Christmas in Hong Kong - Dec. 25 - 26

I just got back to the U.S. yesterday and already miss Hong Kong. It's a crazy city with too many people all moving at a pace much too fast. The efficiency of the people is striking, everything is done in fast forward. Customer service is immensely impressive provided with such speed, accuracy, courtesy with at least the appearance of amazing enthusiam. There are greeters at McDonalds and even banks, it's just amazing.

Anyways, I spent a week in Hong Kong just traveling to SZ and back, doing a little shopping, getting over jet lag.

Dec. 21.
Mom and I visited the tallest building in Shen Zhen, really not very tall. But my dad's cousin, auntie Margaret was visiting from Australia, so we decided to take her there for a little look see. The theme of the top floor was SZ-HK, because you can see HK easily from there, which to some Chinese "continentals" is the closest they can get to HK. To be honest, the views sucked because of the smog covering both cities, but I guess it was an "experience."

Dec. 25
Ricky arrived on December 25th, just in time for Christmas and my grandma's birthday party. I picked Ricky up at the airport express in the morning. I was determined to take him to the 'touristy' places in HK because he never had a chance to go the last time he visited. We were too busy planning for the wedding and all. Since Ricky said he had slept well on the plane, we decided to make good use of the afternoon and hit the peak. We took the peak tram up an impossibly steep slope .

Then we walked the "loop" around Victoria Peak to get an aerial view of HK, it is a surprisingly beautiful city, the buildings have such impressive architecture. At 2:30 we met up with my parents for lunch at Cafe Deco.

After lunch mom and dad dropped us of at the Wan Chai convention center. The site of the WTO conference not just a week ago. Now that the delegates have left the city, the place is once again crawling with tourists. It was also the site of the annual video game expo, which turned out to be much for fascinating then I thought. Although we didn't go inside (neither of us are big video gamers) we did see the people who were dressed up as characters of video games congregating in the public space. They posed for reporters and friends alike, wearing otherworldly costumes and wigs. Very entertaining.

That night was my grandma's birthday party, an annual gathering of family and friends that I have been lucky enough to be able to attend almost every year. This year was quite special since Noel, Helen, Heidi and I were all able to make it. In past years, either one person or another would be missing since we now all live in different locations. It was so cool to have all four of us together again, singing karaoke. :)


Dec. 26
Helen, my cousin the architect now living in Sydney, loves to drive. She also happens to know the roads in Hong Kong quite well. Therefore, we drove Ricky, mom and I to Repulse Bay a popular beach and toursit attraction. In Chinese the beach is called "Shallow Water Bay," I have no idea why it is Repulse in english, so unattractive! There is a popular Temple in Repulse Bay with many statues of buddhist gods and such that provides great photo ops for tourists and the like. Going to Repulse Bay brought back memories when I used to go there as a kid, with Helen no less. We'd picnic with our parents, setting up camp on the sand and eating chicken wings in between building sand castles and irrigating canals for sea water. Ahh...the good old days.

After Repulse Bay, we drove to Stanley Market, another popular tourist attraction. Stanley is full of small shops and outlets that foreigners love to wonder through. Unfortunately, Ricky was not into shopping there so it was kinda a bummer for me too. We visited the old Murray House, a government building built back in the colonial days in Central (on HK island), but was moved stone by stone and restored in Stanley so that it's architecture could be preserved. Now Murray House houses several restaurants and the Maritime Museum. The views of the ocean from Stanley are beautiful. The little town also has many cute little al fresco restaurants, built specifically to cater to the foreigners who often live in the area. It's like a little seaside retreat, very special.

We contemplated staying in Stanley for dinner but decided against it since Helen and my mom both had a commitments that night. Interestingly, Ricky and I ended up going to Helen's "commitment", a party at the house of an interior designer, auntie Angel's friend. Auntie Angel called and asked if Ricky and I had plans and we said...ehh, no. So she invited us to go along. It was an interesting crowd...to say the least. It's hard to have too much fun among strangers, but it was fine...good food at least!