Before Bangkok

We got our suits tailored before going to Bangkok (and actually picked them up today!). It's a really fun experience.

We ate at Maxim's Palace (there's also Maxim's Bakery, where we get breakfast before class) last week and they had some very social prawn on death row.

There were a bunch trying to crawl out and say hi...

We also took Star Ferry for the first time last week. It was fun, but we weren't thinking and took it to the wrong place so we had some good quality time on the MTR rushing to our site visit (which happened to be at MTR headquarters).

I just love the beware signs.

The McDonald's here (it was the only edible place in the MTR station we were in) have interesting changes in their menu...like corn and chicken burgers (i accidentally ordered one thinking it was a grilled chicken sandwich)...and the fries come with spices to shake with, like Kimchi and Japanese Curry...yum (not really)

we've visited headquarters for techtronic, the company we're doing our term project on, as well as their factory in mainland china. We get a good welcome everywhere--poor morgan got a Mr. on this one...
the egg auditorium at the HK science park
we threw a surprise birthday party for a girl who turned 20 a couple of days ago,
then went to LFK with some visiting friends from Gtown!
Now I'm off to bangkok (literally leaving in 30 minutes) so have to run! look forward to some more pictures

Catching up...

We're still enjoying the local culture...here's a band that always just happens to be playing everywhere we go. We're groupies...
There was a beer fest at Lan Kwai Fong last weekend,
And on Sunday afternoon we went to the Shatin HK Jockey Club to watch the races. I only lost 40HKD (betting on Favourite Supreme--how can a horse with that name lose?). This is a picture of the tv monitor in the middle of the track because I didn't get any great shots...

The Peak

The other night we went up to Victoria Peak...

This one was on the Tram ride up




We went and got custom suits at Sam's Tailor in the Burlington Arcade in Kowloon. Mine's going to be dark charcoal!

These little guys are my favorite olympic mascots--read about them: http://www.lotustours.net/info/olympics/index.shtml
They're all over the city. I love the panda!
In HK, instead of saying caution, they say Beware of ___. Some of my favorites have been Beware of Children, Beware of Wet Tiles, etc...
The view from our room on a sunny day.
Yesterday when we were going through the MTR station there was a crab crawling around the floor. Very strange.

The MTR trains here don't have doors between the cars so it's one big long hall. Cool to watch when the cars aren't very full Our first visit was to Invest HK. Since then we've heard a couple of speakers and also visited the jockey club and HK's anti-corruption office.

This was on the bus ride up to Stanley market after Invest HK. The views were spectacular the whole way...cities in valleys surrounded by green mountains and beaches.

We went through Stanley Market and then a bunch of us had our first non-Chinese dinner at a restaurant by the water.

The beer came in tiny, regular, and huge--otherwise known as a bucket.

Morgan and me at dinner (since I haven't been in a posted photo yet and I thought you might miss me).

Day 1 in HK

On our first day in HK we took a shuttle down to Tsim Sha Tsui and wandered around. We went to Avenue of the Stars in Kowloon with a view across the harbor of Hong Kong.
It's a busy harbor and it smells like the seashore.
Toasting the Aqualuna...

Bruce Lee lives...

We walked through the lobby of the Peninsula, very pretty.

That night we went out to Lon Kwai Fong (the bar area) to a place called Stormies for food and drinks. We eventually got to meet a friend of Dave's named Mike who lives here and works at AIG. He happens to be friends with a man named Troy who is an executive in the restaurant group that owns a big part of Lon Kwai Fong. So, of course, they treated us and shows us around.

After that we met up with a friend from Georgetown who lives in Hong Kong.

So this isn't the most exciting group of pictures, but--

Here is our room at the Horizon Suites hotel in Ma On Shan, New Territories. We have a nice 2 bedroom 1 bath apartment with a little kitchen/dining/living area. Here's Andrea at the dining table... Morgan in the living room (note the view--Tolo Harbour!!)
The master bedroom--Andrea's in here.

Here's Morgan and my little bunk bedroom,

Our kitchen (used this for the first time last night to make pasta when we had a bunch of friends from the program over to hang out after a loooong day/night out!)
The views our of our big living room window are amazing--the main view is the harbor with mountains in the distance and trees...the picture here does nothing justice since it's so hazy--no smog I don't think, but it's always monsoon raining or just about to rain!
We're hoping for some sun soon.
At another angle we look out on a little water park
and if you look back towards the mountains, there's Ma On Shan, our little city district! There are so many cool things in this area, all sorts of little street vendor type restaurants (the food is, as rumored, bad--unless you go to more upscale places). There is a great mall where we go all the time--our favorite part is a little dollar store with fun Asian stuff. We got a few wine glasses for our apartment!
It's about a 40-minute bus ride to downtown where the bars (Lan Kwai Fong) and Central HK are, but it's a really cool drive across water and amazing bridges. It's such an incredible city, I would really like to live here one day! There's also an area called Kowloon about 10-15 minutes away where we explored on our first full day. I'll post those pictures next--that's where Avenue of the Stars is.

Especially when it's monsoon-ing, our campus at the Chinese University of HK is like a tropical rainforest. The campus is about a 10 minute bus ride across the river. The campus is really big and set on a mountain; the first day we had to trek from the top of the hillside to our classroom near the bottom after a tour of the library. It was very pretty, but also slippery and a little scary--there was a drop off immediately to our left...one kid slipped and almost fell under the railing! Luckily we probably won't make that hike often...