Didn't get to go to India

Well part of my team at work is in India today to meet with the client. I did not get to go. My visa got screwed up and didn't arrive in time. I am really bummed. I am supposed to go in early October now, but it really would have been great to have gotten to introduce myself to our client along side my boss who was on this trip. Well maybe next time! Damn it.

But I did get my Hong Kong work visa on monday, which is nice!

....Shek O

.... then after a train 3 busses and a cab we got to Shek O. Which again was really nice but totally different. This beach was packed, and very European feeling, lots of beach chair and umbrella rentals, swimming platforms and the like. I only took one picture and it was from the bus on the way in and really doesn't due it justice.

Relaxed on the beach the rest of the day, and ended up meeting a bunch of french dudes renting an awesome house right on the beach. Drank some wine on their roof deck and barbequed which was awesome and headed home.

All in all a very adventurous and tireing weekend.

Labor Day Weekend in HK

Well they don't give us labor day off over here obviously! But I figured, if I was back in LA I would likely have either been up at the lake with the Fam, or off on the boat camping trip with the gang, so I decided to get out of the city and go backpacking! Cristina (one of the other people who is here from LA) and I bummed some camping gear off other people in the office and took off for Tai Long Wan.

My Journey Begins

 A remote beach that is supposed to be one of the most beautiful spots in Hong Kong. Originally we had talked a big group of people into going with us, but everyone got scared off by the treat of rain. It was trains, taxis and busses to get to what the little old chinese guy we got directions from kept calling (in a stereotypical asian accent) "the begining of our journey!" I kept thinking of "Search for the Animal Chin" if you get that reference, you will know what I mean. We had little or no idea where we were going let alone what we were getting our selves into and as we left the little man added "weather no look so good for going to Tai Long Wan!" but we went anyway. We walked for a few kilometers using a photo of a map on an Iphone to navigate, and after a while thought this is BS, we are walking on a road! and taxis keep flying past us. So despite our fears of being thought of as lazy americans we hoped in a cab.

Best decision of the weekend! We ended up taking two cabs before we finally ended up at real trail head where vehicles were not permited anymore. That hike was a fairly quick one over a ridge and down into a beautiful remote beach called Sui Mo, and we were already thinking man we really cheated our selves out of a good hike. Sui Mo had no amenities though and since we did no preparation and brought no food we decided to keep hiking to the village we were told would have the best sea food and noodles ever.

Sui Mo Beach

Leaving Sui Mo, we started up hill on a trail that continuously deteriorated, and after over an hour of continuous accent into clouds that looked a lot like they would be raining on us soon. Which was going to be no good on the muddy incline we were already on. But alas we pushed on, climbing over the peak and down into the next village Sai Wan. All in all it was around 14 kilometers, straight up and straight down. By the time we got to the bottom we decided those cabs were well worth the cash! At a fork in the road headed down into the beach we ran into a guy and a chick in a bikini with no shoes on, both of us imediately knew, "there is an easier way to get here!, cause no way that chick is about to do what we just did, in that get-up!"

Cristina waited until it was time to set up camp to tell me she had never been camping before! Nice! Set up on the beach, took a swim and headed to the one restraunt in town for dinner. We ate with the family that ran the place cause there was no one else there. We ate what they were having for dinner, since the cook did not want to cook anything else! It was delicious, beef noodles, and fried squid (which by the way we saw the local ladies wading out into the water with flash lights and nets to catch as we went to dinner). A few big San Miguels with the family and we were ready to turn in.

Home for a night

Slept right on the beach, it was awesome. At breakfast in the morning our host told us, sure enough, there is a paved trail that leads out another way, a 30 minute walk to a bus stop that takes you right into town! Damn it!

We left there around 9:30 and were home by 12:00. As we left the subway station just meters from home, we ran into another friend who said that he and some others were headed to a beach on the opposite side of the island, so of course we just turned around and followed him to the next beach....

Sunrise on Sai Wan Beach

Quick update on my last two weekends..

Clear water bay.

Well the main thing is work has been absolutely crazy so I have had to be in the office at least one day a weekend for the last two, so my weekend adventures have been fairly limited. A week ago I did get to go on a junk boat cruise though. It was just what I needed. You get on one of these old junks like you have seen in the movies, pack it with like 50 people and bunch of booze and drive off for some remote island or secluded beach. Unfotunately it was pretty rough outside of the harbor. Cory you would have been proud of me, I was egging the driver on trying to hold for the remote island while the girls were puking and we were taking water over the bow. But instead they diverted to a closer cove, that ended up being packed because everyone had the same issue we did. It is called clearwater bay. We got to do some wakeboarding over here and I met a chinese guy from canada who has his own wakeboarding boat over here, he's going to take me out again, or at least that's what he said while we were drinking and floating around. Anyhow, lots of floating swimming, jumping off of boats and I finally got a bit of a tan going. Oh yeah.. and on the way home I was pretty tipsy and I had been bugging the boat driver all day to let me see maps of where we were going and trying to comunicate even though he didn't speak a lick of english and he finally let me drive the boat on the way in! So Cory I have officially piloted a vessel in chinese waters!!

This weekend was another filled mostly with work. My big highlight was a trip to a part of the island called Aberdeen, to go to this restraunt called the JUMBO. It is a giant boat some rich guy built back in the 70's that is a huge dim sum restraunt. You have to take a ferry to get to it, and Aberdeen is where all the really rich people live. My tour guide was Michelle (an old friend from LA's sister, she has been taking me to all the off the beaten path spots, and making sure I don't get sick from the food!).

 It was an awesome early dinner then we sat up on the upper deck and had a few drinks, and got to watch all of these multi million dollar yachts pull in from a weekend out. These boats are insane! The Aberdeen yacht club is right across the marina from the restraunt so it was like a red carpet show for huge yachts. They light the whole thing up at night and it's pretty cool. Any how I have a big deadline this week, and then I am supposed to go camping with some people from the planning group upstairs so hopefully more pictures and cooler adventures next week.

what saved my weekend!

Dude Check out these Vessels! Dude Cory my Skiff would be
the best boat in this town!

I decided to go down to this small fishing village on the far end of Lantau called Tai O to try and get the bad taste out of my mouth from the Buddha. And man did it work. This place was awesome! the whole town is built on stilts over the mud flats! with canals running everywhere it is called the Venice of Asia! It looks nothing like venice. It looks like a scene out of Slum Dog Millionare. Anyway we hung out at this restraunt on stilts. I was trying to get the guys to take me out on one of their little boats. This place was way cool! I could totally hang out in one of these little houses for a while! I tryed these dryed out and flattened squids that the street vendors cook. They were actually delicious. I had a bit of reservation to try them as I had just recently gotten over my second bout of the Asian version of Montezumas! But I was glad I did. Tryed a few other things. Crysanthamum juice! Not good. Looked great! all pink and frosty and cold! Tasted like sweat!

Mom, said I had to put up a picture with me in it!

Anyhow after a couple hours at this place we needed to head home and had worked our selves out far enough into the rural parts of Hong Kong that we litterally need to take a bus a ferry and a train to get home! But Tai O saved my sight seeing weekend. I'm not going to anything in the tour book again for a while. Stay off the beaten path right Cory??

More Mixed sight seeing results

This sunday I went to do some sight seeing. First on the list was the largest outdoor, seated, bronze buddha. Interesting that so much pride is taken in something that has to be so qualified. This isn't the largest buddha, it isn't the largest outdoor buddha, it isn't even the largest outdoor bronze buddha, its the largest outdoor, bronze seated buddha. I took the gondola up to the top and the only thing that made this worth the 1 1/2 hour wait. Was the view of the airport, desgined by Sir Norman Foster. If anyone has ever wondered why I like working on airports, search youtube for a 5 part discovery channel piece on the Hong Kong Airport seen here and you'll know why I think it's cool.

The gondola lead to some cool views of this Buddha, and lots of the surrounding island. I have to come back and check out more of this island (Lantau). This is where most of the good hiking is. This is where all the beaches are, and some are really remote, and you have to hike to them. Which will be nice because all of the others I have seen have really been polluted by the thousands of people that go to them every weekend.

So more of the Buddha, well it's pretty cool looking but it is very comercialized. I guess there has been a Buddist monestary here for a long time but this thing is baisically Buddist Disney land, there are charactures of Monkey (a famous Chinese folk hero) walking around. There is a Subway and a 7-11 up there. I felt like it was kind of shame that this buddha was being so commercialized. There were a lot of people praying all around the site which was kind of humbling. But the last straw for me was at the very end of walking around I was reading some info about the tale of this specific Buddha what his story was, and I read that the statue was built in 1993! I don't know why but this fact ruined the whole thing for me.

I also toured the monestary, it was nice. I bought some incense and lit it for my family as is traditional. I have some pics of that but I have to get them from the girls from work I went with. I bought some for them to burn and thought I was doing a good deed. But as I was taking a picture for the girls of them lighting the incense I bought for them I backed into some other incense burning and melted a hole in my boardies and burnt my leg I think Buddha bite me for my negative thoughts.

Asians love Malls

They really do, check out this one it has a 12 story atrium. This where they hang out, and they totally take local pride in them. They are massive and filled with all high end stores, that are way more expensive because they are american or itallian brands. Any way this was a pretty gnarly one.