Condensed version of Melaka & Kuala Lumpur

I apologize for not blogging while in Malaysia (there was no internet access). After our 9 days in Singapore we took a bus to Melaka, Malaysia. We stayed at Hotel Puri in Melaka's Old Chinatown. The ceiling had little holes where these little birds would sleep in. At first I thought they were fake and wondered who designed such a thing because it was really ugly. I mean come on, bird's asses sticking out from the wall? I soon realized that they were real and moved on. The Chinatown in Melaka did not look like your typical Chinatown. The architecture there was very different, and I later found out that it was occupied by various different people at different times and therefore the architecture took after whoever was ruling at the time. The hotel is located in the middle of many temples, mosques, and museums. However we never ended up visiting the museums because it was more a collection of antiques rather than your traditional museum. It felt very different in Malaysia because EVERYONE knew you were foreign. Strange men would drive by and stare at you, and one guy said "Ooh La La," and another meowed! He literally meowed, like a cat. Aside from the weirdness, the Taiwan clan didn't really do anything too special. We visited the mall (Graham would not have been happy about this, for he is nostalgic about the past, and malls are just for shame!). Well too bad because most of us ended up going to the mall anyway. Haha. We found one rather dingy looking mall right across the street from a rather modern type mall. Outside on the streets there were people riding bicycles carrying carts that you could sit on, and they often blasted Hokkien music while they dinged their little bells. Many restaurants and shops were closed around the area because apparently they only open during the weekends, but unfortunately we were there on a Monday and Tuesday. We did however find a chicken rice restaurant (I think we all became addicted to chicken rice after the NUS students brought us to that great place in Singapore). I had chicken rice for $1 cdn! Beware of your choice of restaurants in Melaka though, they do try to charge you for everything possible, such as tissue and even utensils! Haha, but overall, food in Malaysia is pretty damn cheap. The constant moving around countries made money conversions difficult. After we left Hong Kong and went to Singapore we started converting Sing dollars to HK and then to Canadian. After we arrived in Malaysia we were still thinking in Sing. Conversions started to become formulas.

After 2 days in Melaka we took a bus to the capital city of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. Very different from Melaka. KL was a lot more commercial while Melaka was much more historic in both architecture and feel. Again in KL I went to a mall. Haha. we took a cab to Times square and of course we had to watch Pirates (Chow Yun Fat personally told us to watch it, who can resist). We also visited the twin towers, KL's trademark buildings. Lily, Michelle, Jen, Fu and I also went to the aquarium at the KLCC mall where we touched stingrays, baby sharks, and Michelle, a scorpion. Although I didn't do anything characteristic of Malaysia, I found things to be entirely different in KL in comparison to Melaka. Things were more expensive, still cheap, but more expensive; and overall the people were just more "modern." All the UBC-NUS students and profs also gathered for a dinner with some Malaysian students where we talked about "being Chinese" and the makeup of Malaysia and its brief histories. Ah, I must not forget to speak of the fruit bar right outside the Hotel Malaya in KL. In Hong Kong I went to 7-11 about 3-5 times a day. In KL I went to the fruit bar just as much. I would usually buy at least 2 bags of pre-cut fruit during each visit. Fruit is SO cheap in KL! Each bag costs 1 Ringget (3 Ringget is equivalent to $1 cdn). The guy at the fruit bar knew us after the first day. KL was interesting and I'm sure there is a lot more to see, but unfortunately we only got to stay there for 2 days. We then took an almost 7-hour bus ride back to Singapore. We took group photos of everyone that night since that was officially the end of the course. Everyone has bonded so much in the 3 weeks that we have been together so it was rather sad seeing everyone split up.

The next morning some of the NUS students saw us off at the airport and we had one last group lunch together. We took photos like crazy. People would have thought the NUS students were some sort of a famous rock band and us UBC students were the crazy fans (kinda reminds me of Chow Yun Fat day). Haha. Anyway, they were so cute. We must have stood on either side of the glass window at the airport and waved to each other for 5 minutes straight. I really hope the USP is able to sponsor them to come to Vancouver in September. I would definitely like to see everyone again.

As for now, I am back in Hong Kong for a couple more days and then I'll be officially back home. I went back to the YMCA today and Fu and I took some pictures of the place. We also made videos of impersonations of the people on the trip, which I thought was pretty funny. Fu and I shopped some more and of course we went back to Maple and Tsim Sha Tsui. I am already missing everyone, the scary monster bees at NUS, the elevator and hotel music in Guangzhou, the fruit bar in Malaysia, and of course all the people.

I have uploaded some Singapore and Malaysia photos on Facebook so I won't upload them on here again. In the meantime....toodleloo

Life in Singapura

You know you're in Singapore when..........


This is a shop that sells toast. It's funny. There are toast shops all over the place. People love toast here. I don't think a toast place would ever make it in Vancouver.

This is another toast place. I see this one EVERYWHERE.

From the museum.

At the Arab place you will read about in a bit. I liked the light on the ceiling. Thought it would make a good picture, even with my crappy camera phone.
This is the live band.
This is also at the same place. This part of the restaurant was indoors but with an open roof. It looked really nice (but the service was real crappy).

Yesterday we went to the Eurasian Museum and read a lot about the Japanese occupation. The descriptions were pretty graphic and cruel. I won't really say what I feel towards what I saw but just that people sure can be cruel to one another, and it's amazing what war and power can drive people to do. We had a class dinner with the USP staff members and after dinner we found a place on Arab street to get some drinks. The place looked really cool. You had to take off your shoes to go upstairs and people sat on the floor while an Arab band played live music. It would've been nice except that they didn't bring half of our orders over and then charged us for it. The service was unbelievably crappy but I've never seen any place like that before and it was an interesting experience. There was a kid who was less than 10 years old behind us smoking from a bong looking thing. Supposedly it contains fruit flavoured tobacco. He sure was enjoying himself.

Today was pretty laid back. We all went to another Museum this morning. We've been to so many I can't even recall what it was called anymore and it was only this morning, but it was about Chinese migration and the overseas Chinese. I got in touch with my Fujian roots by reading about Hokkien dishes from one of the books. Haha. The Hokkien pronunciations were written out in English and Michelle and I figured out the pronunciations of 2 out of 5 dishes. Afterwards, we went to Vivo City which is apparently the biggest mall in Asia. We shopped around a bit and I ended up spending money again even though I said I wouldn't. I know I said that I was going to go to the zoo but that plan never worked out for the past 2 days. I don't think it will be happening anymore. We don't have lecture tomorrow so I'm going to have a great time sleeping in. Sleep deprivation is taking its toll!

I look Taiwanese

You know you like this as much as I do.
Dinner at a Hawker Centre.
Indian food at Holland Village.


Last night was terrifying. Lily and I were happily sitting in our little living room eating our Kaya toast (kaya is a jam made out of eggs, sugar and coconut milk, and it is eaten everywhere here), when suddenly we heard an abnormally loud buzzing sound coming from the bedroom. Our decadently toasted midnight snack was ruined when we found a 2 inch gi-normous bee or wasp buzzing around in the light at the bedroom doorway. We stood in the living room staring at it reassuring each other that it would not find its way out. Unfortunately it did and our little midnight drama began. We spent over an hour trying to simultaneously attack and hide from this alien bee monster. Well really, I was doing the hiding while Lily was doing the attacking. Finally after it had been sprayed with mosquito repellent, beaten up with a telephone book a few times, and trapped inside a plastic container and placed outside our door, were we able to retreat back to bed. It was traumatizing and hilarious all at the same time. I don't know what I would have done without Lily. That thing was definitely extraterrestrial.

Moving on to the important stuff. Yesterday we visited a Clan Ancestral Hall. When we got there we were presented with pre-made name tags and were greeted by the entire board committee. They gave us a presentation about the make up of races within Singapore, and spoke heavily on filial piety and the festival of Qing Ming. There used to be a cemetery underneath the shopping mall nearby and everything was moved in order to create this mall. The clan fought for its right and won only 3% of the land, and now the ashes of everyone from the cemetery have been moved to the Ancestral Hall. Today during morning lecture we discussed how we all felt towards the Clan and their approaches to welcoming us. Michelle felt it to be rather disrespectful for them to lead us around like a tour guide and allowing us to take photos when it should have been a place for the dead to rest in peace. Many of us also felt that a lot of it was propaganda for the clan because of the extravagant hospitality that they provided, and the fact that they were filming us and taking photos of us, and had also set up the entire board committee and given us a powerpoint presentation before we were allowed to look around the area. Some others felt that although it was propaganda they had the right to want to show the place to others because they had worked so hard to fight for it, and that any publicity was a good thing.

Personally, I didn't feel like it was a place where I would go to pay respects to my ancestors. While Graham felt that it is a great thing to take photographs and show people the deceased, I, much like Michelle, have been brought up to think that people should be quiet and respectful around places like these. It really wasn't even until Michelle had told me about her feelings did I realize that there were actually deceased people's ashes being kept there. Prior to that, I had gotten the feeling that it was more like a museum that we were visiting. As a child I was told not to look at other people's tombstones which would give me the sense that tourists walking around looking at other people's ashes would in fact be disrespectful. I'm not sure if that is a Taiwanese thing or a Canadian thing, like Graham had mentioned, but it's interesting that everyone got a different feeling out of the visit, especially since at many times the Singaporean students tended to differ from the UBC students.

During the presentation I found out that there is an extremely large Hokkien population within Singapore. Hokkien is basically the same language as Taiwanese, and if you visited hawker food stalls you would oftentimes find pronunciations written underneath dishes to be Hokkien. This seemed really friendly to me because I'm from Taiwan and I've never heard anyone else speak the language anywhere outside of Taiwan before. The population here is so mixed that on the Singapore resident identity card there is a category that states your race. It may say Malay, Chinese, Indian, or Other. We spoke a little about the "other," mainly the Eurasian group as well as the mixed group. Amandae brought up the term "Chindian" used in Singapore for the mixed race of Chinese and Indians. I found this interesting because the mixed race culture in Vancouver is predominately White and Asian or White and Black etc. I hardly ever hear about "Chindians," and yet it is so widespread in Singapore that there is actually a term for it. It is also interesting to note that while Canada's national languages are English and French, Singapore's is English and your own mother tongue. Often when I walk down the street and read street signs, the same sentence will be written in 4 or more different languages, which is really rare anywhere else.

Alright, enough of that, let me tell you about dinner last night. We went to a hawker centre. For those of you that are unaware of what that is, it is a place much like a food court outdoors. Apparently in the past all the food stalls along the streets, that are very much a part of Asian street food culture, were moved to enclosed locations and made to be more sanitary and more food court-like under the law. So now basically if you're looking for street food, the most you'll find are probably hawker centres (unless you're talking about rectangular shaped ice cream from a cart!) The food there was really good although I was already really full before I even got there. I swear I've been eating nonstop for the past 2 weeks.

Today we visited the Singapore National Museum. It was the most amazing museum I have ever seen. We were all given little highly technologically advanced machinery draped around our necks with headphones. When we entered each exhibit there would be a number on the floor and we would punch in that number and our little machine would tell us the story and history of whatever it was that we were looking at. It was really cool and really informative. I enjoyed how you could walk around by yourself and listen to what you chose to listen to and linger around the areas that interested you more. It had stories about Singapore's history, as well as a food and fashion exhibit. Afterwards when the class split up, the Taiwan clan (as Graham likes to call us) headed over to Bugis Junction (pronounced: boogus), which is a mall, to walk around. We mainly chose to go there because we love saying the name so much. Bugis. We then found our own way around again over to Little India which is supposedly exactly like a "little India." Oh yea, by the way, I have never been so aware or informed by others that I in fact do look Taiwanese. In fact, no one has ever distinctly said to me YOU LOOK TAIWANESE, but apparently to some of the people in Singapore, I actually DO look Taiwanese, not HK, not Chinese, but Taiwanese. Amandae had said to Fu before that apparently we look more Taiwanese than Lily and Michelle, which I found to be really interesting because I had never gotten that before, and today while we walked through little India, someone sitting there just randomly looked at me and said "Taiwan?" Haha. It's quite interesting. Evidently, many Singaporeans are fascinated with Taiwanese media, much like the way Taiwan is fascinated with Korean media. It's weird. So perhaps people in Singapore are better at knowing what is Taiwanese and what is not? Now that I think of it, I have heard a lot of Jay Chou in Singapore, and I do see S.H.E. on clothing advertisements, and I have also turned on the TV to find Taiwan talk shows playing on some of the channels. I also find it interesting that Singapore barely produces its own products, and that almost everything consumed here is imported from somewhere else. I guess in this way Singapore is able to preserve their cleaner air and water in comparison to other Asian countries.

After Little India we took a bus to Holland Village, an area that consists of many restaurants and bars. We found an Indian restaurant and had dinner there. I'm pooped now. My feet need rest. We're going to the zoo and the night safari tomorrow. I will need to load up on the deet.

Wow...I talked a lot today. Till then.

Durian Land & Red Light District

Ying Kit said that you can read your future from the tea leaves in your cup. There are no tea leaves in my cup. I guess that means I have no future!
I doubt Western cuisine would ever serve up fried fish skin and charge you money for it.
Some sort of fried thing with a cheesy, creamy concoction. It was very yum.
Very soft tofu. mmmm.
Some sort of fish ball with fried fish skin as a crust. I didn't try this one because by this dish I was stuffed already. I've been stuffed for 2 weeks.
This is half of the class eating dinner for Graham's birthday. The restaurant played children's songs that had a happy birthday song. We sang along and I particularly enjoyed the part where the children sing "Happy Birthday dear mmm mmm.....Happy Birthday to you!"
only ONE of the many mounds of durian.
This is a durian.
Us sitting down to eat said durian.


Today during debrief we talked a lot about the migration within Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Singapore. Henry and Graham spoke about how people don't really think of Guangzhou as an immigrant city because most of the immigrants that make up the area are from other regions of China, however that population makes up almost all of Canada's population in total. Singapore on the other hand consists of an obvious array of races, with various different languages being spoken. We also talked about the characteristics of the Vancouver F.O.B versus Singapore's P.R.C. We compared the manners of the various places and discussed how Singaporeans know how to line up and say excuse me when they need to walk past you. Haha. Overall, it is obvious that Singapore is a lot cleaner than the other Asian countries but I can't go as far to say that it is cleaner than Vancouver. I definitely think Vancouver is still at the top of the list in that regard.

If you guys don't know, durian is EVERYWHERE in Singapore. I spoke of the 2 buildings here that are built in the shape of durians earlier. On the buses there are even signs that say NO DURIAN. Haha. Someone already broke the law while I was on the bus though because there was definitely a sudden gust of durian wind at one point. Today was Graham's birthday and we all went to the red light district to eat dinner. After dinner we walked past a durian market with mounds of durian for sale. We bought 3 and sat down to eat the stinky fruit. I had it once before in a fried dessert at dim sum but never fresh. It was extremely creamy and rich. I don't think I could eat too much of it but I definitely think it would be awesome frozen. Everyone says it tastes like ice cream when it's frozen. After the durian feast the profs and Jenn our TA went back to campus while the rest of us decided to do a head count before we headed into the night to get a glimpse of the red light district (if you haven't been up to date on the blog, the red light district is an area where all the prostitutes frequent). Hui Ping informed us prior to take off that we were not to take photos, we were not to separate from the group, and we were not allowed to laugh. we saw a lot of them and Jack told us that sometimes the men treat them to dinner first so sometimes you don't really know when you see them. After a few streets I soon developed hooker-radar. We also saw hotels that charged by the minute, quite expensive I must say. The area we saw tonight is definitely the opposite of the commercial shopping area we were taken the first night. Yes, so that was what we did tonight: eat durian, and go look at prostitutes.

Singapore is a FINE city

This is what Singapore's commercial area at night looks like.
This is my living room at the Visitor's Lodge.
The kitchen
The bedroom
Wow greenery.
and last but not least..... DRINKABLE WATER!!!


Now that I've settled down in Singapore I can go into more detail about what we have done so far. Since we are staying on campus we are beginning to have more structured lecture schedules. We met up yesterday morning at the conference room where we had our orientation with the NUS University Scholars Programme staff where we were offered a banquet style brunch (which was good). We also received a goody bag with cool pens, highlighters and a notebook. Hehe. After lecture we headed over to Singapore's Chinatown. Let me just say that I have never seen a cleaner Chinatown. It did not look like any other Chinatown I had ever seen before. I've seen 2 lizards so far. I'm starting to think that they're kind of cute, that is until they get too close to me. We visited the Chinatown Heritage Museum which was very very interesting. They had rooms showing how people would have lived in the past. Little rooms with uncomfortable looking beds and bamboo fans. There were also dingy and dirty looking kitchens that had recordings of conversations and the sound of woks. There was also a small factory looking room where people used to work sewing clothes and we could hear the sound of the sewing machine. It was all very cool but at the same time kind of creepy. I don't have any photos of the place because I don't think we were allowed to take photos inside. Some of us had dinner at Thai express and afterwards headed over to see the two buildings that were built to look like Durians. There we could see a really nice night view of the water, city and also the Merlion, which is basically a lion with water squirting out of its mouth.

We met earlier this morning for lecture again and made short presentations about what we have all seen so far and our feelings towards the culture, people, pace of life etc etc. We then visited the Chinese Heritage Centre. Again, we weren't allowed photos but it was guided tour and we learned a lot about overseas Chinese and got a glimpse of what it meant to be Chinese overseas. It was quite interesting. Tonight we'll be going to the red light district, in other words the prostitution district, to celebrate Graham's birthday. Haha. I'll let you in about it tomorrow.

Arrival in Singapore

So in case you all are wondering why my Guangzhou trip has been left out of the blog, it is because A) I was half-dead throughout the 2 days while we were there (probably got an average of 4 hours of sleep a day), and B) China doesn't allow blogging!
I didn't realize this until the very last day. The whole time I was thinking that maybe I have too many pictures uploaded on my blog, and that the internet was just too slow to load because it kept timing out, but then towards the end of the Guangzhou trip I finally realized that blogging isn't allowed in China. You can't access myspace, xanga or any other public blogging website. You can't access Wikipedia either. Supposedly the first thing Michelle tried to do was try to search up Taiwan independence and she said that was blocked too. Haha. I may go back and blog what happened in Guangzhou later on but for now I will just say that we had a long day today. We woke up at 5am and left the Canton Landmark Hotel at 5:30am, reached HK airport, and took a charter flight to Singapore. Lily and I got stuck in a different room again! While most of the students are staying at the Temasek Hall dorms, we are staying at the Visitor's Lodge where the teachers are. We have a living room, a kitchen (no stove but we have a microwave, fridge and toaster), washroom, and 2 single beds. Oh, and of course free wireless since we're living on campus at the National University of Singapore. It is a nice change of scenery here. It's much greener than Hong Kong and Guangzhou, and the tap water is safe to drink! On the bus ride here from the airport it actually reminded me of Vancouver because we passed by a beach, and there were trees and grass everywhere. I can hear the crickets outside as we speak and earlier today I saw a gecko run across the grass. I do however hate the mosquitoes. First day here and I've already been attacked with about 5 mosquito bites (at least). Oh how they love foreign blood. I shall write more tomorrow.

Guangzhou

My room is stinky and the internet won't let me load my blog :(

Funny signs and T-shirts

You know you love these "toilets"

"The flushing system may be overloaded and insufficient during the peak period."

I sure don't want to be around during the peak period!

"Wash hand basins are for hand washing only."

What else do you think other people wash in the wash hand basins? Hmm... now that is worth finding out about.
I THINK they are trying to write Mickey and Minnie but somehow it ended up like Neikcy & Imneim????????????? These people are Hweird.
If you can de-code this or tell me what language this is, I'll give you $5
If you can't read this, learn Chinese!!!!

Haha, just kidding. OK...it says Benefits : Easy to have nosebleeds
The last time I checked, nosebleeds were a bad thing? *scratches head*

Tsuen Wan & Chinglish Art Museum

Yesterday the class gathered at the lobby in the morning and took a bus to Tsuen Wan where uncle Graham lived when he first moved to Hong Kong. We visited the Chan Ancestral Hall, which contained various rooms of the old and the new. There were rooms of old furniture like old school bed frames and also things like old fashion steamers and anti-ant pots for storing food. There was also an exhibition room showing the more contemporary aspects of Tsuen Wan and project plans showing what could be done in the future. We also visited a Temple except the smoke was getting too overwhelming so we didn't really stay very long. Afterwards, we all went to eat together as a group and I drank over 1L of liquids. We had a lot of fish, and supposedly it was freshly caught too! Brandy, Henry, Jenn, the girls and I then went to a food market and looked at all the different fruits that were available. We even bought 2lbs of mangosteens and ate them right in the middle of the sidewalk like true Asians. Speaking of immersing ourselves into the HK culture, I have been capable of traveling alone for a few days now. I'm beginning to think I'm more comfortable with finding places here than in Vancouver, and Fu and I have also started to cross the streets when we're not supposed to, like true locals. Haha. Back to the food market, we found a lot of Engrish at the food market and enjoyed the fact that fruit was classified as a "wet good." After the market we all headed over to the Art Museum to see the Chinglish exhibition. It was interesting but also really confusing. I didn't really get half the stuff, but it's art right? I don't think you're supposed to understand it. Michelle read on a sign that was explaining how in 2008 the traditional Chinese used will be changed to simplified in other places other than China. That really upsets me. I have always been anti-simpified, and it's not just because I was taught in traditional, but the fact that everything is about efficiency nowadays that the meanings behind each character and the culture is going to be lost just in order to save the time of writing out a couple more strokes. If Taiwan decides to comply I will be an angry kid for a long long time.




Haha. I don't know what Michelle and Jen are examining. Maybe a special way to do to the Honger pose.
Fu and I on the bus
The class and uncle Graham on the bus
The old and the new
Old kitchen
You've all seen this in Olden day Chinese soaps
mmmm shrimp
Do you think this is beautiful?
Read between the lines

Emilie Simon

Aside from meeting Chow Yun Fat today, the most exciting part of my day was going to the Emilie Simon concert. I have never heard of her up until today but the performance was so great. She is often regarded as the French Bjork, and she wrote Emperor’s Journey which is in the March of the Penguins soundtrack. Every May in Hong Kong is the French festival which I think is really great because throughout the week there are many different performances that allow everyone to experience French culture. I would assume that there is large French population here. Simon’s style is a “unique brand of ‘electro-chanson’ mixing subtle compositions, real-life samples and aerial, child-like vocals.” Her voice is very sweet yet at the same time very strong and powerful. I loved the performance. The drummer made sounds from a large glass bowl of water, and beats from banging the inside of the piano, as well as plucking the piano strings. It was really cool. There was also another guy in a top hat that specialized in the electronic aspect of the music. He took care of all the echoes and made music out of instruments that weren’t even really instruments. At one point he was just blowing out of a tube while the other guy was swinging around some kind of rope that all made its own unique sounds. I ended up taking the Ferry home except this time there weren’t any cockroaches :)

OMG OMG OMG

So.... Lily, Jenn, Michelle, Fu and I walked around Tsim Sha Tsui to find breakfast this morning. We walked by a bunch of places that were either not appealing or over our budget, and by budget I mean $4 cdn. We finally decided to go into a random noodle house because we were all hungry and it seemed decent enough. Jenn asked for tissue and the waitress said that tissue costed $1. HAHA. She then got up and went to the washroom, which she said was outside of the restaurant in some rundown alley or something. When she came back she sat down and said "look at the guy in the back corner. I think that's the guy from Crouching Tiger!" I look at him and think "Who was the guy in Crouching Tiger.. hmm.. but this guy looks extremely like Chow Yun Fat." Then I stared some more and Jenn and I confirmed that we couldn't be wrong. We started pretending to take pictures of Michelle but instead we were trying to zoom past Michelle and take photos of Chow Yun Fat. He looked over and smiled because I guess we were really bad at pretending. After he finished eating we all walked over and got his autograph and he even look individual pictures with us and told us when Pirates was coming out. Hehe. He was really really nice and it was really exciting to see him.


Me and Chow Yun Fat!
The hands that touched Chow Yun Fat's hand. Haha.

Walking with Buddha

The class gathered in the lobby at 9:45 this morning to walk to Kowloon Park to have our first official lecture. We all introduced ourselves and found out about each other’s backgrounds. Many of the Singapore students are of Chinese descent which was really interesting. It was also interesting to find out the difference between Chinese studies and China studies at NUS! After lecture we all walked to a mysterious basement where we ate what else but dim sum. Uncle Graham’s treat! The restaurant was huge. We kept “generously” giving away the food we ordered to the other table whenever we couldn’t finish it :P Henry told us about Chung King Mansion (a supposedly shady 60s shopping area where Brandy urged us NOT to wear flipflops to). 10 of us decided that we would like to visit this shady side of town a few blocks away from the Y, however when we got there we just saw a lot of African people and a lot of Indian people. I wonder why they’re all here and why they’re all gathered over at the Chung King mansion. There weren’t really any interesting stores there so we quickly left and headed for our day trip over to see the big Buddha! We took the Skyrail up to the mountain. It was so gorgeous! When we got to the temple we walked a lot of stairs and we saw so many statues. It has been the most touristy thing I’ve done so far in Hong Kong and it was great. We then caught the last bus back winding through the narrow streets along the mountainside. The bus driver drove REALLY fast. We were all grabbing on the handle for dear life. I think it was comparable to a roller coaster except we’d be thinking about our traveler’s insurance midway. It was so cool when we had to slow down because a herd of cows were standing in the middle of the road! I even saw a hazard sign to watch out for cows. We decided that the bus ride was one of the best parts of the day haha. We then switched over to the ferry which felt like a massage chair the whole way. We all became immersed into the 2 cockroaches that were scrambling about a few rows away. We kept our feet up and tried to scare each other. Some of us even took photos of the cockroaches. You can’t get much more tourist than that. After we got off the ferry we found a random street restaurant and sat down to have a late dinner where we discussed the issues of Hepatitis A and B. A couple of us brought their own chopsticks while others dunked their utensils in hot water. Trevor’s theory though is that if you eat the dirtiest thing as soon as you get there, you’ll be fine the rest of the way. We had another long and full 12 hour+ day. It was great to visit a temple and experience the serenity of it.

Graham: "My face is white, but my heart is yellow."

Jenn: "I like to call myself a pineapple. Brown and spiky on the outside, yellow on the inside."