Great Marketing Idea!

"Say, I have a great idea to promote our Filipino party! We'll use the letters KKK to spell out a zippy slogan."

"Excellent idea. I see no problems with that at all and will promptly order the sign to be made!"

Stanley

In Korea, our bathrooms always had showers that were attached to the sink. There was no stand alone stall or curtain to separate the space. We dealt with it and we got used to it. On Saturday morning, when we woke up in our shoebox sized room at Chungking Mansion the shower situation was similar. Except at this place the shower wasn't attached above the sink, it was above the toilet. We had fun trying to work the angles of the shower nozzle so that we didn't have to wash while sitting directly on the toilet, and then it was time to check out for the day and leave our mansion behind.

We decided to drop our backpacks off in a locker at Sheung Wan station where we'd catch the ferry back to China at the end of the day anyway. After getting rid of our bags, we got a decent breakfast at "Oliver's Super Sandwiches" in the Shun Tak Center before catching a bus from Central to Stanley, our destination for the day.

The bus was a double decker, and we sat on top. It was cool to travel around Hong Kong by bus instead of by subway for once, because we got to see some different parts of the city and map things out in our heads a little better. After we left the city, the trip became very hilly and steep. Usually, we were driving along cliff sides looking straight down at beautiful beaches and bright blue water. There's something about being in a double decker bus, though, that makes you feel like you're constantly going to die. It always feels like the bus is about to tip over and roll down the cliff. We also hit trees all along the drive- it's a wonder there's any leaves left!

The bus let us off at Stanley Plaza. We weren't sure if it was the right stop, but some nice ladies from the NY Times told us it was and how to find the market we were looking for. The plaza is a compact, 4 or 5 story shopping mall and this was the view from where we were let off. How un-Hong Kong does that look? It was a really pretty area. We shopped in the plaza for a little while- there's a great import store there called Taste- and then walked down to Stanley Market.

The market is a decent sized series of alley ways and small shops selling the regular HK market stuff: magnets, paintings, bags and t-shirts. I thought this was probably the suckiest market we've visited. Every stall seemed to be selling the same things, the products seemed outdated, like they'd been gathering dust in Stanley for years, and the prices were really high. There wasn't a single item I was interested in or thought "oh that's a fair price". Skip it!

The one noteworthy product in Stanley market.

After 15 minutes of looking around the market we decided to walk over to St. Stephen's Beach. It's about a 10 minute walk along the coast from the market. We'd both completely forgot and left our bathing suits in the locker back in Sheung Wan so we couldn't swim. Even though the water wasn't that warm, it was swimmable, and the temperature was close to 30. It would have been nice!

Another shot of the beach. As you can see, other than a few other people we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Even if you aren't swimming, there's something relaxing about being on the beach. We loved it.

There is exactly one restaurant on the beach, The Lanai, and it actually turned out to have great food. I got a big plate of nachos with guac and sour cream with a beer for $10 and Mel got fish and chips. Sitting in the sun, on a beach, drinking a beer- this is pretty far from October in Canada!

I took this picture on our walk back from the beach towards the plaza. Hong Kong, as well as where we live in Shenzhen, is so green and tropical. We love it. Sometimes it just feels like you're living in the jungle, especially when there are proper vines hanging from the trees!

We passed by a random group of people dancing along to Gangnam Style...

This is the "strip" in Stanley. The market in the alleyways between those buildings and there's a bunch of restaurants along the water too.

There was a trail that led to a park and a temple, but on our way to the temple we had to beware of snake. When you see a sign like this, everything looks like snake! In the 2 minute walk we passed by a hose, hundreds of long, dangling ferns, and dozens of exposed tree roots that were extremely snake-like.

An offering left at the temple.

Inside the temple.

After picking some things up at the Taste import store, we caught an express bus back to Causeway Bay so we could go to the Jason's Supermarket we'd seen yesterday.

We went to Jason's and got salted caramel mochas at the Starbucks in the basement. They had wifi and we had some extra time, so I decided to search for something to do. I wanted to see if there were any Daisos in Hong Kong and, if so, were there any close by? Daiso is an awesome Japanese dollar store we used to shop at all the time in Korea and Taiwan. They really have everything you're looking for, all the stuff that's so overpriced in China. Turns out, Daiso in Hong Kong is called "Jusco Living Plaza" and there was one about 10 minutes from us. Sweet! Off we went...

They had the neck gel we were looking for.

Men's lipstick.

Mat for earthquake... like I said, everything you need! We bought a bunch of stuff- a bike tire pump, some wine glasses, tea lights and a tea light burner... lots of good stuff.

We also bought a freezer bag so we could get some cold items from Jason's and bring them back to China without too much meltage. We got some chicken pies, potato skins, guacamole, and lots of cheap British chips and chocolate that we can't get in Shenzhen. I love being able to get cheap British imports from Hong Kong- we really like Haribo candies, Cadbury chocolate and Walker's crisps! Also, something we noticed that was kind of funny, a lot of the health claims on the American products were blacked out with marker. If your health claims don't fly in a Chinese country, you know you have issues!

We went back to Sheung Wan to collect our backpacks from the locker. One thing I have to post about that is so annoying at these lockers is that they only take $10 HKD coins and you need like 6 of them to use a locker for a day. So, basically, no one has that many $10 coins and you will always need change. Well, a nearby newsstand has taken advantage of this. Although there is a change machine there, it is always mysteriously unplugged (we've used these lockers 3 times over a 2 month period and it's alwayyyyys unplugged) and the only place to get change on the whole floor is the newsstand and they always make you buy something. I have bought so much gum from that stupid store.

We were a little freaked as we boarded our ferry back to Shenzhen: the boat was rocking up and down so much you'd think it was sitting in white water rapids (the water was nearly still). I can't explain the science behind it, but when we started moving the boat leveled out and it was a good trip. It was time to pig out on all our HK goodies and pet our cat. And the best part of all: it was only Saturday- we still had a whole full day off to be lazy and hang out before school started for the week.

High Tea at the Peninsula & a Night at the Mansion

Last week was sort of a different week for us at school, because we had parent-teacher conferences. After school on Wednesday, we had conferences until 6:15pm and then Thursday was an extended day as well, 8:00-6:15. It was crazy busy, because I'd used my preps earlier in the week to prepare for the conferences so now I needed to use the breaks between conferences to plan lessons for the next week and copy/make things (and my assistant is off for 2 weeks because she's getting married). Unfortunately, I had a LOT of conferences (I have the biggest class at my campus) with only like 15-30 minute breaks in between to get things done. I would have had a lot more prep time, but our school stuck a big ol' meeting in the middle of the day sucking away even more planning time from us too. They have a habit of noticing any chance that you might have for some free time and they fill it with meetings and other crap that has nothing at all to do with your class or lesson planning. Time abuse!

Anyway, my conferences went well! My parents are really cool and were very complimentary. I even had two (TWO!) ask me to consider teaching second grade next year so their child could keep me as a teacher. That's what makes it worth it, y'all. So, because we worked extended days Wednesday and Thursday, we got Friday off. We figured this would be a good chance to do something that is normally too busy to do on a weekend, which is usually our only sightseeing time. Last month, on a Saturday, we'd tried to go to high tea at Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel only to wait 90 minutes in a non-moving line before giving up. We decided to give it another shot today.

I used Wimdu, an apartment booking website, to get us a decent and cheapish place when Jason was here visiting, so I used them again to book us a place for Friday night. There wasn't as much to choose from this time, but I eventually settled on this place with bunkbeds for like $72. It's expensive to stay in HK! So, after I booked it, I emailed the host twice and there was no response. Totally different from my first Wimdu experience. On Friday morning, when I still hadn't heard from her, I called her long-distance via Skype and she answered. The directions she gave me were to a different address from the one we booked at (nearby, but different) which should have been a warning sign, but we agreed to meet there at 1:15 anyway because we needed a place to stay.

So we take the ferry over, and arrive at this place for 1:15. It looks sketchy as hell, but we're not that precious, so we knock on the door. No answer. We wait around. No one comes. Ring the bell again... no one. So, now we have to find a payphone to call this woman, and we eventually find one in the metro station. She says, "oh yeah, yeah, I'll be there in 5 minutes".

We go back to find this doofus hanging around outside the place; he's waiting for us. He immediately starts yelling at us. "Why you only book 1 day in advance? Double booked! No room!" The person who accepted our Wimdu request (the host must choose "accept" or "refuse" and THEY CHOSE ACCEPT), didn't contact us, didn't reply to emails, didn't even show up at the agreed time and now they're yelling at us? I yelled back. He says, maybe he can put us in a room on some other floor- a Korean hotel, he called it. I don't know why we followed him, but we did...

...into this elevator that had plywood walls and floor! And a foam ceiling! What the hell? Clearly, we were about to die.

So he leads us to this hallway, and says he has a room down here but has to go find the key.

While he's gone, we notice this scratched into the wall. The building we were in was super ghetto, like Harlem-the-projects-ghetto, and the guy was an ass so we decided to leave. We ran into him as we were getting into the plywood elevator and I made sure I told him off once more (this time in Korean, since he'd mentioned he was Korean) before leaving.

Hong Kong is annoying. And here's another reason why: our phones don't work. Yeah, we could buy a Hong Kong sim card for $20 and use it once, but why can't we just use our Chinese sims and pay roaming charges? In Hong Kong we can't get any reception on our phones. So, when we needed to call the Wimdu ho, it didn't work. We knew our friends were staying in a nearby guesthouse so we wanted to talk to them buttttt our phones don't work. My friend had invited us out for drinks that night, buttttt my phone didn't work. I brought my ipod, so I could at least use wifi to get in touch with people, but there's hardly any free wifi anywhere in HK. Plus, when we finally did find a wifi connection, facebook made my stupid ipod stupid crash every single time I tried to load it.

We'd already wasted so much time, so we decided to just get on with the day and head over to the Peninsula Hotel for tea. It's pretty fancy... I mean, I had to take off my backwards ballcap. There was a line again, but after about 20 minutes we got a table. AND they had wifi.

The high tea set comes on a 3-tiered tray. On the bottom, there's freshly baked raisin scones, in the middle are some finger sandwiches, tarts and salmon, and on the top there was an amazing assortment of raspberry things. All this with 2 cups of coffee for only $70. The place was pretty posh. They actually had hot dogs on the menu, for some reason, and they were $25.

There was an orchestra playing on the balcony. They played the Flinstones theme at one point, which was to my liking.

Being a fancy bitch.

The only thing that didn't get eaten: the cucumber sandwich.

We tried to enjoy ourselves, but the fact that we had nowhere to stay for the night did loom over us while we ate. Also, it started pouring and we hadn't brought an umbrella so we were all, "GREAT". I used the Peninsula's wifi to try and find another place, and I noticed that there were a lot of guesthouses very close to the Peninsula at a place called "Chungking Mansion". It's a nice area, the place is a mansion, what can be wrong?

 

The rain stopped, and we headed over to Chungking Mansion. It's the type of place that, when you walk in, every instinct in your body says LEAVE. So, naturally, we went in. The place is swarming with shady looking Indian touts out front trying to sell you a watch, a bag, tailor services or a room. We knew where our friends were staying, so we decided to just press ahead and check out their guesthouse. Maybe we could meet up.

The first floor of the place is a maze of shops selling Indian food, cell phones, and cheap crap. There are lines for every elevator, and while we waited in one line a guy approached us and offered to show us a room he had for rent. I don't even know why we bothered, but we looked at it. Actually, another couple looked at it before us and left quickly, and then we looked at it. He wanted like $80 a night for this dump of a room, and while we were talking about it he interrupted us to tell us to hurry up, he doesn't have time for this. Sooooo, I said we don't have time for this either and we left.

We found our friends' guesthouse, but a note out front said "no rooms", so we checked out the place next door (this entire like 15 story building is full of guesthouses. every floor has 2 or 3 different ones, all basically identical aside from their level of cleanliness). The spot next door had a room but it was in block C of the mansions and we were in block A. We looked at the room, it was basic as we've ever stayed in, but it was $50 and we were tired of looking.

So, this is where we stayed. What you see in the picture is the entire room, aside from a small bathroom in front of one of the beds. It's the smallest place I've ever stayed in, but I will say that it was very clean and the old lady running the place was very sweet. BUT, for $50 a night in Korea you get a jacuzzi. Just sayin'.

The view from our room.

We decided to go to Taikoo Station to shop at Cityplaza, which we'd read online is a decent mall. It's just okay. There was an H&M where I bought a cool winter jacket that I can't wait to wear in a few years, and there was a Marks & Spencer with a drool-worthy grocery section. The mall also had a Hello Kitty store and a skating rink.

Mel wanted to go to Forever 21, so we went over to the Causeway Bay area and shopped there.

Across from Forever 21 is a mall called Hysun Place. We saw signs for Jason's Supermarket in the basement there, and we used to love shopping at Jason's in Taiwan, so we went in to check it out. It was awesome! Definitely the best place we've found so far to pick up imported groceries in Hong Kong. The prices were good (a lot of stuff was cheaper than at home) and it's a clean, very swank grocery store. We made a mental note to go back there tomorrow on our way home so we could bring some goodies back to China.

We decided to get a bite to eat at a little Chinese hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Glee Cafe. We were looking for something cheap, since the high tea had been so expensive. The menu was... interesting. Anyone want a refreshing glass of boiled water with egg to drink?

I got a BBQ chicken and pork belly combo which came with a side of soup and some rice. It was only like $7.

Unfortunately, it was cold and the chicken was bloody.

We needed something new to read, so we walked over to Times Square and got three new books at Page One. Mel picked up a book called "Ghetto at the Center of the World", the story of Chungking Mansion! From the back cover:

"There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong's tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home; Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there - even backpacking tourists rent rooms."

This was where we were spending the night?? Of course, we had to buy the book.

We finished off the night with a little luxury, even if it doesn't look so great in the above photo: we got foot massages, and read our new books while our feetsies were rubbed. Every now and then Mel would read me a disturbing fact about Chungking. It was definitely a day of ups and downs, as I'm finding Hong Kong usually is. We were frustrated by our Wimdu booking and finding a new place to stay, and dinner sucked. But, shopping was fun, we got massages and we were able to pretend to be fancy at The Peninsula. Hey, you can't live large all of the time, and we had another full day of exploring to look forward to in the morning.

Dear Tenants:

"Please clean the dog shit" (English translation of a note that was posted for the tenants of our complex).

Rufus

Because of the "connotations" associated with Halloween, our school celebrated a totally different event, "dress up day", on Friday the 19th. My class definitely had lots of spirit- every single kiddo dressed up. We did lots of fun little activities, but it was hard to focus on teaching because something big was happening that day: my cat was in the sky.

Before we left Canada, we'd spent months going to vets, getting shots for Rufus, and getting the right paperwork ready for him to travel with us. But, he couldn't fly when we did because Hong Kong was too hot. There's an embargo on importing pets through Air Canada when the conditions are over 35 degrees. Well, on Friday we finally had a 34 degree day. Ru had been loitering at Mel's parents' house for over 2 months now, and I'm sure they had a celebratory drink when our little guy went to the airport. He's cute, but a bit of a bully to their cats.

It was really expensive to import Rufus. With all of the shots, the flight and everything it cost about $2500. We'd been quoted $5000 by a pet relocation agency at first, so we did as much as we could by ourselves to get the costs down. The big expense was paying for someone to pick him up from Hong Kong airport and drive him into China for us (if he'd flown into China there would have been a quarantine). We hired a company called Ferndale, based out of Hong Kong. They spoke English, answered any questions we had right away, and on Friday they were in touch by text constantly. We were given $1700 moving allowance when we took this job, so we just put that money towards bringing him here. It was totally worth it to us.

Mel had to stay late at work on Friday (she was volun-told-ing for the Autumn Fair, which is basically a Halloween fair) so I was by myself to greet Rufus. It KILLED her that she couldn't be here! When Ferndale texted to say they were close, I ran downstairs to wait for the car. When I saw a car pull up with his kennel in the back I freaked, "That's my cat!" I yelled, and I got in the car. I peeked back to verify that he was grey, and then directed the driver into our parking garage. The driver carried him into the elevator for me and waved goodbye. In the elevator I stuck my finger in the cage and he rubbed his face on it and gave a little meow. I was so, so happy.

As I was taking the door off the cage and freeing my poor cat for the first time in 24 hours Mel called and I was all "he's here" and she was all "ahhhHHH!!!! Okay, coming home". Rufus had peed in the cage, so he smelled kind of bad, but otherwise he seemed a lot better off than we usually do after a long flight.

He immediately went to each room to inspect the place (I followed behind with a damp cloth to try and clean him).

He liked the bathroom quite a bit.

We'd been so worried that something bad would happen to him on the flight, but he was totally normal. In fact, he was 100% lovey all night. He seemed happy. He curled up on us all night and wasn't at all the skittish wreck I pictured he'd be.

When we first saw our apartment, we knew it would be perfect for him. We have a lot of windows and wide ledges for him to lay on and look out. Saturday morning, he and Mel layed in the window and looked at Hong Kong. It's still so weird to see him wa

We're really, really happy to be reunited with our little guy again :)

Sea World Saves Mel's Birthday

Mel's is a bit touchy about her birthday. It's not in the summer like mine. It's not on her best friend's birthday like mine. It was always over Thanksgiving, so her friends were never available to celebrate. So, imagine her glee when, this year, her birthday fell on the first Monday back at work after vacation. Add in the fact that her job is a hot mess, and she wasn't really too excited. Luckily, I'd planned a great buffet dinner for her after work. But first, work:

It was also Jason's last day in China, so I brought him in as my "show" for show and tell class. My job isn't nearly as stupid as Mel's and I'm enjoying it so far. Jason read "Where the Wild Things Are" and played blocks with my students. I introduced him as "Mr. Keddy 2", and when the two of us left them for lunch they yelled "Bye, double Mr. Keddy!"

Well, after school, the buffet didn't work out so well. I couldn't find any obviously awesome buffet places online that weren't at like 5 star hotels and cost more than we could afford, but there was this one place called "4 Seas" at Windows of the World station that had good reviews. When we got there, we asked to see the food before we paid. It was ALL seafood. It looked lovely, the restaurant was impeccable, but all three of us don't like seafood. The only non-seafood dish that we saw was "pig ears". So, we left. But I had no plan b! It was Mel's birthday, she'd had a crappy day at school, it was Jason's last night, we were all hungry and there was nowhere special to eat. Mel suggested just going back to the Sea World area near our apartment. I was all "are you sure?" but she was sure, so we went.

We'd heard there was a good Italian restaurant there, so that's where we went. And it was pretty good! We had wine and pasta, and the ambiance was nice with the red lanterns still hanging from the holiday and the still-warm evening air allowing us to eat outside, even in October.

From the restaurant, we'd spied 2 things we decided we had to do. Number one, was to get portraits done. There were two guys set up doing caricatures in the square, and they hadn't worked all night, so we went over and sat down. Slowly, a crowd formed around us. At the peak, there were a dozen people watching us. Some of them even took pictures. Why would they want pictures of total strangers like that? Also, every now and then our artist (who had an awesome mustache and cowboy hat) would look at one of us, say something in Chinese, and then everyone would laugh. What was so funny?

This. This was so funny. After a half hour of posing, we were shown our picture. We nearly peed ourselves laughing. I seriously hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. We all look Asian! And Jason looks like a lightbulb/alien. We had to roll it up quickly. If we looked at it any longer and kept laughing, we were worried we'd offend the artist. We truly loved it so, so much.

The second thing we needed to do was ride these "things". They're like big robotic stuffed animals that you pay 10 yuan ($1.65) to ride for about 5 minutes. They just drive the whole time and you steer them around. They also play music and have blinking lights. You might not believe this, but usually it's kids that ride these. It was hilarious driving these things around the square. Earlier in the evening we'd seen our principal walk by. I wonder who else saw this spectacle!

Me and my zebra.

Jason and his horsey.

Once again, people were taking pictures and videos of us, but luckily Jason also thought to take a video of what it's like to ride these things around. So funny.

I planned on using one of the cakes at the buffet for Mel's birthday cake, but since we didn't go to the buffet, we ran into Dunkin Donuts for a donut I could stick a candle in! While we were there, we took a picture with this giant cutout of Lebron James, which apparently is the secret code for getting a buy one, get one free coffee coupon because that's what the cashier gave us once the photo was taken. Random! Next, we went to Mcdonald's for ice cream. We ordered 3 at 3 yuan a piece but the cashier wouldn't hear of charging us 9 yuan for them. She charged us 6.5 yuan for some reason I'll never comprehend. She must have heard that there was a birthday girl with us. When we got home Jason said, "I'll never understand what happened in the last 10 minutes". Me neither.

Mel blowing out her birthday candle on her weird "pudding" flavored donut, and laughing again at our amazing caricature. I would say the night had definitely turned around for my Mel.

We were up early the next morning to take Jason to the ferry terminal. He was taking a boat directly to the Hong Kong airport and just 31 short hours later he was back at home in Canada. I think he had a pretty good trip. Word is he even got hard up and made his own fried rice last week. Asia can change a person in many ways.