League is massive in Queensland and usually, but not always, someone from Queensland saying "footy" will mean Rugby League.  It also depends on the time of year because in June there is the first game of the 3 game State of Origin tournament, played between Queensland born players and New South Wales born players.  During this tournament, everyone calls it footy.

Watching the Lions play the Crows (Brisbane vs Adelaide)

The Lions came close to winning this one!

We really like going to the Brisbane Lions games in the AFL and the Reds games in the Rugby Untion League.  We may not always know what is going on, but it always a nice way to spend some time sitting outdoors and enjoying the weather.

A lovely sunset at the Reds match, played at Suncorp Stadium only 5 minutes from our house

The Warratahs (Sydney) warming up

The other complication with footy is that anyone from Europe or South America, and there is a large European influence here, will call soccer "footy".  Sometimes it is easier just to nod knowingly, rather than keep asking "What do you mean by footy?" 

The one sport that is never, ever called footy or football, is North American football, which here is referred to as "grid iron football' or just "grid iron".  Australians really seem to love watching grid iron, and it is hard to get a seat in a pub when they show NFL games.  They love the size of the players and the hard hits (which is why Aussies also seem to love hockey...referred to as "ice hockey" here, never just hockey) but they just can't get their heads around having offence and defence as different teams.  When we try to explain it, we get the same blank look back as when Aussies start talking about footy.  Sometimes it is easier just to cheer for the ball!

Long weekend

One of the many wonderful things about living in Australia is that we get four days off at Easter!  And since autumn in Brisbane is a lot like summer in Brisbane, it means we get four days to enjoy the sun and be outside.

As we have gone away for the past two years, we decided to spend the Easter weekend at home.  We used to spend most long weekends in the city when we lived in Calgary, as it was usually uncrowded and relaxed.  It was pretty much the same here.  Most people headed for the coast, leaving those of us who stayed with plenty of open spaces and lots of choice seats in restaurants!

Beautiful River View

Quiet Day on the Brisbane River

We spent part of Good Friday in the Southbank suburb, not in the pools but at a restaurant nearby with a nice view of the river.  It was pretty hot so we really needed a sit-down after the long walk.  We have been taking the train so much lately that we have forgotten how hot it can really feel in the sun at 30+C with humidity in the 85% range.  In other words, it was melting!  We had good walks on Saturday and Monday too, but, this being the subtropics, it was bucketing on Sunday and there were weather warnings going on all day.  We didn't get hit too badly, but the warnings made us pretty wary about going out on Sunday evening.

We watched this guy try to waterski for about 5 minutes and he never did stand up...still not a bad way to spend the day

A lovely bridge in West End

We probably wouldn't stick around every long weekend, but it was really nice not to worry about fighting traffic or rushing home late Monday to get to work on Tuesday.  The nicest part is that we are having a four day weekend in Sydney in just a couple of weeks, so we are getting away on our own terms!

Balmain

Balmain is a suburb on the west side of the Sydney CBD.  We explored the area when we were in Sydney for Christmas, but the suburb has been on our list of places to visit for a long time.  It is snuggled in a nice, quiet harbour.  To get there we took a ferry from Circular Quay but, perhaps because of the shape of the harbour, JB was convinced that we were on the north shore, not just west of the CBD.  There are so many inlets and small bays in the Sydney Harbour that it is very easy for people who aren't used to it to get VERY turned around!  Maybe we are just spoiled by having the mountains to the west for so many years that we just forgot how to gauge the direction!

Houses overlooking the harbour

Australia Post Office

High Street

One of many posh parts

We had a really lovely walk through the high street in Balmain, which was full of smart shops, cafes and tempting bakeries.  Just off the high street there are lots of cottages dating back to the founding of Balmain, which have been kept up in a very "English" fashion, giving the area a very genteel feel.  This area used to have a rough reputation, but it is now a very well looked after neighbourhood and is really quite charming. 

This area really showed us how little we know about Sydney and the surrounding suburbs.  We will definitely make more of an effort to explore the city.  Our next trip there is only 4 weeks away!