Epic BBQ and 10k Running

Last weekend marked a whole year since we got engaged and what better way to celebrate with an epic BBQ feast! (Yeh I know it's not really an event and we've since got married, but well - any excuse). Stephen also had some good news in work so a bit of a double celebration. He didn't tell me where we were going and it was a very nice surprise as I'd been craving a BBQ.

He took me to The Grill at the Grand Hyatt hotel - wow / yum!

Dining by the pool on the 11t floor, love it. (Yes I was on the water after drinking a few too many Tsing Tao / Cocktails the previous night...) 

BBQ!!! PROPER MEAT!! The big massive prawns were my favourite, I must have eaten about 7!

One of our many plates of food....

With an awesome dessert selection to finish!

This place was fab, really good atmosphere - very casual but decent food and not too fancy. They also do a similar thing on a Sunday with all you can drink which is quite tempting but not sure if it'll be as good if the hotel pool is full of annoying kids... Although we were in the middle of the city (amazing views over the harbour) it almost felt like you were miles away on holiday.

On Sunday my planned lazy morning was rudely interrupted when I realised (at 11:30am) I needed to collect my race pack for the 10k the following weekend between 10 and 12 so I jumped on the tube and made my way to Victoria Park. In true Hong Kong style the organisation was excellent and I got what I needed in no time.

Divided up nicely into 10k / Half Marathon / Marathon Stalls

Think they were expecting a lot of people!

You will not be surprised to hear that I didn't make the podium

10km Challenge for Stephen, 10km 'Run 1' (of 5....) for me.

I do feel a little bit of a fraud with this but also am quite pleased with it!

Apparently over here the Hong Kong Marathon doesn't equal a 26.2 mile run, it equals 3 individual events; 10k, half marathon and marathon. Now if I had run 26.2 miles I'd be pretty mad if the people that had run 10k were getting the same goodies as me, but what can you do.

Another busy week of work passed us by and finally the weekend was upon us. I was determined not to drink much Tsing Tao in the pub after work this week, but it's difficult when the bar staff just keep bringing bottles out! On Saturday we went into town to get our haircut and discovered 'Chillino' drinks in one of the coffee shops.

Yum! 

Evening walk along the promenade

Possibly not the best pre race preparation....

Stephens 10k start time was 5:30am, mine 6am - not exactly ideal for a Sunday morning, particularly when you have to travel to get there (luckily at least the trains and buses were running all night). I woke up after about 4 hours sleep and still pretty full from the night before and really not feeling like running 10k up and down the motorway! (The half marathon and marathon have much better routes at least - over bridges and under harbour tunnels - maybe I'll do the half next year, maybe...).

Walking up the slip road at 5:30am 

As you do. 

Start line

Did it!

It was a really good race and I think I enjoyed it! Felt good to be out running again although I've realised training on the treadmill doesn't really work - need to investigate where you can run round here (i.e. not ridiculously crowded!). Stephen did an amazing 47:32 which given he's not been for a run for 4 months is pretty awesome! I got round in just over an hour, a little disappointed I didn't get under 60mins but I haven't run further than 5k in a while so can't complain. I also missed the 1km and 2km markers so had no idea how fast or slow I was going which isn't ideal! Although we were running up and down the motorway it is at least on the edge of the water so you get good views and it was nice to see the city wake up.

I got back home at 7:20am (!) and out of the window I could see some of the later 10k races going on, there wasn't a whole lot of running being done!!

Note the motorway!

After a small snooze we went out to watch Zero Dark Thirty, it was good entertainment but I'm not sure I was that impressed - the girl in it was too annoying and you know what's going to happen!

Worth it for the popcorn anyway.

Then we had a few beers and a slice of pizza before heading home to watch the finale of Dexter Season 6. Season 7 isn't out for a while yet so we need a new box set to start watching - any suggestions??

Three day week this week (two for Stephen technically since he has Wednesday off too but he'll no doubt end up working!) as we're flying to Bangkok woohoo!

Looking pretty toasty!

Right, back to watching the Oscars (woo Les Mis!) and researching what to do in Bangkok

Chinese New Year (part 2)

We got back from Macau on Sunday with good intentions of going to watch the New Years Day parade in Tsim Sha Tsui later that evening, but then we realised a) it's in TST (the busiest part of HK) and b) we weren't actually that bothered... so what better to do?

Eat pie

Drink cider!

Yep, we went to the Globe again! As usual it didn't disappoint, I keep meaning to watch the parade on youtube and see what we missed out on but keep forgetting.

On Monday it was firework day. We knew some friends would be watching from the terrace at the IFC Mall but we had no idea how busy it would be and how early you needed to go to get a table. The fireworks didn't start till 8pm but we went down with our Kindles for about 4:30pm and enjoyed the view.

The IFC terrace is brill, there's a bar there and nice tables and chairs so you would assume you have to buy drinks / food from the bar? Wrong! It's bring your own so the bar is just there for lazy people who can't be bothered to bring their own or go to the supermarket in the mall!

Stephen returned from one of his trips with the worlds most expensive (but tastiest!) popcorn - yum!

We spent a pleasant couple of hours eating / drinking / reading until others joined us ready for the main event.

This is our view of the fireworks.... but no photos of the actual fireworks - apologies!

The fireworks were a million times better than those for 31st Dec / Jan 1st New Year (I'm trying not to call it 'proper' new year...) - they were set off from barges in the middle of the harbour, 23 888 fireworks in total apparently and they lasted 23 minutes (they tend to be judged on duration over here!). Anyway here's a link to a video of them if you want to watch!

We had a few more drinks after the fireworks and could quite happily have stayed there for a lot longer but Stephen had to be up very early the following day. (Incidentally this is the only time something was shut over CNY that affected us, we were hungry and nowhere was open! As Stephen needed fuel for the following day we jumped off the tube midway home, had a quick slice of pizza and back on the tube!).

On Tuesday Stephen and friends fancied a challenge and decided to tackle the Hong Kong Trail from start to finish. This is a 50km trail from the peak to Big Wave Bay with lots of up and down! If you mention the Hong Kong Trail people tend to ask 'which stage?' people don't tend to walk all 8 in one go! I could maybe have been tempted until a start time of 5am was mentioned... no chance! 

View from the peak at 5am - pretty

I woke up about 10am with a text from Stephen saying they'd already walked 18km (!), since it was a sunny clear day I thought I'd go join them. I looked on a map and worked out roughly where they'd be and set off walking. I didn't anticipate quite how hot it was or how steep the hill was I needed to walk up to meet them. I quickly revised my initial plan of joining them for the last 20km and joined them for their lunch stop instead and walked back down the hill to our flat. (It was still a 15km round trip so I didn't do too badly and had a very pleasant afternoon knitting and catching up on iplayer... much more sensible than 50km no?).

Here's a few photos Stephen took along the way:

Ocean Park in the distance, 19km in 

View from Jardines Lookout - (this is where I walked up to) 

Reservoir 32km in.. 

37.5km...

Shek-o beach in the distance, where beer and food await!

After my lazy afternoon I took the bus to the finish point

The 100th 500m marker (=50km)

They all completed it with various people joining them at various stages - a seriously impressive achievement! Once the 50km was done it was then another 1km to the bus stop (harsh) for thai food and beer - well deserved and very enjoyable!

The not very direct route

Altitude vs. distance.

Wednesday was a very lazy day (not surprising really!) but a good end to a good few days off, finished off nicely with a couple of happy hour cocktails.

Cheers!

Chinese New Year (part 1)

Kung Hei Fat Choi! ('Happy New Year' - my Cantonese is coming along...). We've now left the year of the dragon and the year of the snake is here!

Well I'm so glad we ignored* any advice of 'make sure you get out of HK during Chinese New Year - everything is closed, it's busy, cold and wet'.
*not wholly true, we might have flown out of here but flights were silly money and we are tight.

The view from our window as I type this currently looks like this:

Not raining and 17.4 degrees according to the HK Observatory - not bad for February!

It's not been any busier than usual and nothing much is really closed! We've had a brilliant 5 days off... could get used to this not working malarkey!!

On Saturday morning we took a ferry over to Macau (after a McDonalds breakfast at the ferry terminal, naturally...) - they depart every 10 minutes or so and take about an hour. We've both been so busy we hadn't really considered what we were going to do when we got there and it was bigger than we both envisaged. We withdrew some Macau Patacas from the cashpoint and set off walking with a couple of free maps we picked up at tourist information.

Stephen spotted a cable car and we thought that sounded like fun so headed off to find it. We paid our 30pence each return fare and went to see what was at the top!

Ticket 

Cable Cars

Stephen in Cable Car

We got to the top and couldn't really see much so got in the queue to go back down... the friendly cable car operator man was curious as to why we were going back down so soon and told us we needed to see the church and lighthouse - err, what church and what lighthouse?! We set off further up the path and lo and behold a church, lighthouse and amazing views across the city! 

Bye bye year of the dragon

Hello year of the snake! 

View of Macau

Church and Lighthouse

Cannon

These are typhoon/monsoon signals hoisted onto the Lighthouse to warn of weather conditions , v interesting!

 We decided to walk down from the top (I know, could have bought single tickets and saved ourselves 10p!) towards the main tourist part of town to see the Ruins of St Paul and plenty of CNY decs along the way.

At the ferry terminal we looked up the hotel we'd booked to stay in and according to Forbes magazine it has one of 'the most jaw dropping pools in Asia' - ah, we'd forgotten our swimmers! (Told you we were really unprepared for this trip!).

After a quick stop for freshly cooked biscuits - massive bag for 70p and super tasty, don't mind if we do, we set about trying to find somewhere to sell us cheap swimwear. (No Primark / similar in Asia - everything is Louis V / Prada etc and very difficult to find normal priced goods!!). Luckily Stephen located a department store and we got ourselves sorted - 50% off too, win!

Biscuit man!

Then it was time to find a bus to take us to our hotel and check in - as usual for Asia the transport was amazing, reliable and cheap. The hotel was amazing - very posh, but we got a really good deal and it was fab! (Had a complimentary mini bar too - what more could you need!?).

View from the room - this would be really quite impressive if it wasn't so murky! 

Honey and ginger tea delivered to our door as a welcome drink.... 

View looks a bit better at night!

Quick dip in the infinity pool!

We'd booked ticket for the House of Dancing Water show at the 'City of Dreams' so were in a bit of a rush to make it for 8pm. We spent a bit too long enjoying the complimentary minibar and researching a good restaurant for tea that we ran out of time and ended up with this - never mind!

Mc Prosperity Burger and Curly Fries - can't beat it!!

The show was absolutely amazing - i've never seen anything like it! Normally I'd be a bit dubious but after reading the reviews on tripadvisor I decided we needed to splash out on tickets. I've added a few photos but it's really hard to explain - really pretty water shows, amazing diving / acrobatics and a motorbike stunt show all in one!?

 I think there was a love story in there somewhere (with added hints of pantomime) but it was lost on us - we were just so impressed with the half stage / half swimming pool and the cleverness of the whole thing!

After the show it was time to briefly explore the casinos - having been to Vegas last summer once you've seen one you've seen them all but it's bonkers really to think there's a Venetian / Wynn / MGM etc on this small chinese/portuguese island!

Casino floor inside City of Dreams 

Ceiling artwork at the Venetian 

Galaxy Macau in the distance.

We tried to buy famous egg tarts from Lord Stows but it was shut by the time we got there but we knew we had time to go back in the morning. We got a free firework show once back at our hotel as the government had put out special bays alongside the harbour for people to take their own fireworks which was cool to watch! (Midnight that night was the official start of the year of the snake, hence the fireworks, although they'll go on all week - they do make them here after all!).

In the morning we checked out of the hotel and walked down to the Venetian... I decided to stick a $50 in one of the slot machines (for some reason the casinos take HK$ rather than Macau money?!) and woohoo - I won big $81.20 to be precise, I was pretty pleased with this and it funded the egg tarts!! There was some serious money in that casino - 10am and people just getting wedges of $1000 (£800) notes out of their purses and putting them down on the table?! And there was me thinking I was going crazy betting my £4 away...

Authentic gondola rides inside the Venetian...

City of dreams by day

Venetian

CNY decs inside the Venetian - we also found a Fazenda style meat feast place so I think we'll be back!!

EGG TARTS!! These were AMAZING!

More genuine venetian architecture... 

Never been to Venice but I imagine this is just what it's like... 

Obviously had to take some tarts home with us!

Ferry back to HK

On board the ferry

Back in HK waiting for the bus home.

Macau was a brilliant little trip out of HK and I'd thoroughly recommend it. It feels so different to HK, almost like a European city in places but so easy and quick to get to so I'm sure we'll go back at some point, if only to sample the all you can eat meat restaurant....

I'd update you with the rest of our CNY adventures but this post is already a bit long and happy hour cocktails are calling - back soon!