Put a spork in me...I'm done (eating!)

Sunday morning we met again with with Uncle Pok Yen's family for dim sum (aka 'yum cha') in the biggest dimsum resturant we've ever seen. Once again we ate and ate. I hope we didn't offend our hosts by eating too much! Everything was delicious. Ayse especially liked the post-dessert serving of tasty bbq morsels.

(If Ayse could post to Yelp she would--we highly recommend Pleasant Palace near the HK ferry Terminal)

I think it's time we called up the number on one of the thousands of weight-loss billboards in the HK subway. It seems they have a surefire solution for getting one from a horrifying blubberous 120 lbs to a more healthy 105. Clearly we are beyond help!

Lawyers everywhere!

As if it weren't enough of a coincidence that Ayse's friend Alex was passing through HK Friday, it turns out that Greg Muir (our favorite patent lawyer) was in Hong Kong on business this week too. We met up with Greg at the Avenue of the Stars on the Kowloon shore facing the HK skyline. Avenue of the Stars is just like Mann's Chinese Theatre in LA--handprints of the famous in the sidewalk. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, and a bunch of other people I've never heard of.

At 8pm we watched the super-cheesy light show. All the HK buildings, already plenty well-illuminated, flash and blink their lights and shoot lasers into the sky coordinated to music. Nice :)

starting to add photos...

WE started adding our photos onto this site. Note that they have not yet been edited.

http://s214.photobucket.com/albums/cc79/peteandayse/Hong%20Kong/

more of the same...

still in Hong Kong, still sweaty and sticky... We took things a bit slower today, got up later, tried to reach At& on the phone (and had no success so we're stuck on blogspot for a while... ) and took on Kowloon today. After a nice light breakfast of noodles and roast pork, we spent some time at the Kowloon park watching people do Tai chi or learn ballroom dancing (hot), HK museum art (air'conditioned), Avenue of Stars (hot), lunch at Good Satay (AC), and taking in the Star Ferry Harbour tour (AC if you sit inside and the views were not really worth standing in the sun...) As you can tell, we figured out the sane way to spend time in a hot country, some time in the heat, some time indoors in AC... We now even know which malls to use to get to the nearest metro station. I think the newest addition to the google maps should show the air-conditioned public spaces in Hong Kong....

yep, it was a slow day. The best news of the day was to come back to our room this evening to find freshly washed and dried clothes on out beds! We washed it all in the shower yesterday but even though we had the AC on all the way in the room (I slept in thermal underwear) they didn't dry... REI failed me, dri-fit doesn't dry! Anyway, we splurged and spent $4 having them wash our clothes, so worth it...

We are pretty much ready to leave the big cities behind... Tomorrow we are off to the mainland!

our blog has decided to travel, too!

Our homemade blog running from a server under the coffee table did not want to be left behind and apparently also quit his job and go travelling... For now we caught him on blogspot.com, so wel'll just have to see how long he'll last here!

WE had an awesome day until we found out about our website being dwon... We got up at 6am and started wandering about the northern portion of Kowloon. We walked through the bird market, the flower market, and the goldfish market. It turns out we were earlier risers than the market people, most of the stalls were closed. We find very good breakfast though... porridge with Chinese donuts. Martha would be proud!

We spent most of the rest of our day on the Hong Kong island. Basically, this is where the beautiful and rich people live... The hills are alive with lots of luxury apartments, so it was no surprise that loads of German cars were racing down the hill to work (or to the malls?) at 9am... We started at the top and enjoyed the views of the Hong Kong downtown from the top of Victoria peak. The peak has amazing views and we got htere with the tram. The hill was steeper than SF hills! After we were done getting our hair messed up, we walked down the hill to the Hong Kong botanical garden, and then to Hong Kong park. THe walk-through aviary had some fancy looking birds, but the most interesting site to see at this park were the newly married couples posing at the park! The brides were dressed in huge dresses, but the grooms surely did not want to be left behind and went all out with their bedazzlers!

After the park, we took the double decker tram to the Star Ferry to shuttle us back to the Kowloon Peninsula where we are staying! Tonight we will meet Ayse's friend Alex from college for after dinner drinks, how cool is that!

sorry again about the blog problems, but it's hard to maintain a website from this far away..