Cheung Chau

It had been some time since we'd booked the work Junk (i.e. boat), so we headed out a couple of weeks back to Cheung Chau (Long Island). I'd been once before - about 6 years ago. Little had changed: there's still a huge number of fishing boats in the harbour and cycle rickshaws on land. Although I did see one thing unknown to the island in 2005: a car. There was a tiny little police run around, but it seems of limited use on an island where the streets are steep and narrow. They've also got public baths in the truest sense of the word.

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Lights

The proliferation of Christmas lights is starting to become overwhelming. From our living room you can see a mass of different colours flashing. Flashing lights are not unheard of here with the nightly Symphony of Lights, but the Christmas lights achieve a whole new level. Sadly photos can't quite capture it. Across the harbour in Kowloon, there's a particularly fine collection of hypnotic colours. With Chinese New Year at the end of January, we may be treated to them for some weeks to come.

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New experiences

On Thursday, I experienced a sensation which I hadn't felt in a fair few months. After mulling it over for a few minutes, I realised what it was: I felt cold. Walking down the street in mid-December in my shirt, it felt a bit nippy.

On Saturday, we headed to Sai Kung for a trip out to an island about thirty minutes by slow boat. Deserted apart from our little group, it was great. It also has the distinction of being the only time I have ever been sunburnt in December.

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Parks

We made a lovely discovery on Saturday afternoon. It turns out that if you walk about 20 minutes south of where we live you end up in countryside with rolling green hills and streams. It feels a million miles away from the city. The well protected national parks have to be one of Hong Kong's finest features.

It's now the ideal time to go out exploring. The summer heat has dropped off to very pleasant temperatures in the mid 20s.

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Hanoi

The exam's been and gone - only got to wait til February for the result!

After a lovely lunch, it was off to the airport to board a flight to Hanoi. It's only an hour and a half's flight, so it's an ideal long weekend break. Lovely old French colonial buildings abound and the Old Quarter is full of motorbikes buzzing around. In fact, the good people of Hanoi seem capable of living their lives on vespa-style motorbikes: a family of four seems to fit snuggly and eating and sleeping are easily accommodated on any journey.

The food is wonderful, plentiful and cheap. We went to one lovely restaurant in particular which took us on a 12 course spice journey for about 25 dollars each.

The museums were genius with their unmitigated bias. Undoubtedly, the French did not cover themselves in glory, but even the introduction of a legal system by the French was frowned upon. The history museum demonstrated the advance of spectacular progress up to 1945, it appears that the Vietnamese didn't suffer a single reverse in the whole period covered because they fought so heroically against the French in particular. The revolution museum covered everything since 1945, which was an equally successful period you'll be pleased to hear. I didn't see an explanation for all the Vietnamese faces in the pictures of French officers and prison guards - that doesn't quite fit the narrative.

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Right, where was I?

Ah yes, Sun Yat Sen the opera. We spent the following weekend up at a conference at the centre where tter church does its drug rehab work. Very impressive set up with since great sports facilities including a climbing wall, a swimming pool and all weather pitch. The conference itself was very interesting despite a bit of initial scepticism and cynicism! The speaker was a psychologist who was talking about how experiences in childhood can continue to affect our behaviour today - going back as far as conception! A few real life stories suggested it wasn't as pie in the sky as it first sounded.

Anyway, lots of other bits and bobs have been going on, including catching up with a mate I used to play footy with at uni but hadn't seen for about 10 years. We also took in our first real Cantonese film (our first attempt turned out to be a Mandarin film dubbed into Cantonese): Life without Principle. Worth a watch.

I'm now on study leave - exam on Thursday and then we're heading straight off to Hanoi for a long weekend.

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3 full weeks

Three full weeks since I last wrote something, so it's high time.  Starting with the things freshest in my memory: I had my first go at wake boarding yesterday.  It was nigh on impossible to get going (i.e. to get the boat to drag you out of the water) and everything hurts today, but it was great!  The weather is really nice now - down to mid to late 20s and lower humidity.  The water temperature is also down to about the same level, so it's a bit more refreshing that it was.  With the winter closing in (!), the open air swimming pool across the way is only open during the morning in November and is then closed until April.

A couple of weeks back I had my first work trip to the Mainland - Shanghai and Beijing in quick succession.  It's funny to think that they both feel like quite well trodden territory now and it was great to meet Terence and Nikki for a drink at a Peruvian place in Shanghai.  Beijing was more polluted than I'd seen it before.  It's reputedly the worst its been since the Olympics (when they created rain to clear things up a bit).  It was really easy to spot: just looking at the hotel window you could see it clearly with the sun trying as hard as it could to get through - and largely failing.

I got back from Shanghai just in time to go to Sun Yat Sen the opera - the man who holds the distinguished position of being regarded as the father of both Taiwan and Mainland China - work that one out!  It was the first Western-style opera written in Hong Kong and the first ever Western-style opera with Chinese instruments.  For good measure, it was also banned by the Mainland - apparently talk of revolution and democracy doesn't go down so well up there.

Ah, Matt's calling on skype...