The bear invasion

My bud told me we were finally travelling again.  I got excited.  It’d been a while.

I even willingly went into the travel back pack — a tall ask —

Only to resurface in Hong Kong.

Wait a sec, I’d been here already.  This isn’t exciting!

The only saving grace is that I was staying at the Conrad hotel, where apparently they knew I was a VIB because they gave me a room on the top floor.  This, this I liked.  61st floor views are pretty sweet!

I chose to ignore the fact that the welcome back card wasn’t made out to me and that there was some mention about celebrating anniversaries.

What I liked a little less was that there were already other bears on premise.  First there was one Conrad bear.  Him I can handle.  I can show him his place.  But then more Conrad bears appeared.   There are 3 bears too many in this picture.

Luckily Nicholas said that these bears didn’t have to come along for the rest of the trip.  GOOD.

 

After we dropped off our stuff we stopped at the Collinson Crematorium to pay our respects to some ancestors.

Next, we went to mine and Nicholas’ least favourite kind of place.  A wholesale fish market.  It definitely smelled like fish.  A lot of fish.

Pokin had it in her head that we were going to take everyone to the Aberdeen Wholesale Fish Market, specifically to a canteen.  I cannot think of a place that more aptly fit the description of ‘hole in the wall.”  It really was a hole in the wall — I barely would have found the entrance if we weren’t given a photo of what to look for.  Apparently this place used to be a local’s secret, but it got written up in places like the Lonely Planet so it’s not so secret anymore.  Pokin met up with a person who knew a person, who had arranged to pick out some seafood for us that the restaurant then cooked.  I saw some conversation between Pokin and some person, I saw some money change hands, and then we proceeded to sit down through way too many courses of seafood.

I mean, who wants to eat stuff that looks like this?  Not I.  Not my bud.

I think the only thing that made the trip worth it at all was to see that our chef / cook was some shirtless guy who definitely did not look like he should be cooking our food.  It amused me.  And Nicholas.  Everyone else didn’t even pay attention as they were too busy eating a lot of seafood so the two of us amused ourselves.

Nicholas tells me we are going to Tokyo the next day.  Now this I’m excited about!

Just smile and wave

The whole reason we are in Hong Kong is because of my minions.  I’m a little mad at the Peers but I have to maintain a good facade when I’m around these Peers.  So here I am buddying up with P4 even though I want to smack him.

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Smile and wave, fellows.  Smile and wave.  <smack>  You better be worth it P4!  I could have been gaming at home this whole time.

My day out as a tourist

Today I played tourist.

We actually went to one of those tourist attractions that had been advertised all over Hong Kong.  This attraction was the Ngong Ping 360 – billed as the longest gondola ride in Asia.

Which meant we stood in line like every other sucker tourist.

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At least I got to sit in Nicholas’ lap.  Everyone else stood.

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And we waited in line like suckers.

For like hours.

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And hours.  During that time, I learned that Ngong Ping 360 had partnered with Hello Kitty.

So this attraction was going to be littered with kitty propaganda and merchandising.

Great.  During this wait I learned more than I cared to about that cat.  Pokin also used up all her data and got billed twice.  Ka-Ching for the cell phone companies!

Well after said hours of waiting, we got there.

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I willed myself to be excited.  After all, I had to justify to myself why I just spent the last 3 hours of my life waiting in line for a tourist ride.  Ooh gondola ride!  I am SOOO excited!!!

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We had opted for the crystal ride, which had a glass bottom.

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I actually dug that part and got a little excited for real.  It’s cool to look down and see what’s up.

Our destination at the other end was Ngong Ping village, which is home of the Big Buddha, another hyped up tourist attraction featuring an ANCIENT giant Buddha that was, oh, built in 2003.  There’s a picture of the buddha in the background of this photo, which is a picture of my bud eating some bun while I watched him eat the bun.

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And here is the path to the actual buddha.

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You have to climb 268 steps to reach the buddha.  I just got Nicholas to carry me.  So the walk up was easy.

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Big Buddha is 34 metres tall (112ft).  That’s cool.  I dig a big buddha.  We loitered around the premise for a bit to soak in his bigness.  We also took the time to check out the view and take selfies in front of the other statues.

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Once we had enough of that we made our way to Po Lin monastery.  Po Lin monastery was a legit monastery that was built in 1906, and housed visiting monks — that is until the MTR corporation went and built a giant tourist gondola line leading right to their back yard and began billing the area as a must-see.

Now flocks of tourists like myself go to gawk at the monks to help them master the ability to practice their buddhist-ing ways despite the distraction.  I’m sure it’s been great for their training.  It’s definitely been great for their budget.  This is the shiniest, best kept monastery I’ve seen to date in my travels.

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I wonder how annoying we have to be as tourists before the monks get distracted.

I was getting ready to test out my theory when the gang told me it was time to go and move on to our next locale – Tai O.  On the bus we go!  I guess my plans to disrupt monks will have to wait.

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Tai O was once a sleepy fishing village, before — you guessed it, it got turned into a big tourist attraction.  Tai O is now known for being a big tourist attraction that also happens to have traditional stilt houses.

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I also noticed a lot of these metal houses.  Apparently they are shanty houses that are technically illegal but tolerated.  Mostly because if they didn’t tolerate these houses a lot of people would be homeless.  And a lot of people actually WERE homeless because a big fire that happened in these tin houses a few years back destroyed many of the homes.  This house, as you can probably tell was built after the fire.

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Here’s a charred house.

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A lot of the homes were actually really tiny.  Allow me to enter exhibit A, with Daniel standing beside the house for context.  This is certainly too small a home for this bear!

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We were sort of in a hurry so we ran our way around town.  We had to catch the last ferry of the day that left within 40 minutes.  We underestimated a little the size of the loop, so after booking it for the last half of the circuit we go to the ferry terminal just as they began boarding.

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Glad we made it on the ferry.  It would have been a long, windy, long and windy trip back otherwise.

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Upon getting back to Hong Kong proper, we celebrated by eating.  And by eating again at a dessert shop.

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And that was how I spent my day playing tourist in Hong Kong.

Hiking in Hong Kong : Dragon’s Back Trail

With Nicholas’ friend Daniel in town, I’m being let out of my hotel prison a lot more often than usual.

Today we got to go hiking on one of Hong Kong’s most popular trails, “the Dragon’s Back.”  This trail is on the southeast part of Hong Kong Island, and runs along the top ridge in Hong Kong.  It’s supposed to be scenic and one of Hong Kong’s top 10 trails.

Scenic + Accessible = Hiking at the speed of molasses.

We started off by making sure we had enough energy for the hike.  For Nicholas that meant getting some champagne Chinese milk tea.  It sounds all fancy and has SUCKER written all over it.  It just meant bottles of tea stuck in a bucket of ice at a $10 premium.

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Then we took a bus from the MTR station towards the starting point of the trail —

And got in line to wait for the stream of other hikers to move their way along the trail.  We inched forward on the trail at the pace of the slowest hiker till we eventually reached the top of the ridge.

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View’s not bad.  I got to see where all the HK rich people lived.

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And I saw where the HK paragliders took off from.   This is how humans get to enjoy a taste of what it’s like to fly like me.  This is also where all the curious on-lookers completely halted the slow procession along the trail.

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Well, trail was fine.  I’m glad I went so now I can brag to Quatchi that I’ve trekked on the same trail that ever other person in Hong Kong did during the same weekend.

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Getting ready for Star Wars : The Force Awakens

I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars movies.  They were all before my time.  But Nicholas told me that I would really like them.  It’s supposed to come out in a few weeks.

We were walking around Causeway Bay in Hong Kong when we came across a Starwars exhibit.

“There’s a Starwars Exhibit,” pointed out Nicholas.

“Ok take me there so I can see what the fuss is all about,” said I.

I’ve flown space ships like this.  I’m sure of it.

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I don’t know what these “Storm Troopers” are, but I’m sure I could give them the beats if we were in combat.

Hmm, well these characters are weird.  They all look kind of blocky.  I don’t know what to expect of the movie, but I guess I’ll find out!

A respite from prison

Today was one of the rare days I got to go out. Nicholas, Pokin’s cousin Shirley and Anthony took us around Hong Kong.   I jumped at the chance to go. Really. I jumped into the backpack (voluntarily) and had Nicholas carry me around.

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First stop was SunnyHill. I was expecting them to take me to a cocoa place, but instead they took me to some gourmet Taiwanese cake shop that sells these things called Pineapple cakes.

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I tried a bite. It wasn’t bad.  Obviously cocoa is superior, but they really weren’t bad.  It came with some tea.

Speaking of tea, there’s a drink that I’ve been seeing Nicholas drink lately. It’s called 鴛鴦, or Yuen-Yeung.  It’s basically a 1/2 coffee 1/2 tea combo.  They would traditionally sell them from stands like this.

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I already know of a better a 1/2 and 1/2 mix.  It’s called mocha.  It ACTUALLY has cocoa in it.

We continued to walk around.  Because it was Sunday we passed by all the helpers who gather around public places in Hong Kong.  Like in this corridor.  In Hong Kong, helpers usually work 6 days a week, and Sundays are the one day they get off to relax and hang out with friends.

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It’s pretty impressive how big the gatherings can get!  Why they choose to hang out in places like this instead of in front of a gaming studio is beyond me.

Next we went to a shopping mall.  Shopping malls are ok.  Except shopping malls with giant bears.  I don’t need to be around more giant bears.  Way to make a big bear like myself feel small.  Jerks.

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At least the day ended well.  I got to order dessert that was bigger than the size of my head.  I like having a lot of dessert.  That was pretty good.  It almost helped me forget about my forced imprisonment.

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Almost, not quite.

My life in Hong Kong

Most of the time my life here has been really boring. I’m imprisoned in a hotel cell devoid of games.

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The closest I’ve gotten to gaming is to read books on games. I read Ready Player One, which is a book that Nicholas got for free at the Oculus Connect developer conference. Mark Zuckerberg apparently read this book and that’s what convinced him to buy that company. Well cool. I get to read a book on games. But I’m not gaming.

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Duffy and I even resorted to taking Panadol to drown out the pain of lack of gaming. Panadol is like the HK equivalent to Tylenol.

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It didn’t help. And Duffy didn’t know what he was doing. As for Peep, I have no idea what’s up with that bunny.