Views from the 60th Floor

We were invited to spend an evening on the roof of a 60 floor apartment building out in Tung Chung on Sunday. The views were awesome and the company, drinks and snacks added to the occasion. I will miss opportunities like this.

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Bonkers in Singers

It’s with heavy hearts I announce we are leaving Hong Kong on June 18th for Singapore. We accepted positions in an international school there a few months ago. Three years have passed by in a flash.

I started this blog to record our new and exciting experiences in a strange and wonderful city and I’m a bit disappointed I couldn’t keep up with the regular postings. As I have stated before life just moves on and sights and sounds that I may have goggled at before became common place. Still awesome but I just found the posting of it to this blog to be a bit cumbersome and I would often forget.
Even being one of the Hong Kong blogs featured on CNNGo.com couldn’t keep me going. Silly me.

I am hoping that the new experiences in Singapore will reignite my passion for blogging. I will probably get a new domain and set up forwarding information from here so you all don’t miss a thing! I will look forward to looking back at my time in Hong Kong through my posts here, just wish there wasn’t so many gaps of time in between posts…

Hong Kong is an amazing city. Visit it. If you have the chance to work here, do so. You won’t regret it.

Camping with 80 or so Grade 4s on Lantau Island was actually good fun!

The views from hiking around Hong Kong Island can be breath-taking.

The mixture of old and new is always a common theme in Hong Kong

Yes, this is actually on Hong Kong island, one of the pre-conceptions I had of HK was that it was all concrete but even on the island there is greenery!

Foooood! Another of my regrets is that I didn’t get too experimental with eating here. There are so many different cuisines to try.

It’s so hard going through the hundreds of photos of stuff we have done over the last three years. The experiences have been many. Who knows we may, one day, end back here. You just never know..

Stay tuned while I come up with a witty website name (which isn’t so place specific) for our continuing adventures. Suggestions welcome!

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Rosedale on the Park

Rosedale on the Park has been on my radar for a while but for some reason we just never ended up going to it…until tonight!
It promised stunning views and happy hour drinks on their website and it duly delivered.

The Skyzone Bar and Restaurant is all the way up on the 33rd floor. Decor is a bit “The Shining”  (and the music was in accordance with the decor at times) and the service a little lacklustre at the start when we were the only ones in the place but the service improved  as the night went on.
I think our bill was about 300HKD for salad, garlic bread, pasta main, dessert and 2 beers and 2 wines. Pretty good for a hotel in Hong Kong! And, you know what? The food was really good! The bread was fresh and hot, the mains were tasty and just the right portions and the ice cream for dessert was, undoubtedly, “home-made”.

The views are pretty, prettayyy good. It’s a strange vantage point that you may not see as a visitor to Hong Kong; looking over Victoria Park, HK library towards Tin Hau. Normally people get to places to look over the harbour or down towards Central. So it was a nice change.

And going in to the men’s bathroom you are met with another interesting view and quite a…strange bathroom experience!
I hope you like the authentic sound effects…

Here’s a little stitched together panorama from the main bar area. Click for biggy!

 

from https://bonkersinhonkers.wordpress.com

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Hot Pot Cuisine

After only experiencing one hot pot eating event once before I was eager to try it again. Especially as the first one was bloody vegetarian!! So I was very happy we were invited to a very meaty hot pot event in a colleague’s apartment.

Basically hot pot involves a pot of boiling water, raw vegetables and meat. And an accoutrement of  sauces and spices to mix together as your dipping concoction. It’s a very communal, social affair with everybody ladling out various things to people who can’t reach the bubbling broth of earthly delights.

This was my smorgasbord of sauces. I like soy so I  had two types of soy, some spring onions and a little sesame oil. It was niiice!

Various fish balls, beef balls and tofu bits.

The pot for veggies only. VEGGIES ONLY!!

Pre-dipping into my special sauce. Yum!

The other entertainment of the night was our friend’s aquarium. I love a good aquarium and could stare at one for evvahhh.

Hi Mr. Turtle!

I think this guy is called an Axolotl; a type of salamander. We think he’s blind…

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The A380 Experience

If you’re heading down to Bangkok from Hong Kong for whatever reason you can get the most reasonably priced flights on, strangely enough, Emirate’s sparkling new behemoth double-deckered Airbus 380! I’ve wanted to fly on this bird since I watched its maiden flight live streaming back in 2006/2007, I can’t remember exactly.

On board, it’s got great leg room; you are actually disadvantaged sitting at a bulkhead row as you can’t watch your TV while taxiing, take-off or landing. And the extra leg room is minimal. Emirate’s entertainment system is also full of stuff to keep you entertained. Flight times between HKG and BKK are only about 2 and a half hours anyway.
The downsides of flying this size of plane is the extra bodies on board, everything takes longer and is more stretched out due to the numbers involved. We were delayed both going and coming back and I’m thinking this is quite regular. The more the people the more the chance of things messing up!

You can really feel the sheer weight of the A380 when turning and taking off. It’s a great experience and if Emirates keep their prices low then it will be number one choice for many people doing the Bangkok route from Hong Kong.

from https://bonkersinhonkers.wordpress.com/

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