paging Batman

Holy crowds, Batman! Bet you didn't realize just how many people would be excited to see you filming in the middle of Central.

Yes, the big excitement when I arrived in HK was that Christian Bale and Morgan Freeman were in town filming some scenes in Central on the famous escalator that goes up the mid-levels (watch Chungking Express if you want to know what I mean), and doing stunts off the tallest building. There was some controversy over the film production company asking offices to keep their lights on at night so that the night scene shots would look really cool. Environmentalists complained.


I missed out on the stars, but I did take some photo shots on Sunday of the film crew getting set up for secondary exterior shots.

babies on planes

I survived my 15 hour flight to Hong Kong on Cathay. I was really expecting the seats to be more comfortable, and while they were wider, the leg room was quite bad. You could adjust the seats two-ways, but with my long legs, the foot rest got in the way. Originally, Mama and I were in the middle of a four-seater but when Mama did some quick thinking and asked this young woman who was frowning at the end of the row if she wanted to sit next to her friend. Thank goodness, that way we were able to get up just about every hour, and I could sort of stick my legs out.

We sat behind one of the most cheerful 3 year old kids. He was Chinese but lived in the states, and no matter what the hour, when he popped his head up to look over, he always smiled. I couldn't believe he was still in a good mood on such a long flight...with NO TOYS. Who goes on a long trip unprepared like that.I made him a paper airplane and a paper sailboat. He was very cute and mixed his English and Chinese, spoke with an American intonation, like "Can you make me a another fay-gay (airplane), and "draw the faygay with my gugu (auntie) on it."

Lots of toddlers on the plane. Meanwhile, the row behind us was a family of 5, in 4 seats. Grandpa, mom, dad, 2 or 3 year old, and baby/toddler. And boy, was the little boy unhappy. He pretty much cried or whined the entire flight. Exhausting!

Lantau Island

Besides eating at Yung Kee restaurant (twice), probably the best, new thing that I did in Hong Kong with my parents was to take this amazing, 25-30 minute, 5.7 km cable car ride from Tung Chung to the Polin Monastery on Lantau Island. Lantau is a much larger island than Hong Kong, but not inhabited by that many.

This was such an incredible ride. To put this in perspective, it used to be quite an undertaking to make it to Lantau Island -- a ferry and a bus ride, or a hike up the mountain. I've done all that in the past. And now, all you have to do is take the subway, then wait in line (first for tickets, then to enter the turnstile, then to take the cable car).

If you're ever interested in going, check out this site, the Ngong Ping 360 experience. The view is absolutely breathtaking. You pass the Chek Lap Kok airport in the first 5 minutes of the ride and then keep going over mountains and hiking paths of Lantau mountain parks. Parts of the ride became completely shrouded in fog, which is a bit spooky. It's really exciting to get to the end, and see this large, outdoor bronze Buddha statue looming on a hill in the distance.

At the end of the ride, you end up in a little shopping village which has several small restaurants, shops, and a theater that has explanations of Buddhism, and something called Monkey Tales for the kids. It's very well organized, and while you might think it seems a bit slick, it's not tacky. If you walk past that, and can make your way to the monastery and have a vegetarian meal, and walk to the steps leading up to the statue.

oh wow, Macau

What can I say about Macau? The best thing about it, quite frankly, was leaving it. We'd heard all about how this former Portuguese colony had done a great job cleaning up its old city, getting more investment in casinos, etc.

So it was a bit of a shock to go there today and be a bit unnerved by the number of mainland tourists, the chaoticness of trying to figure out how to get to the old, preserved district (which is cleaned up) when there are no good signs at the ferry pier, and the fact that some of the historical sites just weren't open for business. We spent a lot of time walking through narrow roadways in the center of the old town, sometimes flattening ourselves against walls as small buses and motorcycles went by.

I still remember it from when it was a much sleepier, slow-paced city to visit -- with just a few casinos, and gangs, and a nice promenade by the water. Faded glory indeed but rather pleasant way to spend a day trip. This time, I really don't think I need to go back. There's a lot of reclaimed land where they've put up a lot of Las Vegas casinos, and so the original promenade is no longer facing the ocean, but now a small causeway bay and a twolane highway. The taxi driver we had was not overly enthused with all the changes.

The hydroferry was particularly pleasant with mainland Chinese men hawking up spit really loudly. And talking at the top of their lungs. Bleh and ick. It definitely reminded my mom of why she's not so keen on going back to be a tourist in China anytime soon.

What I did like. They have done a nice job with restoring some of the old buildings, and I particularly liked the Moorish barracks, the Senado plaza and a few of the churches. Also, we had some good Portuguese/Macanese food today -- Sopa de Caldo Verde (green soup) and Spicy African-influenced chicken, a fried bacalhau (cod) with egg and potatoes (the potatoes weren't quite right), fried sardines (excellent), and a soupy rice with small octopus and tomatoes.

I'll post some photos later, have to charge the camera first.

hair today, gone tomorrow

Every day, while on vacation in Hong Kong, we end up with a bit of a "program". I've pretty much settled in a routine of where in the mornings, we see my grandfather and take him to have yum-cha (mandarin-speaking people and Americans say eat dimsum, but the Cantonese know it as yum-cha -- literally drinking tea). So Sunday, we did that and my favorite two dishes were the fried glutinous dough ball with black and white sesame seeds on the outside with black sesame seed on the inside, and a vegetable cheung-fun (long flat sheet of noodle wrapped around vegetables.) I've never had that one before, usually I've had shrimp and cha-siu filling.

So that Sunday, then while my Aunt was studying, my mom and I went to Kowloon-Tong stop and hung out at the Yau-Yat Sing shopping mall where it was great fun to check out what are the latest fashions and styles here. I really do love the shoe styles here, and there was this very cool department store that had all the little cool things that you don't really need. Like miniture magnets of baseball players - how cool is that! And then we spent an hour or so there having a hot drink, eating snacks and trying to play WordsUp, which is like a scrabble game but you can change words by stacking tiles up to 5 high. We think some of the pieces were missing and mixed up with a Scrabble bag. It was a bit annoying -- I had so many vowels, and my mom had so many consonants. I won by a few points.

Monday, besides the morning visit with my Gong-Gong, the afternoon was all about getting our hair done. We got scolded by the hair dresser. He told us to never come back to HK with such bad haircuts again -- because he had to spend so much time fixing mistakes. Guess I won't be doing the Chinatown special anymore. My mother had a particularly bad cut from DC -- everything was uneven and ugly, as she put it, like a bad Liza Minnelli. Luckily, we are beautiful again. I went for color as well -- black with thick red (scarlet?) highlights? Pretty cool, and about as radical as I can get without going for purple or blue. That was about 3 hours of sitting in a chair. oh, and we had oil treatment for our hair so now it's really soft :)

I'll have more later. Today, we're heading off to Macau for a day trip. Hopefully the scattered thunderstorms in the forecast will be just that... scattered.