Hong Kong: July 2010

Yay, we’ve moved into our new apartment and it is truly amazing – such a nice space with fantastic views – we both feel very lucky! We’ve been here for 3 weeks and have settled in nicely. The lions-share of the furniture is rented by Matt’s work, so was already in place. We’ve finally been re-united with all of our paintings and ornaments that we had shipped over from England. We hadn’t seen most of the stuff for over a year due to our travels, so it felt a bit like Christmas unwrapping everything!




We’ve also been shopping to buy some new furniture – an antique cupboard from Tibet as well as a couple of Chinese style reproduction pieces. I’ve also been back to the flower market and bought plants for both terraces, which now look super!


The weather is still very humid, although we’re both coping better now – we’ve definitely acclimatized! There have also been a couple of typhoon warnings which have been a bit scary – being 35 floors up and half way up a mountain is not ideal for a typhoon - fortunately both passed by several hundred kilometers away so we were unscathed!


Other than settling in to the new pad highlights for July have included:
A Sunday trip to Lamma Island – this is just to the South of Hong Kong Island, and like Cheung Chau, which we visited last month, Lamma has no roads or cars, but a couple of nice beaches. It’s bigger than Chung Chau and is well known for its great hiking routes – unfortunately we found it just too hot to take a hike, so we just walked along the waterfront, checked out a small temple and then sat in the shade in a harbor-front café!




I spent a Monday afternoon with Khim and Nita from my photography course looking at the famous ‘Lovers Rock’ which protrudes from the jungle half way up the mountain over Wan Chai – with spectacular views of the city below.


The rock is famous for its ‘phallic’ shape, which the locals treat as a fertility symbol – apparently it has magic powers! On the 6th, 16th and 26th day of each lunar month, the local women come from all over Hong Kong to light incense and receive blessings at the various small alters dotted around the hillside – in the hope they’ll meet the man of their dreams or solve their boyfriend/marital issue – sweet!





We also had a visit from our friend Shirley whom we met in Siem Riep, Cambodia last year. She’s currently living in the Philippines and was attending the dive show as part of her job. She and I went out for drinks in Wan Chai on the Thursday and then she came round on Saturday night for dinner and She, Matt and I ended up clubbing which was much fun – especially the pole dancing!







I met up with Khim and Nita again to photograph the sunset from Pokfulum, on the Eastern side of Hong Kong Island, where Nita lives – this was followed by an amazing Indian meal at Nita’s, cooked by her 2 helpers. Nita has lived in HK all her life but is of Indian origin and knows how to put on a feast!


One of the main highlights of the month was our Junk boat party in Clearwater bay and Victoria Harbour.




We were invited by Kate, who is the sister of Bianca, an old colleague of mine and we were celebrating the upcoming birthdays of her friends Tessa and Paul – we had an absolute blast drinking cocktails, eating yummy food, jumping off the boat and dancing…lots of dancing! We made some great new friends too!



After the trip several people came back to ours where we had more drinks and dancing on the terrace – the perfect end to a perfect day!!!