Hong Kong Adventures: The Big Buddha (Part I)

Our visit to Big Buddha was so incredible we are going to make this a two part recap. :-) First up, the cable cars. We took the bus to Tung Chung station, located about 15 minutes from our apartment building. We bought our tickets and were ready to go! Here is Daniel getting ready to board the cars:

Once we left the station, we were guided slowly across the water and through the mountains of Hong Kong. Ok, I will admit I was a little scared, hanging by a wire above the water and into the mountains. But it was such an incredible view of the city behind us and then the mountains that I would definitely do it again.

We saw people fishing in the water below us:

And about 25 minutes into our ride, we spotted the Buddha in the distance!


Up next in Part II: Visiting with the Buddha.

Hong Kong Adventures: Peak Tram

The Western half of Hong Kong Island has a giant mountain called Victoria Peak. From the top of the peak, you have an incredible view of the city. On a clear day, you can see across the entire island. During our first couple of weeks in Hong Kong, while still living in temporary housing in Central Hong Kong, I took advantage of a clear and sunny day and traveled to the top of the peak to check out the view. There is a tram that starts from the center of the city (right next to where Daniel works actually) and climbs up to the top.

At the top, there is a station for the tram and surprise, surprise... a shopping mall and a Starbucks.

And now for the views!!

This building is the International Financial Center, the tallest building in Hong Kong and the 6th tallest in the world.

Food for Thought

We're finally settling in and now have the time and energy to get out of our apartment to explore. We found some interesting things on our quest for culture:

Apparently, the coffee is served really strong here.

Not sure what this is a sign for, but we think it means: "Stand, Sit, or have Sex here."

We were hungry, so we made our way to the grocery store. Here are some of the specials that they had:

Good ham comes from Happy Pigs? (Like cheese from cows?)

They have an entire rice aisle!

They had real honeycombs in the honey! How cool is that?

And they had a lot of other gross things:

So not being able to find anything edible at the supermarket, and still hungry, we found a Ben & Jerry's and had some ice cream. :)

Picture Tour of Hong Kong

Stir fried squid tentacles! Yuk!


And Kelly's a pirate. Arrr!


The money is see-through!


And they have IKEA!

Sticky Burnt Things

Why do things stick to other things when they are burnt? For example, my eggs this morning stuck on the frying pan because I burnt them. Now there is a thin layer of burnt egg stuck to the entire pan.
What about heating something up makes it more likely to stick, you ask? I don't know, I have the same question.

Oh man do I miss these!

My former coworker Johnny emailed me today to tell me that he just went to the local deli (Rockwells if you are ever in the neighborhood of Broad & Water St. in the financial district)across the street from work to get breakfast. The guys who worked behind the counter started to make his breakfast and they started making my usual order too! Johnny and I would often pick up food for each other and they knew our orders because we literally went there almost every day. So they assumed he was picking up my breakfast too. He had to break the news that I moved to Hong Kong and he said they were heartbroken.

I have to say... I am heartbroken missing their sandwiches! ;-) Seriously, they have alot of great food here but I've been unable to find a good egg and cheese on a bagel. I just finally found a bagel at the supermarket today so I'm going to try to make my own but I dont have high hopes for the bagel.

Note: I obviously never ordered mine with bacon but all the google images of egg & cheese sandwiches have bacon. Geez.

Home!

The good news is that we now have a real bed to sleep on. We haven't had all of our stuff in one place (let along a bed) in over two months now. Really, we haven't been able to relax at home since before the Wedding in May.
Look at us finally be married and have a home!
I'm very excited for this weekend when I can actually enjoy our new home (and maybe go back to Disney land again.) ;)

Midgies, mosquitos, and mozzies, oh my!

Daniel's last post described all the really great things we have discovered about Hong Kong. Last week, unfortunately, I discovered a not so great thing. Midgies. No, these are not really tiny people. They are bugs.

Yom Kippur was last week and we had a couple of hours between morning and evening services to wander around. We decided since it was a nice day we'd check out the zoo in the center of Hong Kong. The zoo was really fun! But apparently while we were there I was attacked by a swarm of midgies. The bites have been popping up ever since and they are soooo annoying. Very itchy. And there are so many of them.. they bite you in swarms so you have 30-40 bites. I counted and I have almost 40 on my legs. I heard that they take two weeks to clear up. :-( Ugh. Signing off now so I can itch like crazy..

Skip the rest of the post if you dont want to see pictures of the bites. :-)

Here to Stay!

Much to our family's dismay, Kelly and I love it here! We've only been here a few weeks and already have found lots of reasons why we think Hong Kong beats America as a place to live. We also have some suggestions for Hong Kong, which would make it an even better place to live.

Here is my first post in a series I like to call: "Butterlips!"The official title of the series is called "Here to Stay!," but I don't like that as much.

Reason #1

There's no sales tax in Hong Kong. Aside from the obvious savings associated with this, there a bunch of sub-reasons:

• Firstly, all prices come out even when the salesperson rings them up. It's so much eaiser to pay in whole dollar amounts..


• Secondly, it's easy to figure out if all of your items were rung up correctly. Who can figure out 8.25% (sales tax in New York) in their head?


• Lastly, there's little need for coins because all the prices are even amounts. (I hate coins!)

Our travels

We are finally getting settled here in Hong Kong. We have our apartment and furniture due in next week. It will be nice to finally blog from a real chair rather than a laundry basket full of towels. :-)

Once we are all settled in, we'd like to to start our adventures. Where should we visit first? I was thinking of Thailand but there has been some trouble in Bangkok recently so we may wait on that.

Any suggestions? Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia (hadn't considered this before, but the commercials here for Malaysia are sooo catchy!). Vote here!

Look at me post!

Wow, I forgot I can totally post here!

Good job on updating the blog so often! I think it's really cool that Daniel has to take a boat to work, I've never known anyone who had to do that before.

It's 4:40am in Hong Kong, so I should go to bed.

Haha! I'm so silly, it's 4:40pm in Boston... so I can stay awake!
~Jodi

Welcome to our new apartment!

Its been a little while since the last blog post because we have been very busy settling into our new apartment. We had to go a few days without internet when we first moved in which as you can imagine was quite frightening.

We ended up in a community called Discovery Bay. This is on Lantau Island, located across the water from the main Hong Kong Island where most people work. Basically its like being in one of the outer boroughs of New York. Hong Kong Island is Manhattan. We take a ferry ride for 25 minutes to reach the center of the city, so its actually not a bad commute at all.

The apartment itself is about the same size as our last place in New York, just with a different layout. However, the ammenities are much much better. We have a gorgeous pool in the backyard free for all residents & a limo service to drive us to the town center where the ferry and buses are stationed (about 1.5 miles away). With the palm trees and almost year long warm weather, it feels like we've retired to Florida. We are also located very close to Hong Kong Disney and you can see the fireworks at night from the pool.

The town center has a Residents club with gym, pool, library, rock wall, and even a small bowling alley. There is also a beach! And lots of little shops and delicious restaurants. Sigh.. I love it. And there isnt a Starbucks here yet just a local coffee shop which is actually pretty refreshing.

And now for the pictures! First up, our apartment (our furniture has not arrived yet so its pretty empty).The bedroom...

Living room..

And kitchen. We also have a bathroom of course, but who wants to see pics of that!

Some interesting observations about apartments in Hong Kong:

1. Small and expensive just like Manhattan

2. Most places do not have ovens, just a stovetop. I looked at some places like this in Manhattan, and it was assumed you'd just be eating out most of the time, but almost every place here was sans oven. I was told by the real estate agent "we dont bake in Hong Kong." Well we do, so we had to try hard to find a place with an oven! How else do you bake brownies at home?

3. Many apartments do not have closets. Including ours. So off to the Ikea to buy a portable closet. :-)

I'll upload some pictures of the town center in my next post, but for now I leave you with our pool as seen from out cute little balcony...