Nanjing hen hao!

I know that in my last post, I said that I was going to Shanghai, but it turns out I was only there for a grand total of 4 hours. At midnight the night before/day we left for China, my friend Jenny calls me up (I had just turned off my lights) and says that they want to only go to Nanjing because a weekend is too short of time to visit two cities. Thank goodness I agreed, because Nanjing was so much fun, and there's no way it coulda been done in less time.

Photos can be found here.

The trip was great. I didn't know 3 of the girls very well although I had met two of them before. (Heck, the one girl, Hong, was in two of my classes, but I could never remember her name.) But, like most trips, by the end of it, we were great pals.

I started off the trip a little better than the other girls, because I got by far the most sleep. I probably fell asleep by 1am, (had to get up at 4:15) but according to the other girls, they only got an hour of sleep. (I dunno how they survived.) In fact, Jenny was late because she had stayed up until 3am applying to an internship and slept in. Thahn actually phoned her to wake her up.

Because we had changed our travel plans so late, we ended up having to fly into Shanghai anyways. We immediately travelled to the train station to buy our train tickets to Nanjing. Unfortunately we had to waste 3 hours before our train departed, so we decided to go grab some lunch.

Amusing anecdote: Mel's totally right. The more education we get, the dumber we become. On the plane ride over, we got lunch. In the lunch kit were buns and crackers. I was inspecting our crackers and saw that the date on the package was 2006-01-15! I was like, "Oh my god! They're serving us expired food!" (I never put anything past the Chinese.) The other girls checked out their food too, and we realized that most of it had expired. About 5 minutes later, Marja brilliantly suggested that maybe it was the production date instead.... Duh. At least I wasn't the only one thinking it was bad food.

This is where the fun began. We were trying to find a famous street of good restaurants, but no one knew where it was, and they were too embarassed or nervous about asking for directions. By now, most of you know that my mantra is "Screw it, they'll never see me again." So Mau brushed off her mandarin, got Jenny to repeat the street name we were looking for a few times, and then grabbed the nearest local and asked, "请问，Nanjingshi路在哪里？" (Hmm, not sure if thatwill show up on your browswer, those are chinese characters saying "May I ask where Nanjingshi road is?" Hee! People actually understood me!!! You have no idea how excited I was by that. Of course, when they replied to me, I didn't have a freakin' clue as to what they were saying. Luckily three of the girls in my group are better at mandarin, so they could at least answer me.

We rapidly discovered that me, the white chick, got much better responses from the locals than they, the asians did. It's sad though because whenever the asian girls asked for directions, people were very abrupt or just less polite in general. Very strange. When I asked though, they'd be very kind and would go out of their way to get us to our destination. (Okay, not all the time, but Jenny agreed that I got much better responses.)

We ended up getting to the Nanjingshi Road, but decided not to waste time looking for a restaurant. Instead we backtracked to where we started and I got to ask a guy "Nar you yige haochi de fandian?" (Where had a tasty restaurant?) Hee. He directed us to this big fancy restaurant. The restaurant was funny though. The staff seemed almost shocked to see they had customers. They had been sitting around a big table yapping away, and had to rush around to prepare seats for us. We're guessing that the restaurant was meant for big parties rather than groups of 5. We only got two dishes, because after they brought out the second dish, they informed us they didn't have the ingredients for the others. Doh.

Fast forward to the train ride. Oh my gosh, space is such a valuable commodity. We're still not sure why, but the train was overly full - there weren't enough seats for everyone! I dunno if the people paid tickets to get on the train and stand, or whether the train was overbooked (apparently the train tickets are good for 2 days). Anyways, our little group got seats, but the car was roasting, and there were people squashed in the aisle beside us. (Some chick was sitting on Marja's armrest.)

3 hours later we arrived in Nanjing. All I noticed at first was the cold. It was about 1-5 degrees there. Cold cold cold. Yeah yeah, I know, it's not as bad as Canada, but cold cold cold for people used to Hong Kong. (Heh, right now it's 15 degrees and I'm still thinking it's cold.) One of the girls had made reservations at a hotel right by the train station so we made our way over there. Egads, I just bitched about the cold, and now I'm about to do the same about the heat. We couldn't control the heat in our room - we had to prop the window open and even then, we didn't sleep with blankets on.

Rather than just chilling at the hotel for the rest of the evening, we hopped on the subway and made our way to famous street in Nanjing - Hunan Road. It was a pretty shopping area. Lots of sports stores, and then we found a restaurant alley. There were lots of wacky little chinese statues around and the like. We ended up going to a random little DELICIOUS dumpling restaurant. Unfortunately it was nearly closing time, so we had to rush. (They actually started turning off the lights around us.) That was it for the first night.

Travelling in China is wack. I dunno the reasons, but the next day, our first stop was having to go to a travel agent in Nanjing to pick up our return airplane tickets. We ended up getting to walk around downtown Nanjing hunting down our travel agency (accidentally walked by it into a clinic - eek! I've got SARS now!). We then had to pay for our return tickets (they had been booked by not paid for yet) - very strange.

Anyways, after the travel agency, we hunted down a place for breakfast/lunch. We accidentally found a famous restaurant in our guide book so went there. It was ridiculously expensive, and I don't know enough about chinese food to know the different between normal and good chinese food, so it was a bit of a waste, albeit a delicious waste. :)

After our brunch, we started to walk to the Nanjing Memorial. For those of you who aren't aware, Nanjing was once the capital of China, and in WWII, was the site of a massacre by Japanese troops. The Memorial was the only thing on my wishlist that I really wanted to visit, so that's why it was our first stop. This is when the madness of public transit began. To make a long story short, we walked half way to the memorial before finding out it was a long freakin' walk. We then got on 3 wrong buses, had to backtrack several times and so on. We did make it though. Barely. And poorer for all the wastes bus fares. :(

The Memorial was a bit anti-climatic for me. I was expecting it to be more like a museum, but it was much more artsy and the like. They had all kinds of "representations" and stuff like that. (e.g. they mimicked a mass grave by spreading around a bunch of white washed stones and had barren trees sticking out it.) It wasn't terribly impartial (a lot of the plaques had sentences like, "Who could imagine such cruelty existed?!" which is an understandable question, but rather impartial nonetheless). There were actual skeletons on display in one section, but it failed to drive home the gravity of the massacres that occurred. They also did have a more informational section, but I only got to see about half of it because the other girls decided they wanted to leave. I don't blame them - it was a very sad and depressing display. Which was the point of course. Still.

We then managed to make our way back to downtown in an effort to find a place known as Confuscius's Temple. (Why can't I spell Confucious correctly???) We felt silly asking for directions, because all the stores/shops around us were called "Confucious Temple something something shop." We ended up arriving in this great little shopping area - very chinesish. We walked around for about 20 minutes looking for the actual temple before Thahn finally tackled a local and asked for directions. Queue stupid traveller moment: Turns out that "Confuscious' Temple IS a shopping district and that there is NO temple there. Whoops!

We chilled at "Fu Zi Miao" (Confuscious' Temple) for a bit longer, then decided to wander around the area some more. To shorten the story, we wandered around long enough to realize there were no museums open anymore and get lost. We wandered around random streets and ended up BACK at Confuscious' Temple. Whoops. This time there were pretty lights on because it was night. Shiny Chinese lights make me happy no matter where or when. We ended up finding another branch of the dumpling restaurant we ate at the night before and filled ourselves back up. So yummy!

Amusing anecdote: Chinese people are horribly bad for cutting in front of you in any kind of line. At Confuscious' Temple, the main source of bathrooms were at either KFC or McDonald's. Thahn and I went to a KFC to use their toilets. Unfortunately there was like a 15 person line for the 2 squatters. Anyways, when Thahn and I were about 4 people from the toilets, two chicks squeezed through the line and pretended they needed to use the sinks. They then stood there, looking for areas to cut the line. I told Thahn, "There ain't no way those biatches are cutting front of me." I then practically started humping the lady in front of me in line in an attempt to maintain my spot in line. :) Thahn also grabbed ahold of my purse so they couldn't squeeze between her and I. We made it to the toilets safely, but the girls had managed to squeeze in right behind Thahn and I. And to top things off, Thahn deliberately took her time in the toilet in order to piss off the one chick who bugged us the most. LOL.

Another amusing anecdote: While at Fu Zi Miao, I wanted to buy a lollipop. I walked up to a vendor and asked them in chinese how much it cost. They just stared at me for a second and then started beckoning for a co-worker to come and help talk to me. I was like, "Why the heck can't they understand me??? I spoke in Chinese!" That's when I realized, I spoke in Cantonese - not mandarin! LOL. Thahn, a cantonese speaker just about died laughing when she heard me. Thanks to my goofup though, I got the lollipop for 2RMB cheaper. :)

The next day we got up extra early (well, we tried, but with 5 girls, that's a huge feat - we were only running 20 minutes behind schedule though). We then got instructions on how to get to the Ming Tombs and Sun-Yat Sen's mausoleum... Queue more confusion and getting lost. We managed to get on 4 different buses, and kept getting off at the wrong stops. Well, the last bus we got on actually dropped us off in the right area, but some passerby gave us bad directions and we had to walk down the road instead. (Actually, when the person realized that we HAD been at the right area, he ran down the road after us and offered to show us back to where we wanted to go - but we were closer to another sight instead.)

We ended up going to Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum and some random tombs. The Mausoleum was just a big-ass set of stairs with a single building at the top. Very frustrating to find that out AFTER you climbed up them. But it was still super pretty, because the mausoleum was built on a mountain, so you could see Nanjing in the distance.

As for the tombs, I was a bit lost at them, because I had no idea about who lived there, what they did, or even their name. I'm just calling them the Ming tomb because I vaguely remember that name from something. The tomb was pretty with lots of random buildings and the like. Nothing terribly special about it though. (Although a group of random highschool girls said hi to me just for kicks.)

Amusing anecdote: Hong and I had walked far ahead of the group. We were trying to find the actual tombs (in Beijing, we actually got to see them tombs). She and I saw a path leading up the hill and a sign saying it was the Treasure Mound and that beneath the hill was the tomb. Well, foolishly we though that by walking up the path, we'd find something to see. 30 minutes later, and a very out-of-breath-Mau later, we finally stopped and realized the path merely walked through the forest along the stone wall surrounding the tomb. I promptly refused to walk any further. (Turns out Marja, Jenny, and Thahn had stopped at the bottom of the hill and were waiting for us.)

Finally we returned to the city centre and had another yummy meal (although the fish dish nearly killed us because of all the bones in it!). That was the last of our adventure. We promptly hopped on a bus to grab our plane and returned to Hong Kong. One amusing anecdote from the trip is my return into HK. While I was in line to get my passport stamped, the chick couldn't find the right stamp. I also peeked through the glass and saw it, so I pointed at it and told her in cantonese "This one" and she started laughing. That's it.

The last thing I need to say is egads! I need to apply for a new passport soon! I've only got 3 blank pages left in my passport!!! :( And I looked up the info on the net, and I can't get extra pages added - I *have* to apply for a new passport. That's a biatch. :( (HK gives students a huge half-page stamp everytime you enter and leave the country.)

Seeing is believing.

Holy crap, I knew I had lost weight, but I didn't realize how much it showed until I started looking through some old pictures.

Here's one photo of me taken during early September during my orientation week.


And here's one taken of me during the past weekend.


I have dimples! Dude! Forgot those existed. Ahem. Okay, enough with the self-pimping.

FYI, my friends bought the tickets for Shanghai today. We're flying out Friday at 9:45am and coming back on Sunday at 9:25pm. (Mom, don't call me unless I don't contact you by Tuesday. :P) The tickets only cost $1040RMB... meaning about $150CAD. I love travelling in Asia!

Professor Maureen

Wow. I never realized just how difficult teaching is! I suddenly have a lot more respect for my professors and all the other teachers I've ever had! The Zengcheng teaching trip was an amazing learning experience.

There were 9 of us going on the teaching trip - 5 of us were white, and the other four were Chinese/Japanese. The bus ride to Xintan (the first city we taught at) was miserable because it's really cold here right now, and they were blasting the air conditioning. We had slight issues upon reaching Xintan because we couldn't find the van that was supposed to meet us. Half an hour (and one coffee at a cafe) later, we found out that our escort had been waiting for us at the hotel for the entire time. Whoops.

Anyways, I was under the impression that we'd be given some instructions or some kind of idea as to how good these children's English was. Ha. Not. The next thing I know, we drive into a school full of 14/15 year olds and are told to go and teach.

David (another Canadian) and I, teamed up and braved the first class together. It was a painful experience. It wasn't too horrible, but we hadn't planned anything to do, and we assumed these kids had semi-decent language skills.... Which they did, but not at the same time. What I'm trying to say is that the kids knew all kinds of English words like "Important" and animal names, but they couldn't form sentences or understand the games we wanted them to play. It was strange though, everytime I'd emphasize a word, they'd repeat it after me. You could totally see the memorizing techniques the chinese use in their schools.

Luckily the first class only lasted an hour, so afterwards we met up with our friends and exchanged stories on what we had just taught and whatnot. Sadly it sounded like all the other classes had gone better than ours, but oh well. The second class went a lot better. We played games like Hangman and charades - I had prepared some flash cards with actions/animals/jobs on them, and we made the kids get up and act them out.

Thankfully due to all the prior delays, we were running behind, so we only had to teach the two classes and then got to flee. We were given time to go check into our hotel (which was pretty swank for a chinese hotel!), go for dinner, and then go shopping. (We accidentally lost one of our chinese guys when we went shopping - we couldn't find him for an hour but finally did manage to run into him again.)

I'm happy to report that the next day's teaching went much much better. We had had a meeting the night before to brainstorm ideas of what to cover/teach the next day. So this time we had a list of ideas to pull from. Another bonus was that this time we divided into groups of three rather than pairs, because we were teaching younger students this time (7/8 year olds) and figured it would be better to have a chinese speaker in each group.

We played silly games like "Heads and shoulders knees and toes" (adding more vocabularly as we went), taught them "Twinkle twinkle little star" (sadly, David, Minnie and I ALL forgot the words to the song and had to make them up quickly), "Row Row Row your Boat," hangman and some other games. It was a lot of fun and we were able to keep their attention for longer. David had also brought some pictures of animals, so we quizzed them on that.

In our second class, it was a bit more difficult to keep control of the kids. They were super hyper (note to self: make a suggestion that candy ISN'T a good reward for answering questions). Plus there was one boy in the front who you could tell was the class bully. He kept yelling at everyone and none of the girls would answer questions because of him. We had to start answering by rows because he was being obnoxious.

So even though we had a rocky start on the first day, I'm pleased to say I had a good time. After our classes, we would go out into the hallway and snap a gazillion photos of the cute kids. They were constantly jumping into the photos, each trying to get closer and closer to the camera. I managed to pawn off a bunch of my canadian handouts on the local teacher, who informed the children (all of them were fighting over the things) the people with the next highest marks could have them.

Please do not send any more Canadian paraphernalia. I appreciate getting it, but I haven't met new people to give this stuff away too! LOL, I have a drawer full of it still even though I've given a lot of it away.

After most of the kids had left, we descended down into the school's courtyard and chilled for a bit. A few of the young girls had stayed around and asked to take some photos with us before the boys came. LOL, so we obliged happily. They were so CUTE!

I then astounded a few of them by asking them where the washroom was in chinese. That's when I confirmed that no, my chinese is NOT as a good as a small child's. LOL. They were chattering away to me in mandarin and I could only catch a few words here and there. They kept giggling whenever I told them I didn't understand. LOL. So CUTE!

We ended up chilling around the city for awhile which was good because Zengcheng is very NON-touristy - people kept staring at us while they passed us. It was neat to see a truly chinese city with little to no English. Plus we got to walk around little market areas (kind of like a rouger/tougher Mong Kok).

Our bus ride back was a bit more hectic because first, the roads were under MAJOR construction. I felt like we needed a freakin' 4x4 because we were bouncing around so much. Plus we got lost so it took us a lot longer to find out bus. Secondly, the german guy in our group lost his bus ticket so he did nothing but gripe about it on the way back. You lost the ticket dude, so pay the price and shaddup. Argh.

And of course, how could I go to China and NOT return with a bathroom story? Zengcheng had the most TERRIFYING bathrooms (View 1, View 2) I had ever seen. I've seen the hole in the ground variety before, doesn't bother me. It smelled bad, but not as bad as places like bus stations or immigration. What did weird me out was the whole "no walls/no doors" policy. Plus the little partitions that were there, were so short that even if I went into them, I had to squat before taking down my pants. Too funny. Plus, the bathroom at the second day's school was even scarier. Same concept (no doors/walls/hole, etc.), but this one had flies all over it. The wall was covered with them. So scary!!!!!!

Oh, and one more note! I'm going to Shanghai this weekend! (Yeah, it surprised me too!) Last Monday I ran into a girl I went to Beijing with, and she mentioned that she was going to Shanghai with some of her friends and invited me along. And today, she told me they were going this weekend, so I said I'd go. Yay! I'll only be gone for 4 days, but I think that'll be more than enough for Shanghai.

Catch ya on the flipside!

Kudos to you, non-native speaker!

I've been meaning to talk more about the chinese language and what I've learned so far... The only thing I can say is that now that I know how the chinese language works, I'm utterly amazed that people can learn English. Chinese is so simple compared to our language. Now, whenever I hear someone who can speak semi-fluent English, my jaw feels like dropping with awe.

The most difficult thing about chinese for us non-native speakers is the grammar. The rest is just memorizing tones and words. You see, the order of words can make a huge difference in what a sentence means. For example, one evening, I asked Peggy (in Chinese) "Want to eat dinner with me?" but I accidentally mixed up the order of the words and it came out as, "Want to eat dinner and me?" Very amusing.

Another problem with the order of words in Chinese is the use of time words. It's difficult to get into the habit of the chinese way - you have to put the time word at the BEGINNING of the sentence. So a direct translation of a sentence would be "1:30 I have class." It's both amusing and frustrating to tell someone something in Chinese, only to get to the end of your sentence and realize that you forgot the timeword, thus making the entire sentence intelligible.

One of the best things about Chinese are the verbs. There is no conjugation of verbs at all. It's fantastic. Therefore there's no memorization of different forms of the same verb. Wanna make something past tense? Easy, just toss the word "le" on the end of the verb and bada-bing-bang-boom, you're done.

I think I'm done on that topic.

I haven't done much in the past few days - I've been trying to get on top of my readings, but I think I'm just gonna have to surrender, admit defeat, and start reading the current ones. I'm okay reading while I'm exercising, but in my room or anywhere else, I just wanna fall asleep. As a bonus though, I have learned more this term than I did last term - that's a definite plus - so rest assured that I'm actually enjoying this school term.

Now, although I haven't done much in the last few days, the next few should be different. I have a short presentation in a tutorial tomorrow, then on Friday, there's a Chinese Language Centre Party thingie, and finally, on Saturday, I'm headed into China for a Teaching in China programme.

I'm both excited and nervous about this Teaching programme - it's just an overnight trip with maybe a max of 6 hours of teaching, but it's still kinda intimidating to be thrust in front of a class of approximately 40-60 kids (little kids) and be asked to teach them English games/songs. (This is an amusing admission considering how long I've been thinking about going to Asia and teaching English.) So does anyone have any ideas about songs/games I can teach? They've suggested "Yanky Doodle," and I was thinking about singing "Head and shoulders, knees and toes." Send ideas!

Anyways, I shall leave off with this final message. SUCKERS! It's a humidex of 29 degrees right now! Mwhahahahahaaa!

Another snack party, another gorging

I'm going to explode. These snack parties are going to be the death of me - everytime I go, I eat more than I knew my stomach could ever hold. I feel like dying right now. And each time there's a party, the amount of food seems to increase exponentially.

The party itself was a blast. Lots of people showed up - I got to meet some people from Singapore. They were an ego boost because they fell head over heels for the chocolate coconut drops I made. (Thanks mom for the recipe!) They actually grabbed my phone number so they could obtain the recipe. Ha ha. Rock on.

The food was awesome but also very strange. I have to admit, that while I'm completely cool with trying different types of food (meal-wise), I have a harder time trying out actual snack foods - I just can't pick up some things and think, "Mmm, I feel like something to munch on - hand me some of that dried eel!" (The eel skin is actually mine - Jen gave it to me as a gift from her trip to Canton. And come to think of it, I actually haven't eaten any of it yet. Whoops.

Other weird foods of the evening included a Finnish fish sauce for bread - it was like a sweet mustard with bits of cooked fish floating around in it. I really liked the taste, but the whole fish thing threw me off - all my cultural condition could not be overcome, and that makes me sad. Let's see, there was also lots of beancurd snacks (a fave of Taiwan it seems) - I like the beancurd stuff, but once again, it's just a bit strange to think of it as a snack. There were also a few Belgium goodies such as duck liver on crackers - very tasty.

So this is me, saying goodnight now. Toodles!



Pics from the party are here.

P.S.
Mom? Dad? I need hands on cooking lessons on how to make beef stew. My attempt to make some tonight turned out like crap!

Beach fun

I guess it's time I update my blog with the info on my Lantau island trip. As mentioned before, Lantau Island is Hong Kong's second largest island (the first being HK island itself). The trip was an absolute blast, I only knew about 3 of the 10 people who went, but all of us had a great time together anyways.

The thing I love about Hong Kong, and Asia in general, is the transportation system. You don't need to reserve your tickets ahead of time or really plan your way of getting anywhere - you just appear at the pier/bus station/whatever and hop on the first available transport because there's so many. (e.g. in Guilin, China, there were about 3 or 4 buses all headed to Yangshuo and they just chilled until they had enough people - and even then, the bus would drive slowly through the city with people yelling out the bus' destination and random walkerbys hopping on.)

Anyways, all 10 people who would be crashing at the apartment managed to make it to the Tsim Sha Tsui pier with no problem. As mentioned, I only knew about 3 of the people really well, and maybe 2 of the others by sight only. There ended up being 3 Japanese guys, a Hong Konger, an American, a German, a Mainlander, a Taiwanese, and 2 Canadians. Quite the mix if I do say so myself.

After a quick trip on the ferry, we arrived in our destination, Mui Wo. First impression? So pretty! It was a beautiful day - we're talking beaches with beautiful blue water and mountains in the background. So amazing. The fact that it was 22 degrees also helped. :) (Feel free to pelt with snowballs right now.)

While we were waiting for our checkin time to roll around, we rented some bikes and began to explore the surroundings. There were lots of BBQs going on. I think the most surprising thing we encountered though were the white people. I began to feel like I was back in Canada - they had invaded the place! I don't know why Mui Wo would be so popular among the Westerners, but it was amusing nonetheless.

The biking went well until I started biking up a small incline... Upon which I then had to get off my bike and start pushing it. 5 minutes later, I gave up (I was in the lead) and that's when we found out the trail did nothing by go straight up. Queue the quick turnaround and riding back in the opposite direction. We got advice from a local to go check out a more rural village in the opposite direction. So we started biking in that direction, but had to stop in the middle of a bridge. Apparently the village had forgotten to post their "cattle crossing" sign. There were about 5 or 6 cows just chilling in the middle of the road, or walking around the planters eating the city-planted shrubbery. Very amusing. Off we go again.

The rural village wasn't as rural as the ones I've seen in China - it was just an older village. It was still fun to bike around though because it had very narrow paths. We encountered a hiking trail near the back of the village and since half the group wanted to go up the trail, but the other half didn't, we split up. I and 3 others started to go up the trail because apparently there was a great view up there. Well, half an hour and no view later, we finally called it quits and descended again. (The top of the trail merely melted into a BBQ/camp site and other trails - and all the views were completely blocked by trees/bushes.) The four of us ended up biking further into the various villages and had a great time just sight seeing.

We finally met up with the rest of our group so we could go for a dinner at an apparently famous beach/restaurant. We hopped on a bus and made our way to a beautiful fine grain beach. Of course, it was night by now, so we couldn't see much, but it was still pretty. All the restaurants were set up partially inside the restaurants, and partially on the beach itself. Very chic. We ended up sitting at The Stoep, a South African/Mediterranean restaurant. Sadly everything was expensive, but at the same time not. It was dirt cheap by Canadian standards, but middle priced for Hong Kong. I did end up ordering an amazing piece of lasagna though. Delish!

Prior to the meal though, the Japanese fellow sitting across from me was falling asleep. I'll admit that at first I was really annoyed - he seemed to be acting really rude - not making any attempts to make conversation or anything. But it turns out he was feeling really ill. Minnie actually asked the restaurant owner if he could sleep for awhile in her house. (I swear, the people over here are willing to ask the weirdest things, and expect to get them!) And by god! The restaurant owner said yes! So Shouzo went upstairs and crashed. We suspect that he was suffering from dehydration or sunstroke. Either that or some weird tropical disease that's slowly incubating in my body as I type.

After dinner we returned back to Mui Wo whereupon our little group separated. 7 of us decided to go buy some alcohol and go to the beach for some fun. I ended buying a single wine cooler and a huge bottle of cheap strawberry wine. (No worries, it was only 7% alcohol. :P) The beach was So. Much. Fun. We sat at a picnic table and played the Hong Kong version of spoons, had a Canada vs. Japan battle (Canada won of course), and played some drinking games. We ended off the night by harassing some local Hong Kong girls with our German guy.

The next day, we waited until noon for some of our other friends to reach the island. They hadn't wanted to/couldn't crash with us at the apartment, so they came this day instead. Upon the arrival, we returned our bikes and boarded another bus, this time, headed to Ngong Ping - home of the Big Buddha. Since it's still the Chinese New Year, the Buddha was insanely busy. Thank goodness I had already been there once before - I could escape having to walk up the steps with a guilt-free conscience. Therefore those of us who didn't want to climb up went for a vegetarian lunch offered by the monastary while everyone else went to check out the temples/buddha.

After lunch our group gathered together again for a walk to the "Wisdom Path." Apparently some famous guy read a sutra of some sort, was blown away by it, and felt the need to construct a giant figure 8 out of wooden posts in the middle of the countryside. Some people need hobbies. Each post had a part of the sutra written on it, so it was cool, but otherwise unremarkable. That's when Scott, the American began asking if we wanted to go for a hike. There were quite a few hiking trails along the edge of the mountains. I wanted to go, but I didn't at the same time. It was about 4:30pm by this time, none of us had much water, I was lugging around my purse and whatnot... But at the last minute, I caved and ran along the trail after them.

It was such a pleasant change to be in the middle of nowhere, rather than be surrounded by people and buildings. I just wish that the middle of nowhere I went to had less stairs. The entire frickin' trail was like a StairClimber - up and up and up. Plus we were racing against time - we wanted to get to the top and try to descend before the sun set because there were no lights. I'm sad to say that I only made it a bit more than half way up the trail before I finally caved. I told the group that I would go back down the trail and wait for them there. Thankfully I wasn't the only one who's legs were crying for mercy. The other chick also decided to join me.

I also had the great pleasure of watching the sun set over the mountains. I think this was the first time I had EVER seen the sun truly set. Usually it's marred by trees or buildings or something similar. This time, it slowly sank behind a layer of smog/fog/mist. It was so amazingly beautiful because the valleys in front of us were also filled with a mist that was moving really quickly and drifting along. I've never seen anything like it.

Vris (no, that's no a typo) and I ended up waiting for the boys at the bus station, and it's a good thing we did. It turns out we had missed the last bus back to Mui Wo. Luckily, the people actually arranged a bus just for us. So nice! That's probably the best customer service I've seen here in Hong Kong! (I find that customer service skills are considerably lacking when compared to North American standards.)

We finally made it back to the apartment just in time to help light the BBQs for dinner. I dunno if it's because we're urban dwellers, or whether our charcoal was crap, but it took us forever to light the damn BBQs because they're campire style - not a barbeque in the North American sense. However, after we got everything burning nicely, the feast began. So. Much. Food! Oh my gosh, I don't know how we managed to eat everything. It was crazy though.

After the gorging was complete (seriously, it can't be described by any other way), the beach party group decided to try to recreate the previous night's festivities. I don't think that we succeeded very well, but Lukas certainly put a lot of effort into it. He and I had bought 2 Smirnoff's each from 7/11 and while waiting for our other pals, he managed to finish one entire bottle while I had only made a quarter of the way through my own Smirnoff. I ended up running back in and buying another 2 bottles for he and I, and I swear, he managed to down the second bottle while we were waiting. He's German, maybe all those Oktoberfests have helped him to build a resistance.

Since the beach was super windy, we ended up taking shelter in a small wooded bench area. Unfortunately, talk alone wasn't keeping us awake. (I sold Lukas my 3rd Smirnoff because I was having a hard enough time getting through my first drink.) We ended up going back to the apartment and having another failed attempt at a roof party. We fled the wind and went back to Vris' and my room and played cards instead. I taught them how to play Dragon (one of my new fave card games from Taiwan), and 99. Lots of fun ensued. We didn't end up crashing until around 3 or 4am.

Our final day was spent by going for a dim sum breakfast. I think this was one of the best dim sums I've gone to since arriving in Hong Kong. We ate so much and had a fun time, because most of us didn't know what the hell we were eating. Sadly, after the meal, there wasn't much to do except wait for the ferry. Again it was a beautiful day - I sat on the edge of the pier and chilled in the sun.

When we arrived back on HK island, our group decided to make one last trip - this time up into the IFC building - the International Finance Centre - the tallest building in Hong Kong. Very cool. I didn't even know we could go in there! We had to register and get visitor passes and the whole caboodle. Unfortunately we could only get to the 55th floor where the Hong Kong Monetary Authority had a small museum thingie, but it was cool nonetheless.

Thus ended my trip to Lantau Island. It was a great time with a diverse group!

P.S.
For those of you who were wondering, alcohol can be purchased at all convenience stores/grocery stores, and yes, you are allowed to carry it around in public.

Grocery bill

For amusement, I've listed my grocery bill below. All prices shown are in Canadian dollars.

• 20 rolls of toilet paper - $3.80 (the cheapest available)
  
• A dozen eggs - $2.79 (not the cheapest ones either)
  
• 1.5 pounds of frozen chicken - $2.94
  
• 3 cobs of corn - $1.31
  
• A loaf of whole wheat bread - $1.34
  
• 1 litre of milk - $2.49 (frickin' expensive no matter where you buy it)
  
• 6 bananas - $0.91
  
• 4 cups of yogurt - $3.48 (not the cheapest)
  

Therefore my grand total for groceries was only around $19CAD. If I were to buy veggies, it would still be cheap - the only reason my bill was this high was cause of the bread and milk products.