Episode 13: Shenanigans at Wanchai

last friday a friend of my brother's here in hong kong was nice enough to meet up with me and show me around the city at night. he also introduced me to some of his friends, who were all really cool people. here are some pictures.

here we are at a bar with billy's (guy in black shirt) cute girlfriend. funny story about her. so we were all sitting down, and everyone asked her to guess my age (billy promised her $1000HK if she got it right). naturally, she assumed that i must have been older than i looked, as opposed to as young as i look. she guessed 40. 40!?!!??!?!?!! am i that old? i would have been the oldest guy at the table.... haha it was still a good laugh.

here go me paul and ceedee. paul looks like he is crazy, but he is actually a calm guy. perhaps it is the other way around actually. he is probably crazy, but acts calm until it slowly comes out. i like that much better.

here is a little bit of flasiness of a street at wanchai at night.

here we all are at a romantic little place at the peak (remember, with the fantastic view?) from left to right: ceedee, billy, (forget her name, she is kevin's gf), kevin, and paul. everyone but ceedee works as industrial designers.

Episode 12: epilogue at the beach

Episode 12: sai kung and the beach

on sunday (yes i realize i am a few days late posting these) i went back to sai kung with my expedition crew: danny and tamara, and we visited an island not too far from there. we rented a boat for $3. once there, we hiked around the island, across miles of uneven rock terrain, for two hours, until we found a great little spot on the beach to chill. best part of the day was the dessert for dinner. check out the pics.

is if it doesnt rain enough in this place (almost 4x a week) a lot of the people here in hong kong walk around with umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun. here we are on the pier of sai kung, where people are crowding on the edge, what for i wonder?

for fish! so these guys park under the pier with their boats filled with fish of all types, and hustle them to the public. another one of those things you dont exactly find in the US. the entire pier is lined up with them.

this was the ferry we took to an island off of the coast of sai kung. it is the island directly across the bay at my school. our boatman was great...

actually he was the boatman on the way back, but that makes no difference to you guys.

as we sailed across the bay approaching our island i felt strangely similar to francisco pizarro as he sailed into the new world to confront the incas...

this island off of the coast of sai kung had some really pretty rock and coral formations. even the color of the water was nice. but it had this funny smell to it...

here i go diggin a hole in the sand to help danny.

this is my bruce lee pose. if anyone makes any comments about me being malnurited, i am goin to karate chop your head off...

who is this guy chillin on the rocks with the world behind him?

and so the day ends with another beautiful sunset. off into the distance is my school....

but not without some dessert. we had a mango fest, with mango sago on the far left, mango with black "glutonous" rice and vanilla creame, mango cakes on the bottom, and a mango ice at the top. all of this was delicious (evan i think you would have really enjoyed it).

Episode 11: visit to Wan Chai

yesterday i went to wan chai, a stop on hong kong island just before central. a lot of the buildings you see in the skyline are around here. i mainly walked down gloucester rd, a broadway of sorts, that is an artery of transportation through the center of hong kong. but first, i encountered a little baby...

look at this little rugrat. cute aint it? i thought she was, so i went up to her to make a few faces, get her to smile.

instead, i got this face. we stared at eachother, for maybe a whole minute. her expression didnt change, she didnt bat an eye, she just lifted her head and met my gaze. she is going to grow up to be a man eater one day....

this is gloucester road, a broadway equivalent that runs through the heart of hong kong city. keep going down a couple of miles and youll get to central and the governer's former palace (back when this was a part of the british empire).

the opposite view of gloucester. there's traffic anywhere you go. that bus just cut somebody off.

next door to the government immigration building on gloucester rd is thi slittle park. though tiny compared to washington square park, it was still a nice change from the city atmosphere above. in the distance you can see the world financial center, the tallest building in hong kong.

like some cities we know, hong kong has tons of taxis. here, they are color coded as red and green, one goes to the new territories, the other stays in hong kong island (i think).

Episode 10: singing in the dorm

Episode 9: epilogue, live at the fish market

Episode 9: nothing special

pics arent too special today as i went to choi hung, a town the HKUST bus drops me off at in order to ride the MTR into mong kok. i had to buy a new keyboard today and now i have one of those chinese ones with all the characters. cost me 6 dollars, and its silent.... not a bad deal.

this surprised me when i saw it. nintendo has made the gameboy micro, which essentially is an NES controller with a built in LCD screen that allows you to play old NES games. im tempted to buy one.

it rained today so everyone was running around with their umbrellas. here is a pic at the apple shop.... a clothing and jean store i believe.

i found this to be particularly strange. apparently someone here has found the market for model buses to be large enough to dedicate its own store at the mall to. i went inside and there were some pretty nice models, but still, buses?

i often take the bus to the choi hung station in order to hope on the MTR. there is a pretty large market for live and not so alive animals. this side of it was dedicated to poultry. notice all the baby ducks there on the table...

Strange names, part 1

Tonight i met a kid whose english name is Analysis.

Episode 8: Some dorm shenanigans

Episode 7: epilogue 2, HK from the water boat

Episode 7: epilogue, live from the peak

Episode 7: the peak at mt Victoria, to central

yesterday i went to the stanley market, an outdoor market where you can buy nice little nitnacks (this country is the most consumer oriented country in the world, malls are EVERYWHERE). afterwards we took our bus to the peak on top of victoria mountain. that is the beverly hills of hong kong where homes supposedly can cost $100million US (i am skeptical of this figure). still, it was beautiful and some of the homes were like chinese palaces (though i had no time to snap a photo on the driveby). afterwards i went to central.

this was my dim sum lunch that i had at the stanely market, a ritzy little area by the beach. dim sum is a type of chinese cuisine where they serve many small portions of food and you dabble in all of them. it was fantastic.

here are some of my favorite people at the exchange. one french canadian, two french, two austrians. all of whom are very fun... kid on the right, gp, will be in hong kong a whole year. i wish him the best of luck

here is a panoramic of hong kong by day. not a bad looking city if i say so myself...

here i am about to take flight into hong kong, until i thought better of it. there was a 20 foot drop from that ledge...

a panoramic of me at an observatory on the peak. i really liked this spot because of how hard the wind was blowing. we were on the opposite side of the mt so there was no view of the city really.

couple of hours later after it got dark, this is a gorgeous view of hong kong at night. from the top of the peak. every night at 8pm there is a light show which involves dozens of buildings that light up from top to bottom. it is best viewed from the kowloon side across the water.

i found this poor cow on display that was suffering from an identity crisis. my chinese name is xue hu, which means snow tiger. a lot of the mainland kids get a kick out of my name which often comes across to them as a childish one. i happen to like it very much.

here i am sucking on the utters of a greek cow...

some of you may or may not know that i have a thing for lions (leondari means lion in greek). here i am riding on at the HSBC building in central last night. i named him theodore.

this is me smiling in my artistic pose in black and white. the amazing 10 minute hong kong boat ferry ride was coming to an end....

by the end of the day i was dead tired, as you can see. this is danny on my left, he is from maryland.

Episode 6: epilogue, live from mong kok

Episode 6: journey to mong kok

like every adventure into the city, it begins with a wonderful little ride on a minibus. i especially enjoyed this one because of our little donkey companion on the dashboard. can you see the silhouette of the skyline in the horizon?

just look at all these people....

and here i go being a goof ball with our wonderful tour guide alfreida. the chinese kids here pick their western names for themselves. one, our coordinator, named herself olive. i asked how she got the name and she said "from the dictionary of course". the weirdest one to date has been a girl who called her self cinderella. im not even kidding....im waiting for one to name themselves carborator or transmission.

as some of you may know, squid is a favorite dish of mine. on the streets here you can buy a lot of really exotic food (including turtle killed right before your eyes... so sad). this wasnt particularly any good though since they dipped it in this weird sauce.

here is a snapshot of nathan ave. a really overpriced street in mong kok. i like the neon lights. this street is sorta like broadway (but not since they actually have a broad way). all the streets parallel to this one are virtually impossible to drive down since there are so many people about.

and here i go taking a snapshot of myself with the neon lights in the background on nathan ave. just look at that goofy smile.... in case youre wondering why i am always wearing a wife beater, this place is scorching hot and humid. i have to take two showers a day to ward of the sweat and stickiness.