Weekend!

Well,  it's Sunday night here - now 8 hours ahead of the UK with your extra hour in bed this morning!

I'll start with my trip to Jollibee on Friday lunchtime. I'd heard a lot about this place from Filipino colleagues - it's basically the Philippine equivalent of McDonalds and allegedly McDonalds haven't been able to crack the fast-food market over there due to the dominance of this place!

They promised they'd take me one day so on Friday lunchtime a few of us piled out of the office and into a taxi. It's only 2 MTR (tube) stops from work or 20 minutes on the tram but taxis are so cheap here, I think it cost £2.50 each way and that was between 5 of us! I'd had a quick look at the menu online before we went to see what I was letting myself in for, all looked good; burgers, spaghetti, fried chicken, rice dishes etc. However when we got there it appears it only has a reduced menu here in HK, none of which was really to my fancy (I had my eye on the shanghai rolls, sweet chilli sauce and rice dish). I'm scared of chicken on the bone, most of the pastas came with cheese and the burgers all had salad & mayo in so I played it safe and just got some chips! Did get a peach and mango pie as well though which I couldn't have had in McD's! Think my colleagues were a bit disappointed I didn't fully embrace the Jollibee experience but they enjoyed themselves tucking into Aloha burgers (burger, bacon and pineapple) and Pancit Palabok. Stephen and I will just have to take ourselves over to the Philippines for a long weekend on one of the many cheap flights available and try it properly! (And obviously enjoy the local culture and amazing scenery too!).

Friday evening saw us having a few beers, naturally. We both went out with our respective colleagues for a few bottles, met up in Paisanos (tasty pizza place I have mentioned several times!) and then went back to meet some of my colleagues who'd headed into Soho. Stephen had read about the bar they'd gone to due to it's extensive beer list and he/we were not disappointed - I was particularly pleased to discover they had the full range of Rekordelig, including one I'd not even seen before!

Tasty!

I should add we got a taxi to and from the bar, hopefully this will help you understand quite how cheap they are here, given we are total cheapskates and would never do this in England!! (We did try to get the 19p tram home but it was about 1am and I think they'd stopped running, boo!).

On Saturday we got the ferry to Discovery Bay. We'd both heard a lot about this place since it's supposed to be so different to the hustle and bustle of the island - also where the rich expats live and is known in my work as Delivery Bay.... people move there and have babies. This was an expensive ferry - £3 each way! Very luxurious though; comfy seats and wifi! There was a magazine in the seat pocket in front going on about 'DBay' and the 'DB-ers' and it very much enforced the exclusive club we were expecting it to be!

Ferry View - leaving HK Island 

Ferry view - arriving Discovery Bay

It was a very very nice place! Almost like a posh American town - no cars are allowed, only golf buggies and only a certain number are allowed so only the very wealthy have those. There were some lovely looking beaches which we'll definitely be heading back to with beach towels, kindles and picnic to enjoy a lazy day. There's plenty of bars and restaurants overlooking the sea and a nice square with shops. We went to a tasty bakery, bought snacks and sat in the sun and ate them - good times!

Tasty 

You see lots of good bakeries here! 

Square 

Beach 

 Beach again 

Heading back to HK Island

It really is beach weather even though it doesn't look it!!

On Saturday night we went to Western Market having not ventured this far west on the island thus far. Someone had mentioned a good Dim Sum restaurant to Stephen so we went to investigate, unfortunately it was closed for a wedding reception. The restaurant was on the third floor of the building and on climbing the escalators I discovered the second floor was dedicated to fabric stalls so I think we'll be back!! We were hungry and are getting braver so walked into the nearest local restaurant that had english translations on the menu. This was a good move - tasty tea for £7 total!

Stephen's meal, chopsticks poised! I had crispy noodles but ate it too fast for a picture!

Today I've signed up for a phone contract, wahey I finally have data on the move again! Or not, it doesn't seem to be working yet but hopefully soon. It's a two year contract so I guess we best stay now!  Otherwise we've mainly just been out and about locally or chilling here. We've discovered a good film channel so watched Castaway this morning and Casino Royale is on now, hoping to go see Skyfall next weekend.

I also went window shopping (temporary credit card failure, but I think Halifax systems broke rather than anything more sinister as I've managed to get some $ out of cash machine tonight) but think I might have to go back and buy this jumper after work tomorrow...

Loves it!

We may also have possibly maybe been back to Paisanos for tea tonight.... :)

Oh and hope you've noticed I've changed my name to Hannah Greene! It's on Facebook too, so it must be official now!?

Edit: I've also amended the 'comment' settings so hopefully anyone that's had trouble leaving one shouldn't be having problems anymore!

A day at the beach and a night at the races

Since it was Chung Yeung festival on Tuesday and the Hong Kong Government decided we should have the day off, we thought we'd hit the beach! (Traditionally the idea is to go sweep your ancestor's graves and then have a picnic high up on a hill with family).

We'd heard good things about Stanley being one of the nicest beaches on Hong Kong Island (there's plenty more beaches for us to explore on all the other islands too!) so thought we'd go check it out. The bus there comes quite near where we're staying but we got the tram into 'Central' to guarantee ourselves a seat. After some initial confusion about where the bus stop was (not part of the main bus station it seems!) we got straight on. The fare was a whole $7.90 (64p) each way and the buses left approximately every 3 mins, still loving the public transport!

Beach!

Promenade 

We had a bit of a wander round - so strange the contrast to the big city, only half an hour or so on the bus and you could almost be in France / Portugal! We also had a quick snoop at Stanley market - a good selection of tat and fake stuff so I'm sure I'll be back!

I've actually managed to get a bit of a cold so was feeling a bit sorry for myself so we sat and had a picnic of tasty food under a nice glass canopy and just sat people watching enjoying free wifi. Was strange to be sat there in the boiling hot sunshine reading tweets about people going to work in the cold and wet!

The cold nearly stopped us going in the first place but I decided to be a rebel - to sneeze / cough / sniffle on public transport is a major faux-pas over here! People walk round wearing a face mask at the first hint of a sniffle. This doesn't wash in the office mind (perhaps where I caught the thing from!) everyone is sat at their desks coughing and spluttering!!

Chilling in the sunshine 

This explains the Waitrose stuff in all the shops! 

Only £4.50 for some British raspberries...

We then headed home (got straight on a bus, naturally) and I had a small snooze in an attempt to feel better (any excuse).

Repulse Bay from the bus, will be heading back here another day! 

Bus is pretty scary on mountain roads! 

Repulse Bay again

I was feeling much better after my nap but had a horrible sore throat - what better to soothe it than a frozen margarita!

I'd also lost my tastebuds temporarily so didn't want anything fancy for tea so we thought we'd try the Chinese version of McDonalds - Fairwood. It was really quite pleasant (what I could taste anyway) and for £7 for two meals (cooked fresh!) and two drinks you can't really complain.

Back to work on Wednesday, payday for me! I swear banking over here is 20 years behind the UK, odd considering HSBC is based here - you get paid on different days depending on who you bank with too?! Anyway, despite opening an account over a week ago I'd still had no correspondence from them so had to be old school and go into the branch, present ID and sign to be told my balance!

Agh spend too much time here, least they have free wifi!

Was worth queueing though since I'd been paid (turns out your salary looks pretty good in thousands of HK $$$$!) so means we can get hold of local money without worrying about bank fees / exchanges rates, even if it does mean I have to queue to get hold of it for the foreseeable future...

In the evening we went to Happy Valley Races, now I'm not sure either of us have ever been to the races in the UK but over here it's a very popular thing to do on a Wednesday night! There was also the added incentive that it's Oktoberfest there at the minute. I was slightly disappointed by the lack of Bratwurst (you could have had one as part of a 3 sausage platter but one of them had cheese in and it came with sauerkraut, enough said) but I had some deep fried beer battered prawns, pretzels and beer instead, so was fairly content.

100% genuine.... 

Only £10 for  2litres....

Pleased with this pic :)

We put a couple of small bets on (think $20, £1.60 small) but failed to win. Was just a good night though and good to catch up and get to know people :) think we'll go back but perhaps not every week!

Almost weekend, just Friday to go.... just a lazy one here I think, kick this stupid cold!!

Married for a month :)

It's been a whole month since the big day!

I would say nothing much has changed but since we moved part way around the world how can they not! Everything is going very well however.... apart from tonights dining option. Since it's a month since we got married we thought we'd go out for dinner to celebrate. (Because we totally don't do this often round here...).

We'd passed what we thought was a cool looking place whilst on the tram a few times.

It was a Japanese place with hot plates in front of you, we thought they were for noodles. Oh no it's for cabbage patties. The proper name for which is apparently an Okonomiyaki. Imagine a pancake, full of cabbage, with a few prawns and mushrooms in my case, and meat in Stephens. Mine was particularly tasteless, Stephen's slightly less so because he ordered the 'curry' version. They basically bring you a bowl with your chosen meat / veg in, with some dough stuff and an egg. You then have to spend 5 minutes mixing it up yourself before cooking it on the hotplate in front of you. Not one of our most successful choices. It was so bad I couldn't even bring myself to take a picture!! (Everyone else seemed to be enjoying it mind, even getting the chefs to shape their weird patty things into pokemon type characters...). We had a good laugh at least! (Although annoyed this is perhaps our most expensive meal out to date at £20 total!).

The situation was rectified by purchasing a footlong sub on the way home.

And being the good wife I am I had the foresight to purchase tasty cakes earlier on in the day.

Yum!!

Lesson learnt - get data on our phones so we can check reviews before we go in places, also take more notice of the pictures of the food...

Time to enjoy the cake! Day off tomorrow, woohoo!

Weekend Tourists

Wahey, we both survived our first week of work out here! 

On Thursday night we went to the local pub for a quick drink then to a local restaurant. I made a bit of an error with my choice - was expecting a plate of fried noodles with veg but instead got some really thin tasteless noodles in a bowl of weird soup. Stephen did much better with his pork and rice! 

Before I joined the HK office I'd been assured they were very sociable and went out for drinks every Friday, so obviously I was hoping to go out and get to know my new colleagues a bit better. Unfortunately it didn't happen this Friday - we have a bank holiday on Tuesday (midweek, ace!) so a lot of people have tomorrow off and are making the most of the long weekend. People were jetting off to Thailand / Vietnam / Philippines etc, good to know for future!

This didn't bother me at all though since our lovely chums from Leeds, Georgina and Nick were in town. They'd been planning this trip for a long while, Leeds - Hong Kong, on the train! This meant they couldn't make our wedding but was great to see some friendly faces :) I met up with them for a few drinks before we headed to a nice Indonesian restaurant and Stephen joined us after he'd been drinking with colleagues.

Georgina and Nick

Ace wedding pressie they bought us! Can't wait to put these in our flat in a few weeks!

3 Yorkshire Folk outside the 'Yorkshire Pudding'

In our new favourite bar

Stephen and I also called into our local pub when we got off the tram home. This was a mistake on two levels; firstly we really didn't need another drink and resulted in slight hangovers Saturday morning, secondly it was really ropey and full of drunk english / australians and we could well have been in Benidorm / similar...

After quite a long lie in attempting to sleep off our headaches on Saturday we set off for a trip up 'The Peak' (Stopping at our favourite pizzeria en route for a late lunch). I knew it was steep but it was crazy steep - actually quite scary on the tram and moreso on the way back down!!

Peak Tram Station 

I wasn't expecting there to be much up the top - it seems there's a 'Bubba Gump Shrimp' and a big shopping mall!

Cute 

Obligatory Instagram of the view 

Ticket

We then went for a bit more of a walk around potential areas we might want to live in, before heading home for an afternoon snooze (well I did anyway). Feeling rather refreshed we headed back out to meet up with some of Stephens work chums for a few pints and to watch the football (well they did anyway, I read my HK guide like a proper tourist!). We were hoping to get something tasty to eat after the game but clearly we were in the wrong place as it certainly wasn't 24 hour city round there and the only place open was McDonalds - never mind tea for two only set us back about £3.50.

This morning we were up and about a lot earlier and headed out towards a market we'd heard about.

All very nice but a bit fancy for us!

Once we'd had a quick wander we caught a ferry over to Kowloon side (a different route to normal and cost a whole 50p, shocking!). It was worth it though as we had a really nice walk in the sunshine over to the International Commerce Centre to continue our tourist trail and go up to the Sky 100 Observation Deck. Needless to say the views were amazing from up there and really gave us an idea of the scale of this place!

We then rounded off our weekend tourist trail with a trip back out this evening to the 'Avenue of Stars' to watch the 'Symphony of Lights'. This is on every evening at 8pm and several buildings put on a light show and since we'd not seen it yet we thought we'd go have a nosey. I don't know if it's because I'd read the tripadvisor reviews before we set off but we were distinctly underwhelmed! It's free so can't really complain but since everything is lit up pretty cool anyway it's hard to make it stand out - glad we've seen it though!

Bedtime on Sunday night now but it's ok because only a day of work and then we get Tuesday off - should break the week up nicely! Hoping to head out to one of the beaches since the weather seems to be lovely at the minute - hot, not too humid and almost blue skies!