Hong Kong at Night

We took several walks through Hong Kong at night. I was amazed at how the buildings were lit up...not realising that they were lit up for the Symphony of Lights show, held almost every evening weather permitting, at 8pm.

Below are a few shots of various buildings at night. All are on the south side...Hong Kong island in other words...If you're like me, go check out google maps to get an idea of all the different islands that make up Hong Kong. Hong Kong Island is just one of the islands that everyone calls 'Hong Kong'. 

The old restaurant at the peak

Eaton Smart Hotel...Hong Kong

The Eaton Smart Hotel was not as expensive as other hotels closer to the wharf in Hong Kong, but it certainly wasn't as cheap as the YMCA in Hong Kong, for example. However, it was clean and well appointed. And the rooms, while smallish, certainly didn't make you feel like you didn't have any breathing room. 

It is located on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong...that's the North side I discovered. It is certainly the more 'authentic' side of Hong Kong. The South side, or the Hong Kong island side, was great and more Western I think, but it just felt more like I was in the real Hong Kong on the Kowloon side.

Here are a few pics of the hotel to give you an idea what it was like. 

The entrance on the ground floor leads to massive escalators...it took me a while to get comfortable with such long escalators...

Escalator from ground floor entrance to lobby

Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple

The Sik Sik temple is one MTR stop away from Diamond Hill...so it's quite close to the Nan Lian Gardens. 

We decided to stop off there on our way back to the hotel. We discovered there is actually another garden, behind the temple. The garden was so beautiful. 

Nan Lian Garden...Hong Kong

We made our way to Nan Lian Garden...light green subway line, Diamond Hill station. 

It was amazing to see the area beneath fly overs being converted into such a clean entrance to the gardens. Hats off to the folk in Hong Kong! I certainly haven't found this in many other places. 

It was lovely to find there was no entrance fee for Nan Lian Gardens. There is a map at the entrance. They had no maps to hand out, but you really can get by without a map. 

Once past the flyover area, one of the entrance gates appears. 

Temple Street Night Market, Apple Store & other stuff...Hong Kong

One of our first stops today was the IFC Mall and the apple store. 

View up the escaltor into IFC Mall

 The Apple Store was incredible. I was amazed at the number of people there all day! I cannot rave enough about how helpful the staff at the IFC Apple Store are! Nothing was too much trouble for them. Thanks guys!!!

This was still only getting busier.

Ferry in Hong Kong at night

We found our way across the bridgeway from IFC mall to the Star Ferry... and as short as the trip was, the views were impressive! We had to get a token at 2,50 Hong Kong Dollars each, but it was a painless process, as is everything in Hong Kong...This city is so well organised!

The Peak...Hong Kong

Just a few quick pics for our friends and family to see. 

We headed for 'The Peak'. The tram up to the peak was cool, although it was a supersteep ride. The sites on the way up were interesting too. 

Wedding in the Philippines

So we haven't posted much at all over the past couple of months, so hear comes a quick one. We were fortunate to be invited to a wonderful wedding recently.

Didn't get much Video in the church, but got a quick snippet of the reception. Very nice. And as to be expected in the Philippines, the food included

Habitat for Humanity Mandela Day Outreach

This past weekend we took part in a wonderful day of house building! Together with the South African embassy staff, Habitat for Humanity, Star Alliance Airways and staff from Goldfields, we went out to a site in Quezon City called Bistekville I think. (I hope I got that right) What fun and what a cultural experience. 

There is a huge need for proper housing in the Philippines. Habitat for Humanity is partnering with various government groups and others to get them built. These houses were going to be granted to teachers and to informal settlers. You can see some completed ones in the background.

Before we could get working, we all had to do some basic stretching and star jumps!? of all things. Very different way of doing things to back home, but still good :-)

Brad doing star jumps :-)

Dawson Street, Dublin, Sights

One street I have spent quite some time on while in Dublin, is Dawson Street.

View of Dawson Street

Irish National Library and Natural History Museum

Dublin has a very rich literary history. Yeats, James Joyce, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde all hail from Dublin. You can see the homes of some of these authors, albeit from the outside. Oscar Wilde's old home is now the American College in Dublin. 

One of the stops on the Dublin Hop on Hop off Bus tour, is the National Library. The building itself is so interesting to look at! I couldn't help playing with a toy camera effect on our little Canon.

View from the library across the car park.

Dublin Day 1 - Trinity College

We landed in Dublin on Sunday, which meant I was out sight seeing first thing I could Monday. It just doesn't seem right that Brad had to go to work! I won't gush, but suffice to say, I think I have the best husband in the world :-)

I bought a hop on hop off two day dublin bus tour. I snapped pics as I went. 

One of the first places it stopped was at Trinity College. 

The college was founded in 1592 by letters of patent from Queen Elizabeth the first. Obviously she was protestant and wikipedia says that it was seen as the university of the protestant ascendancy. It was also establish to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy. For example, only from 1873 could Catholics or dissenters become professors or fellows or receive scholarships. Then again, the Catholic Church in Ireland forbade its members to attend the university without permission from the Bishop, until, get this...1970! Pretty crazy!

Main Square

Ireland via Frankfurt!

Some of our avid followers have been clamouring for more posts :-) Apologies for the long delay in posting pics from our current trip to Europe! It's just been such a joy of sight seeing and touring that I haven't made time to get to blogging. Let me remedy that now and start with our flight over. 

KLM basically closed their boarding gate too early in Hong Kong so even if our flight from Manila hadn't been delayed, we still would not have made the connection! Needless to say I've been on to KLM about it and hopefully some corrections to their published available connections will be forthcoming!

In any event, Cathay Pacific was really great and bumped us onto one of their flights via Frankfurt. This was perfect because it gave us a chance to get to see our very good friends from Germany! Thank goodness we'd made the effort to get Schengen visa's. It made it possible to just change plans like that! 

Our friends took us to a beautiful place about an hours drive from Frankfurt called Loreley. There is a legend about the sirens singing on the great rock and as a result causing many ship wrecks. Or something like that at least. We went to the top of the cliff/hill/mountain and had coffee at the top. The view of the Rhine was exceptional!

Barge on the Rhine

Anilao Diving Again!

Well, we have had the joy and privelage of another wonderful dive weekend here in the Philippines.

Although the diving was great, the weekend was rather sad.  It's was officially the last dive trip with Karin and Sadri, as they are heading to Vienna soon after their stint in the Philippines. We will really, really miss them!

Once thing is definitely certain, living as an expat means making great friendships, but also, saying many goodbyes.

All in fun was had by everyone.  The dive weekend started at 5.15am, getting up and doing the final packing.  Our pickup was at 5.45am.  The drive to Anilao was quicker than ususal, including the standard stop and McDonalds for a snack.

The accomodation was a little rougher than the previous places we had stayed, which added to the adventure (we stayed at ScubaBro, which used to be known as the Outrigger).  It was an adventure when everyone's gear was rearranged and/or missing the second morning of diving. We actually found mine on another boat. One of the other groups diving there had understood it to be theirs...hahaha.

Apo Reef Underwater Sights

At the end of April we went to an island just South of Luzon. Just off Mindoro is a reef called Apo Reef with an island in the middle. We didn't stay at the island, but rather slept overnight under the stars on an awesome house boat. The diving there was really spectacular and our Swiss guide Michael really knew the dive sites!

 We did our first night dive - quite an experience - a wreck dive, a deep dive and a bunch of other fun dives. 

Here's a few pics care of our friends the Knappets :-)

Barracuda...I sincerely hope I spelled that correctly!

Apo Reef 2

So our dive instructor gave us a bunch of photo and video from her camera. The video below is what I used to think were Angel fish, but discovered are actually Moorish Idols! Again, I'm still learning my sea creatures!

El Nido - Apulit 3

Meals at Apulit were wonderful! There was so much food and such tasty food too! I had prawns every meal almost and there was a chocolate fountain each meal too! Each night over the weekend we were at Apulit, a wonderful group of musicians and dancers from the university entertained us with traditional Filipino music. It was really interesting to watch and listen to! 

Traditional Artists

El Nido - Apulit Island 2

The one thing I was amazed to see swimming underneath our cabin, was baby black tip sharks. They would swim right up to the beach too. They were more scared of us, than we were of them! A few times we saw them when snorkelling.

Baby black tip shark

 The snorkelling was amazing and the pictures just can't do it justice, but hopefully they can give an idea.

El Nido - Apulit Island 1

This is just a little snapshot of our wonderful trip to Apulit Island.

View from our balcony! It was like being in a postcard!

El Nido - Apulit Island 4 - Underwater Shots

Thanks to our wonderful friends, the Isenhowers, we had the chance to take some shots underwater. Truly, Palawan has some stunning sea life!

Nemo's cousin

Boracay Baby!

We went to Boracay for the weekend with a wonderful bunch of friends. You can fly to Caticlan or Kalibo. Our flight was scheduled through Kalibo, which meant we had to take a bus ride from Kalibo to Caticlan boat station and from there we had to take a boat across the channel to Boracay. Kalibo is the bigger of the two airports. It's actually an international airport strangely enough. It really is a small airport, so it was surprising to find out it's an international airport. 

The crowd...or at least most of them. 

Quick Video for all

Hi family and friends

It seems the activities of life have kept us from posting.  As such, I took a few minutes this evening to try my hand at putting a quick video together of some trips.

Thanks to Sadri and incedo.ph for the video (my rip of your DVD was not the best, and may ask for the actual original footage next time).

Anyhow, I will try to keep such info videos coming.

Legaspi, Donsol and Whale Sharks

This past weekend, we went to an area at the South of the island of Luzon, around a town called Legaspi. Our flight departed from the new terminal at Manila International Airport. It seems completely bizarre that all international flights are not directed through the new terminal. It seems that Cebu Pacific is basically running and using the new terminal, for domestic and international flights. I would think the Philippines would make a much better impression to foreign visitors, if all international flights began to be directed through this terminal. 

This is a picture of one of the ATM's at the airport. Check out the communication devices on top of the ATM, along with a toilet roll or two. Not sure how secure this ATM really is...lol.

This is a part of the new terminal, with a bunch of very tired travellers sleeping in the airport.

Manila Hotel and Manila Cathedral.

So I know this post is supposed to be about Manila hotel and Cathedral, but I just had to post this as a warning to tall people, that you need to watch out for low ceilings etc. in this part of the world :-) This was at one of the most upmarket shopping centres in Manila.

 Yesterday we went sight seeing with a colleague of Brad's (Teri). We went to Greenhills for a little shopping and then we went to Manila Hotel for lunch. The food was great and then of course, I got adventurous and asked if we could see some of the rooms. The only rooms available to look at were the executive rooms. The view from the 15th floor over the bay was just fantastic!!!

Sunset View

New Years Celebration

In the interest of keeping the blog updates, I thought I would post a quick one to let you know what we did on old year's eve.

The plans were made pretty late in the day, but a bunch of friends popped over for a little meal.  This was a meal with a difference, as all ingredients basically arrived at the house, hands got to work in the kitchen and a brilliant spread appeared on the counter, all in the time it took the guys to chill at the pool (I chilled at the pool, and not in it.  The pool water really is cold here).