Big Wave Bay

Big Wave Bay
Not just another beach!

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Plant Life and Flowers

Hello Excellent Ones,
It was an eventful week in that I started school again.  Our school has a six day cycle.  This, I think, is to provide some variety in a student's life.  So this past Wednesday it was day 1.  On Thursday it was day 2, Friday day 3, Monday will be day 4, Tuesday day 5, Wednesday day 6, and then the cycle restarts again.  Holidays don't count.  So if you end on a day 4 and have a ten day break you start on day 5.  Only at the end of the school year does the cycle end.  When school starts it is day one.  Get it?  The only reason why I am writing all this is that on days 1,3,5 I am at the Shek Kip Mei campus, about 20 minutes away from the main one.  I will teach grades 1, 2, and 3 PE.  On days 2,4, and 6 I am at the main campus, Kowloon City and teach PE to the kindergarteners, grade 7 and grade 10.  If I don't pay attention to the day I may end up at the wrong campus which would be no good.  So pray I keep track.  Things look pretty good.  Kids love PE so I am a big man on campus.  Literally.

For the visuals this week I am going to present some unique plant life that I have found here.  Hong Kong has some amazing parks with some very interesting plants.  They also have a flower market which will be a must for every visitor that comes.

Enjoy,

Love adios and peng on,

Dirk 

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Lion Rock

Hello Great Ones,
I had a rather quiet week.  I had to report to school on Wednesday for staff meetings.  Kids arrive next week and so I embark on another school year.  Wow time flies.  However on Saturday I climbed up Lion Rock and back.  Lion Rock is the peak of one of several small mountains that overlook Kowloon.  As mentioned several times these small, jungle covered mountains are a refuge for not only monkeys but from the millions of people in Hong Kong as well.  It only takes a half hour walk from my place to get to the base of the Lion rock mountain and then it is another half hour to forty-five minutes to get up.  Saturday was great in that the views of Kowloon, Shatin, Hong Kong and the South China Sea were great.  Enjoy the pictures.

Love adios and peng on,

Dirk

Sunday, August 14, 2011

ICC, Monkeys, Biking

Hello Excellent Ones,
It was a pretty eventful week here in amazing Hong Kong.  After three very fast months I said good bye to my Elsie.  We had a great time and Elsie found HK amazing.  She is in Thailand now on a mission trip.  Before Elsie left though we went to the International Commerce Center( ICC) together. Here are some facts about the ICC that you need to know.   Located in Kowloon, overlooking Victoria harbour,  it was built from 2002-2010.  It is the world's fourth tallest building.  118 floors, 484 meters or 1588 feet.  Most of the floors are used for office space but on the 100th floor there is an observation deck.  That is where Elsie and I went.  The 101 floor has several five star restaurants and the Ritz Carlton has control of floors 102-118 making it by far the highest hotel in the world.  There is a swimming pool on the 118th floor.  On the 107 th floor is the Presidential Suite which rents for @12 000 Canadian dollars a night.  Yeah wow!  Elsie and I went during the night, which was wonderful.  It was clear and the lights from Hong Kong were amazing.

The next day Elsie and I went for a jungle walk.  The jungles and beaches that are near Hong Kong saves it for me.  If Hong Kong was just a concrete jungle, and it is really, then I would be getting out of there as quickly as possible.  There is only so much noise and frantic lifestyle one can take.  But like I said the jungles and beaches are awesome.  The beaches are fun and the jungles are quiet, peaceful, smell great, interesting, have amazing views, and there are plenty of entertaining monkeys to make your day.  They are wild, but are used to humans and so pretty harmless unless you feed them.  Not recommended. So Elsie and I had a nice walk and it was a good finale to our time together.

On Saturday morning I got up with my young, (I got 20 years on them) friends, Ryan and Jill, at 4:00 am for a jungle ride up to a mountain called Tai Mon Shan  (Big Cloudy Mountain).  We left early to avoid the heat and also to give us plenty of time to get up there.  It was a wicked workout.  The path going up was all paved, so that was good, but man was it steep.  So at times I had to push the bike up.  We got to the top when the sun was just burning off the fog.   We could see Shenzhen and parts of Hong Kong from on top.  Going down was much easier and we flew down.  Five hours to get to our destination and one hour to get back.  The ride down was great.  I was yodelling for most of it.

So that is it for another week.  I have to report to school by Wednesday and the kids come the following week.  Yet I am sure there will be eventful things to report next week.

Love adios and peng on

Dirk


Sunday, August 7, 2011

Mui Wo

Hello Great Ones,
This post, unlike last week, will be subdued.  Hong Kong with all its noise, people, and energy can be overwhelming.  Macau even more so.  Mui Wo is a sleepy little village located on Lantau Island, which is right next to Hong Kong Island.  Lantau has some basic claims to fame.  It has the airport, it has the Big Buddha, it has Disneyland, and it has hundreds of acres of unspoiled nature.  There are a few settlements here and there, but for the most part Lantau is peaceful.  Elsie and I spent a good part of Sunday at Mui Wo.  Great beach with hardly anyone there, nice affordable restaurants nearby, beautiful scenery.  And quiet.  It was so nice to be in an uncrowded and quiet place.

 During one of our swim times a school of fish suddenly started jumping out of the water around us.   Elsie kind of freaked, but it was so funny.  Then it stopped.  I was laughing and then pow one more fish jumped out and hit me square on the forehead.  I kept laughing.

A heard a guy say once that heaven will be all the places that you loved being at on earth.  I have several of those places and Mui Wo has just been added to my list.  I could see myself hanging out there for a few thousand years when I get to Glory and I have nothing but eternal time on my hands.

Love adios and Peng on,

Dirk     

Monday, August 1, 2011

Macau

Hello Excellent Ones,
Macau, like Hong Kong, was once a colony of a European power.  Hong Kong was run by the British, of course, while Macau was taken over and managed by Portugal for many centuries.  In 1999 it was turned over to the Chinese who then made it into a Special Administrative Region like Hong Kong.

Macau is located just 60 kilometers west of Hong Kong and most people reach it by a turbo jet boat.  A fleet of these boats  run every fifteen minutes hauling people from Hong Kong and China to Macau and back.  Travel time on one of these super boasts from Hong Kong is about an hour.

Macau is made up of a peninsula which is called Macau and two "islands,'" Taipa and Coloane which were recently connected by land fill.  The territory lies hard against the coast of China and is separated by only a narrow waterway.   Macau is much smaller than Hong Kong.  Thirty kilometers total area so   you can whip through it all in way less than an hour, depending on traffic.

Macau's claim to fame include: most densely populated place on earth- 18000 people per square km, a lot more on the weekends when the gamblers and tourists come;  a very cool old city-looks like old Lisbon, the Portugese influence is everywhere, old buildings from the 1400's, cobblestone streets,and signs.
It is Asia's biggest gambling center. It makes more money than Las Vegas and The Venetian on Taipa is 10 times bigger than its small twin in Las Vegas.

It is also an off shore tax haven.  It is a verrrrrry interesting place.

Elsie and I turbo boated to Macau on Sunday.  We did not need special visas but had to have our passport checked.  For the Chinese it is tougher.  Passport, visa, and lots of money are required for entry.  Talk about discrimination.

Once we got to Macau (the peninsula, so Macau, still with me?, consult a map if you are lost) we hired a driver, a young ex Romanian, with passable English who gave us a blitz tour of Macau.

First stop was the A Mah Buddhist temple.  It was unique in that it was carved into the side of a hill.  Incense and chants hung heavy in the air.  I am not a fan of Buddhism, but I thought the temple was pretty cool.  From there, we headed to the middle of the town to Senado Square which felt like downtown Lisbon, expect nicer.  Very touristy.  Elsie and I had rock star moments there.  Several Chinese girls got their picture taken with the tall, blond, beauty from Canada, while I got ONE picture taken with a girl from Taiwan who was absolutely in awe of my height.

Next stop was the Ruins of St. Paul's.  Only the facade was left and there was a place nearby with paintings and bones.  Since I have been to Europe a few times, it was yawn, been there done that.  The Mount Fortress was nearby so Elsie and I went up to catch a panoramic view of Macau.  The cannons up on the fortress were: been there done that as well.

On we went through winding, narrow, cobblestone streets that were: been there done that, but I enjoyed them.  Then our Romanian friend, his English starting to fade after 3 hours of it, drove us over a 4 kilometer bridge to the infamous Cotai strip, which not long ago was water between Taipa and Coloane.  After filling it up with earth and making the islands one, the powers to be built several casinos, which as mentioned before rakes in more money from gambling suckers than Vegas.  Elsie and I decided to head to the Venetian because there was, get this, an ice sculpture show.

To describe the Venetian as over the top would not do it justice.  Ridiculous, incredible, amazing, wow, unreal, are a few words that might give you a small idea of what it is like.  I will try to explain, as will the pictures, but I know it won't do it justice.  As you drive in there are buildings in front of the hotel that look like buildings from Venice. Actually they are exact replicas.  They have the famous tower and plaza of Venice (no poopin pigeons however,)  a famous bridge, (too lazy to look up what it is called, but its there, plus a big pool of water by the main lobby with gondolas just sitting there.

Once Elsie and I got our tickets for the ice show in the lobby we then had to trek a half hour through this place just to get to the hall where it was taking place.  On our way we saw gondolas gliding through the middle of a mall, with people in them, on real water (I am sure of it) then through an acre of slot machines and tables all heavily used, (just a fraction of what was there.); through these massive hallways with enough carpet to probably cover the trans Canada from Calgary to Banff, roofs painted like the Sistine Chapel; restaurants selling every type of food known to man; I could go on, but needless to say, I had never done that or been there, so I was in awe, as was Elsie.

We finally found the ice show.  The Venetian had imported a cooling system, I don't know where, a meat packing plant perhaps, then brought in several tons of ice, no exaggeration there, then transferred a bunch of Northern Chinese ice sculptors from Harbin.  Harbin by the way is the sister city of Edmonton.  I kid you not.  I think they exchange notes on how to stay warm cause their winters are about the same.  I kid you not there either.  I think.  Harbin by the way has an ice sculpture festival every winter like Quebec City, so since it was the off season and the ice sculpture guys must have been kind of bored, the Venetian brought them in for a month, gave them tons of  ice, and said go for it.  An Ice Sculpture Festival in the middle of summer at a casino in a sub tropical place will be a hit for sure. Crazy enough it is!

So after Elsie and I got parkas from the entrance to the ice show we stepped into another world.  Whoa was it cold!  It has been a while since I was in minus fifteen, you can start playing the violins now, and my poor body, now used to a sub tropical clime went into a slight shock.  My nose froze, my ears, hands, and my knobby knees as well.  It really sucked.  Next time I will bring pants.  Duh.   Despite my discomfort I still managed to take a few pictures of Elsie frolicking on the ice.  We had to laugh at the Chinese kids going down this pathetic little ice slope and shouting in glee.  They no nothing about true sledding.  I will let the pictures and comments give you an insight of this amazing display.  Nevertheless at the end of it I was frozen and it certainly made me think:  am I nuts for considering leaving Hong Kong for months of cold like that in Canada.  It was only minus fifteen and I was in it for less than an hour.  Ok I know what you are thinking.  Dirk has turned into a cream puff. Sure but I am a very, warm and happy cream puff.  Once we got outside of that fridge plus 35 felt great.

So that was our adventure in Macau.  A great day trip kind of trip.  Have a great week.

Love adios and peng on,

Dirk