Oh Shanghai! (sung to the tune of Oh Canada!)

I know you all are sitting on the edge of your collective seat waiting to hear about our adventures in Shanghai but alas, you shall have to wait. I have uploaded the pictures and will try to send out via Snapfish tonight or tomorrow morning but the blogging will have to wait until we get back from Thailand next Monday. I know, I know, you are severely disappointed and are possibly going through Marc-and-Brina-blog withdrawal however, I promise you the stories are plentiful and highly entertaining. Highlights include:

1 - A ride in a magnetic levitation train (not joking). If you don't know what a MagLev train is (like I didn't before Marc explained it to me), then read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev_train. The dang thing LEVITATES due to the polar opposite attraction of the magnets on the tracks and the train. I swear sometimes I feel like I'm Jane Jetson riding escalators and levitating trains!

2 - The Shanghai Zoo - lions, tigers and (panda) bears, oh my! As well as elephants, kangaroos and spider monkeys! "I'm gonna come at you like a spider monkey!"

3 - Drinks and dessert on the 87th floor of the Jinmao Tower.

4 - A favorable mooncake experience on the plane.

OK, that's it for now, I don't want to ruin the surprise. Have a great week everyone!

Blog Homework

Your homework, while we are in Shanghai for the next few days, is to rent the movie "The Beach" and watch the first half of it (before Leo goes off the reservation). Each of the places that Leo travels to in that movie are the same places we will be visiting when we go to Thailand next week. So, if you want to get a sneak peak, just watch the movie. Oh and the scenery (a/k/a Leo) isn't hard on the eyes either. ;-)

We're off to Shanghai in a few hours, but not to worry, we have been tracking Typhoon Wipha and the eye of the storm is currently south of Shanghai. There will be some rain but Shanghai is not supposed to be affected. Everything is business as usual, so quit worrying Moms! :)

Cheung Chau, Man Mo and Squash, Oh My!

This weekend, we finally decided to get off our butts and find some adventures. See, when the weekend rolls around and we wake up to a hazy cityscape, we usually end up making breakfast, skyping people and watching movies until we get cabin fever and eventually leave the apartment at about 4pm. Not very conducive to adventure seeking.

So, on Saturday, we decided to go to Cheung Chau. Now, who can remember what Cheung Chau is? Anyone? Bueller? Okay, I don't blame you, these Chinese names all tend to run together and I can't remember my subway stop half the time, much less the outlying islands. Cheung Chau, along with Hong Kong island (where we live), Lantau Island (home of the Po Lin Monastery), and Lamma island (home of lamas, j/k, I don't know what is over there) are the main islands which together with the mainland portion make up Hong Kong. There will be a quiz later.

Stick with me, kids, you'll learn geography, as well as where to buy blue wigs (hint: next to the escalator):

Can we say RANDOM?

Anypoodles, so off we go to Cheung Chau. The 50 minute slow ferry costs a whopping $2.18 (US) in deluxe class. We're big pimping. On the way back, we splurge for the 30 minute fast ferry which costs $2.56 (US), also deluxe class.

The slow ferry is quite nice, slowly swaying us like we are in the womb and Marc promptly falls asleep so I'm left to entertain myself for the next 48 minutes. After watching the in-boat entertainment advertising the splendors of Cheung Chau and an amusing infomercial about how smoking is bad for you (no, smoking will not make you look cool or give you more energy to brainstorm), I flip through my trusty Frommers. I learn that Cheung Chau (or CC) is only 1 square mile, there are 25,000 people crammed onto this tiny little fishing village, and there are no cars on the island. How quaint!

We arrive and it becomes clear to me that CC is the Chinese Venice but without the canals and those annoying Italian guys pinching your butt and shouting "Ciao Bella!" Since there are no cars on the island, everyone rides bikes to get around. The small alleyways are crammed with souvenir shops selling t-shirts, flip flops, shells, board shorts and various beach town paraphernalia. What surprises me even more is the McDonalds right next to the pier. How do they find the most remote places to peddle Big Macs?

We wander through the alleys until we reach the other side of the island where the beach is:
There is a cheap wind-surfing rental place but there isn't any wind to make it worth our while and after the Hobie cat debacle of Bahamas 2007, we decide not to risk it. On the way down to the beach, however, we are accosted by 2 friendly Aussies who invite us to an Ibiza party on the beach. Their exact words were "You guys look like you're looking for a party! You gotta come to the f'ing party!" (except they didn't say f'ing). Nice. We didn't exactly make it to the party but we were close enough to listen to the techno music while we lounged the afternoon away.

As the sun was setting, we wandered back to the pier and walked along the main waterfront promenade. On the water, we could see the house boats where many families live and work. We also found the freshest seafood restaurant ever. You literally pick your food (still living and swimming in open air tanks) and they will fish it out and cook it for you. Here is Marc pretending to pick his food:

We didn't really eat there because we couldn't be sure that the fish were not caught in Victoria Harbor which is very polluted but the whole concept is very different and neat. We hopped on the next ferry and sailed back home.

The next day, Marc went to the gym and I decided to figure out where the Man Mo Temple was. I had heard about it from Nancy*, the wife of one of Marc's colleagues, and I knew it was really close to our apartment. Unfortunately, it is under renovation, so there was bamboo scaffolding everywhere but that didn't stop everyone, their mothers, grandmothers, children and 2 tour buses full of Westerners from being in there. Apparently Sunday is the day to bring sacrificial items to the Buddha, although why he needs oranges and grape Fanta is beyond me. What I really enjoyed is a ritual that Nancy had told me about and if she hadn't told me anything, I would never have understood. For $100 Honkeys (about $12(US)), you can get a bundle of about 50 popsicle sticks with Chinese writing on them in a wooden can. You shake the can with all the sticks in it until one of the sticks falls out. I have no idea how only 1 stick makes its way out of the bunch, but it happens every single time! Then, you can take the "chosen stick" to a man who will interpret the writing on the stick and tell you your fortune. The Locals take this VERY seriously. The woman in the pink shirt with a blurry image in front of her is doing the stick can shaky thing but she is shaking it so fast, you can't see the sticks:I didn't get my fortune read but I'm going back and taking Marc so we can do the stick shaky thing, it just looks cool. Plus, who knows, the fortune-teller might be right and he'll pick my winning lottery numbers!

Later that afternoon, we set out to the public squash courts. Marc has been threatening to play squash and even went out and bought a racket, so off we went to try our luck. Let's just say I don't exactly have a knack for that whole hand-eye coordination thing but we had a great time chasing after the ball and Marc looked really cute.
I can't wait to go back again so that I can really unleash my squash playing skillz and really kick Marc's butt. Don't let him know I'm a squash shark! ;-)

Stay tuned because on Wednesday we are going to Shanghai (returning on Sunday), then next Tuesday, we are going to Thailand. I'll be sure to have lots of adventure stories and pictures to share!

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Heaven on Earth

OK, so I know that I said Shenzhen is Shopper's Mecca. However, I have found Heaven on Earth and it is LIII LIII Couture. Read this article, starting at "Catwalk": http://www.northshoremag.com/cgi-bin/ns-article?article=/travel/03-06-hongkong.html

Yes, that is right, LIII LIII is a cobbler store! No, not like peaches and blueberry but an actual shoe-maker! Messrs. Alan, Joe and Billy Chan are the craftsmen of ANY KIND OF SHOE YOU CAN IMAGINE (or not imagine). Pining over a pair of Pradas? Jonesin' for some Jimmy Choos? Craving some Channels? Salivating over a pair of Salvatore Ferragamos? Just bring in a picture of the shoe you are lusting after and one of these gods on earth will create it, just for you. Hate the bow on the side? No problem, they can put a rhinestone piece instead. Carrie Bradshaw may be able to strut on her stilettos all day long, but my calves certainly can't take that. So, I can ask for a shorter/wider/no heel.

Now, these Pièces de Résistance aren't exactly Shenzhen cheap (more like starting at $200) but when a pair of Jimmys can go for $5,000, what a bargain! Or, at least, that's what I'm telling Marc since I'm ordering my wedding shoes right now....

Mooncake Madness

Well, it's that time of year here in Hong Kong when everyone goes nuts over mooncakes. And what, pray tell, are mooncakes, you ask? Allow me to elaborate:

On day 15 of the 8th Lunar Moon (or Sept. 25 for you Westerners) starts the beginning of Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, celebrating the harvest and the brightest moon of the year. It is many people's favorite festival as the city lights up with thousands of paper lanterns in all shapes and sizes. Everyone partakes in the festivities and at night, there are parades with the infamous Chinese dragons. People also eat special sweet cakes known as mooncakes.

Mind you, I got all this information from reading my travel guides and this:

http://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/heritage/festivals/he_fest_mida.jhtml

(quite informative, you should read it, it's neat)

Long before I knew all about Mid-Autumn Festival, though, I kept seeing signs for Mooncakes. "Mooncakes - Coming Soon!" "Stop here for Mooncakes!" "Mooncake Specials!" "Mooncakes in All Flavours!" These signs can be seen in all the grocery stores, bakeries, restaurants, tea shops, and even the Godiva chocolate store (they have their own limited edition "Mooncake Chocolate":

http://www.godiva.com.hk/EN/store/product.asp?id=800)

So, being the inquisitive person that I am and figuring if they are cakes, they can't be that bad, I bought 2 different flavours (yes, I'm becoming British) from Maxim Bakery last week. I passed on the lotus seed paste, sesame seed, tofu and bean paste flavours and opted for the more conventional (at least in my mind) flavors of blueberry and mango. The girl at the bakery unsuccessfully tried to give me instructions as I had told her this would be my first mooncake experience. To this day, I still have no idea what she was trying to tell me.

I went home, made dinner, ate and then with great flourish, presented the blueberry mooncakes to Marc. They were really pretty but really white, like they were uncooked, but hey, you gotta live a little right? Well, we bit into them and they were really doughy and sticky and just didn't taste right at all. I mean, we could taste the blueberry filling but the outside tasted like raw dough. (I wish I had thought to take a picture, sorry.) Mind you, the entire wrapper has Chinese writing and absolutely no English. So, I looked them up online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake

The picture looks like it has been baked, right? So, I put it in the oven, I guess 350 degrees, maybe 10 minutes, I mean they are 1 inch cubed, can't take that long, right? Um, yea, so after about 12 minutes, I take it out and it is oozy and gooey and not at all like the picture on Wiki. At this point, Marc, who ate 3/4 of a mooncake himself, is not feeling so good, so I chuck the whole thing.

The next day, I sent Marc to his office with strict instructions to find out what we did wrong. So he asked his Chinese work colleague what we should have done differently and told her what kind of mooncakes we bought. She said we were eating them right the first time, uncooked, and claimed they were delicious. His British counterpart exclaimed that they were the foulest thing he has ever put in his mouth. I think, after much deliberation, that mooncakes are an acquired taste and that, unless you also eat chicken toes and fish heads, you will never be able to eat a mooncake without gagging. And that's all I have to say about that.

Yes, I'm a Slacker

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been doing really mundane things that don't require narration, so I thought I would spare you the details.

I did want to write about an interesting thing that happened to me a few weeks back though.

As most of you know, I am unemployed, by choice mind you. I couldn't very well keep up my law practice when moving to Hong Kong. Clients don't like it when they have to call you extremely long distance to get legal advice, and I don't blame them. So, I've been the dutiful house-fiancee, taking care of the cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. As you know, moving here has taken some adjusting and I needed the time off to figure things out like where to buy real food, get laundry done, buy furniture, etc. so the time hasn't exactly been wasted. We've also been traveling and planning trips so while I don't have to ask The Man for vacation time, I'm pretty much living it up.

However, I am starting to get brain rot and I figured I should probably start looking for a job. I had a lead on a job from a contact I worked with while in Atlanta. The contact works in Spain for an international trust company and he had mentioned that they had an office in Hong Kong. My ears perked up like Ella when she hears me say "Let's go outside" or "Ella-bella, you want a treat?" or "Hmmm, what I am going to do with this extra piece of bacon?" (The latter elicits the same response from Marc.) He put me in contact with the head of the HK office and we made arrangements to have a meet and greet (not a real interview, but I knew enough to bring my resume).

The morning of my quasi-interview, I got all decked out in business attire the likes of which I haven't worn since I quit my job. I've got to tell you, wearing shorts and flip flops everyday is awesome, it should be the new business casual. I wanted to print my updated resume but had to get the fancy schmacy resume paper and go to Marc's office to print the thing. So, I hailed a cab (since I didn't want to sweat in my business clothes) and headed down to the mall. Once I got there, I quickly jumped out of the taxi and promptly left my leather bound portfolio containing my old resume and my contact's info on the back seat of the cab. As soon as I got in the mall, I realized what happened but sure enough the cabbie was long gone.

Being the resourceful person I am, I bought not just resume paper but a new leather portfolio at the mall and high-tailed it to Marc's office to do the printing. I told him what happened and we looked up the contact info again on the internet since I still needed to know how to get there. Twenty minutes later, armed with a new portfolio and a stack of freshly printed resumes (or C.V.'s as they call them here), I was off. I got to the guy's office on time and the meeting went swimmingly.

Fast forward about 2 weeks.

The guy I met with calls me 4 times and leaves me a text message but I miss his calls and message because I didn't hear my cellphone ringing. I think to myself, "By gosh, this is it! He's called to offer me a job!" But alas, that was not why he was calling. When I got in touch with him, he said had an interesting phone call from the police who had called him and told him they had something of mine and whether he knew how to get in contact with me. Utterly shocked, I conceded that I had left my portfolio in a cab and had thought it was lost forever (because you really want to tell a possible employer that you are so flaky you misplaced important documents like your resume). He gave me the info for the police and I went down to the station with my tail between my legs to retrieve my old portfolio.

When I got there, a very nice receptionist took down my information and within 3 minutes, had retrieved my portfolio, just the same as I had left it just 2 weeks before. I couldn't believe it, so I asked her how they found it. She said the taxi cab driver put the portfolio in a post box and the post office, not knowing where to deliver it (since it had my address in Atlanta and an Atlanta telephone number, remember this was my old resume) turned it over to the police station.

At this point, let me state that Hong Kong has no crime. Seriously, you never hear about murders or muggings or drug deals ever. I think that HK just has no tolerance for crime, so if you do something terrible, you will certainly pay the consequences. Just ask the FDA guy who was executed for the tainted toothpaste scandal. So, I guess since they don't have any bad guys to chase, they called my contact whose HK info was in the portfolio and found me that way.

Can you believe that? All those people went through so much trouble just to get my portfolio back to me. If that had happened in New York, I would never have seen it again and I had honestly thought I never would. But somehow, people here are different and I guess they really cared enough to go through the effort to get it back to me. I'm still truly impressed.

As for the job, I don't think it really hurt my chances and I'm still following the lead, so I'll keep you posted if I get the job. In the meantime, I'm going to send out my resume to a few other places, just in case.

More Funny T-Shirts

Editor's Notes in parenthesis.

1. Middle Aged Chinese man: "Alcatraz psych ward patient"

2. "London is the Great Britain" (What does that even mean?)

3. On an old, frail woman, in large neon letters: "Freak"

4. On a 20-something year old girl: "Ho?" (I don't know, are you?)

5. On a middle-aged man, walking through the mall with a woman that looks like his mother or at least is old enough to be his mother: "I scored last night"

(I'm not sure which is more disturbing, 1) that he is middle aged, lives with his mother and scored last night, 2) that his wife/mistress/girlfriend is old enough to be his mother, or 3) that he scored with his mother.)

6. "NC State Girls Rock" on . . . oh wait, that was me! (GO PACK!)

7. "Just Another Sexy Short Guy" on Marc ;-)

Adventure Quotient: High

Marc's favorite saying as of late is "Hong Kong is a high density adventure city. There is more adventures per square foot than anywhere else in the world." I think he may be on to something. Not only is HK an international finance center, fashion capital and architectural marvel, it is also home to gorgeous beaches and mountains. In fact, less than 25% of the land in Hong Kong is developed, while the rest is country parks with some great hiking and biking trails.

Aside from Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, where most of the natives reside, the New Territories encompass the rest of the SAR. The New Territories include rural mainland to the north of Kowloon, as well as the outlying islands other than Hong Kong Island. The 3 main outlying islands are Lantau, Cheung Chau and Lamma, each with its own personality.

We woke up last Saturday morning not knowing what we were going to do that day, until after breakfast Marc said, "Hey, why don't we go see the Big Buddha on Lantau?"

Lantau Island is home to the new Hong Kong International Airport, although to say that it is on the island is stretching the truth a bit as the land on which the airport sits is actually reclaimed land from the South China Sea. It's actually one of history's most insane construction projects. For more, read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_International_Airport

About 84,000 people live on Lantau where you can get more space to live for your money but have to take a ferry, cab or metro to get to HK island. Lantau is, in a sense, a suburb of Hong Kong. The rest of the island is very mountainous and green, with great trails to go exploring.

To get to Lantau, you can take the metro or ferry and once on the island, you can pick your mode of transportation: cab, bus or the NGong Ping 360 (a recently built cable car that takes you up a mountain in 17 minutes instead of the 50 minute bus ride). We were very excited to do the metro/Ngong Ping combination until we got there and the Ngong Ping wasn't operating. Onward we went anyway.

At the top of one particular mountain lies Po Lin Monastery. Po Lin means peaceful lotus and once you enter the monastery, you can see why. On the grounds, you can see monks walking with their hands clasped and the Locals praying and lighting incense sticks. The ambiance is quiet and calming. Even a stray dog lazily stretches beneath a tree.

The bus ride up there, however, not so peaceful. Let me type you an excerpt from the guidebook: "The bus hurtles around hair-raising curves and up and down through lush countryside-not for the faint of heart." Luckily, I hadn't had lunch, so no dumpling tossing for me although if you go, I suggest my patented fasting technique should you need to take the bus up to the monastery.

Meat and alcohol are strictly prohibited on the monastery grounds, and the most famous place to eat on the island is the vegetarian canteen at the monastery. After reading about it no less than 3 times in my guidebook, I decided we needed to try this. Thankfully I had read about the process or else we might have starved. See, there are 2 tickets, the "basic" meal ticket and the "VIP" meal ticket. If you go VIP, you are served on china and, presumably get better service. However, we wanted to eat with the Locals, so we went "basic." According to Frommers, "the ordinary meal is served in an unadorned dining hall and the procedure is rather unceremonious, with huge dishes of vegetables, rice, and soup brought to communal tables. Grab a plastic bowl and chopsticks and help yourself. Packed with Chinese families, the dining hall here is certainly colorful." What they failed to mention is that #1 - you only get tea, no water or soda and #2 - the bowls you see on the table are all you get. So, when I asked for water, they brought me hot water for the tea.... mmm, not exactly what I meant. And when we were done with our soup, well we had to use the same bowls for the rice and veggies, so we just dumped the rest of the soup we didn't eat into our communal soup bowl. Not the most classy thing I've ever done, but thankfully we weren't escorted out of the dining hall.

We walked through the grounds of the monastery where we saw beautiful lanterns, irises, paintings of dragons and deities, and strange statues:

After we wandered around the monastery, it was time to tackle the Big Buddha. Literally, this is the largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha in the world (I'd hate to see the bigger one that is doing the moonwalk in Mongolia), and there are 260 steps leading up to it. Must do some stretching:

Ha ha, ok, so it wasn't that bad, all that walking around has made my legs pretty strong. What was painful was stopping every 5 steps so that Marc could take a picture of his new-found favorite tree (some Chinese tree he'd never seen before) and Lantau Peak in the clouds. Thankfully the new memory chip on my camera can hold over 500 pictures and I can delete most of the pictures he took. Here is a great one that I didn't erase:

Once we got to the top, we found more than just the Big Buddha, there was also something called a "white relic" which has something to do with when Buddha left the earth passing into nirvana (yea, we didn't get it either but I'm sure we are going into the equivalent of Buddha hell). Even better were these lady statues making offerings to the Buddha:

Although it didn't rain on us, it was a pretty cloudy day and being so high, we were literally in the clouds. I guess they don't call it the monastery in the clouds for nothing. All in all, it was a great day and just another adventure in paradise.

Here's a quick video for your viewing enjoyment:

Festival of the Hungry Ghosts

For the past few weeks, I saw a sign in the lobby of our apartment that says something to the effect of "In anticipation of the upcoming Yue Lan Festival, Management respectfully requests that residents not burn incense or papers in the building." Note to self, pyromaniacs not allowed in the building, good to know.

Marc gets 2 days off from work at the end of September, so I figured it had something to do with those holidays. Except upon further research, I found out he gets off September 26 for the Day after the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival and October 1 for National Day. None of those were Yue Lan Festival.... hmmm...

Then, on 2 different occasions in the past week, I saw a Local burning something in a large tin can out on the sidewalk. Seeing little incense shrines on the sidewalk next to the front door of a store or temple is not a big deal, but burning something in a can? I could see flames!

So, yesterday, using my extraordinary powers of research, I opened up my Frommers guidebook to Festivals. It says:

"August - Yue Lan Festival (Festival of the Hungry Ghosts). [Editor's Note: EUREKA!] Released from the underworld, ghosts are believed to roam the earth for 1 lunar month each year. Religious ceremonies, street performances, and offerings of food and paper replicas of life's necessities are burned to appease the spirits of discontented ghosts (those who were murdered, died without proper funeral rites, or are without descendants to care for them), in an attempt to prevent the unhappy souls from seeking vengeance on humans."

Then, I looked up when the Yue Lan Festival is supposed to occur in 2007 and HOLY BATMAN, it says August 26! This was too coincidental. Understanding now *why* the Locals were burning stuff in the tin cans but not necessarily *why* they would feel the need, I was on a mission yesterday to find this ritual taking place.

At about 9:30 pm last night, on the way to IKEA, SUCCESS!

Yes ladies and gentleman, that is a Local burning paper in a tin can on the sidewalk, in the middle of Causeway Bay. The lady in black with her back turned to us was helping him by feeding more paper, presumably "replicas of necessities," into the can. The round orange things just below the curb are oranges with incense sticks sticking out of them.

For the record, we just witnessed this ritual, Marc and I did not burn anything and no animals were hurt during the ritual. However, I'm now convinced that we will be haunted by discontented ghosts and couldn't sleep last night because I thought I kept hearing someone rummaging through the pantry.

Confirmation

I said "m goi" to the bakery lady and she said "m sai" which means "you're welcome." I might just get the hang of this Chinese thing yet! :)