Friday, 15 October 2010
Hong Kong in style
The last night in HK in stayed in a five star hotel right next to the harbour in Kowloon, courtesy of a very kind sponsor. We enjoyed an amazing meal in Aqua restaurant in the 29th floor facing the harbour and watching the sun set and the buildings light up. Simply beautiful. The next day we had a quick sight-seeing tour of the Hong Kong side and it was too soon the time to go to the airport. The waiting time flied past with some of the best things I know: the newest Sophie Kinsella book, a mojito and quesadillas! The 13 hour flight back to Europe went surprisingly quickly and although I thought I had slept badly and just for an hour or two, I managed to get eight hours of sleep. So I landed at six am feeling awake and there has been no sign of jetlag! The weather is quite a bit colder than I had packed for, so I've resorted to wearing my boyfriends clothes. I miss the warm weather and friendly Asian people but it is so nice to be here with him!
Sunday, 10 October 2010
Hong Kong and Macau
I have spent now a week in HK, and every one of the days has been long and hectic. A friend of mine from Finland has been travelling with me, which has made the beer input slightly higher than normal. Hong Kong has been a total surprise for me, as I was expecting only the tall buildings but not the nature and the mountains all around it. We went up the Victoria Peak by the Peak Tram and up to the Ngong Ping with the cable car. There were beautiful views over the town, the airport and especially over the mountains. In Ngong Ping we saw a modern Buddhist monastery, the world's biggest outside sitting bronze Buddha statue and a monument with the heart sutra written on wood pillars - all built in the past 20 years or so but in the familiar hundreds of years old Buddhist style.
I have been pleasantly surprised by the public transport system, especially after Manila where there was none. The subway, boats and buses are easily navigated and paid for with a handy Octopus card. The Octopus is a valid and easy form of payment also in some tourist attractions, fast food restaurants and shops. Very handy when paying for small amounts and not familiar with the coins! The only complaint I have is the shopping complexes that surround the subway exits and makes it impossible to just get to the street and where you wanted to go to! And the shopping in HK seems to be a lot of Gucci, Rolex and Cartier, so I have not ventured to any shops at all.
Hong Kong is very British in small ways, but actually not at all. The people are very business-like and majority remind me of the City people in London. A lot of foreigners are here obviously for business, and everyone speaks English. Or in the cases where the waitress has not spoken English, someone else has helped us immediately. So very friendly too! On Saturday we took ferry to Macau, which used to be under Portuguese rule for a long time. Nowadays it was a small city-country (or a Special Administrative Region of China, just like Hong Kong) that looks like a bastard child of Lisbon and Las Vegas. The Lisbon side of the town had a lot of historic churches and forts, but the skyscrapers where normal people lived were very run down. The food on the streets offered Portuguese options in addition to the noodle soups. The casinos were grand and tall and sparkly and flashy and kitch. We went inside a couple of them, and spent some spare money on number seven on the roulette (we're both born on 7th July) and lost it all of course. It all was a bit absurd, the casinos and the numbers of people going there just to play. The contrast within the city was so steep, that it seemed obvious that any made made by the casinos didn't trickle down to the society. Or maybe they had inherited the Portuguese chilled out attitude that led to run down building fronts?
On our first night in HK we went out to see what the night life was like, and after several pints of beer in SoHo (South of Hollywood Road) we wanted to see more of the island took a completely random bus that took us to the south side to Aberdeen. We found a nice noodle shop and ordered some food, and started talking to the people in there. We made friends with King, who then invited us for Sunday lunch. So yesterday we went for a very nice Dim Sum lunch in a floating restaurant with King and his wife Bella, followed by a popular Hong Kong pasttime - horse races. We betted again on number seven, and literally lost by a neck. Oh well, even 10/10/10 wasn't our lucky day!
And then finally a bit of good news. We went to the Fortune Tellers near Wong Tai Sin temple and had a look into next year's events by stick fortune telling. My question was if my boyfriend will finish his studies, and the answer was yes as he will work hard, but unfortunately he will not find a job straight away and will have to take some time out to travel to six countries! And then he might become prime minister later on.
I have been pleasantly surprised by the public transport system, especially after Manila where there was none. The subway, boats and buses are easily navigated and paid for with a handy Octopus card. The Octopus is a valid and easy form of payment also in some tourist attractions, fast food restaurants and shops. Very handy when paying for small amounts and not familiar with the coins! The only complaint I have is the shopping complexes that surround the subway exits and makes it impossible to just get to the street and where you wanted to go to! And the shopping in HK seems to be a lot of Gucci, Rolex and Cartier, so I have not ventured to any shops at all.
Hong Kong is very British in small ways, but actually not at all. The people are very business-like and majority remind me of the City people in London. A lot of foreigners are here obviously for business, and everyone speaks English. Or in the cases where the waitress has not spoken English, someone else has helped us immediately. So very friendly too! On Saturday we took ferry to Macau, which used to be under Portuguese rule for a long time. Nowadays it was a small city-country (or a Special Administrative Region of China, just like Hong Kong) that looks like a bastard child of Lisbon and Las Vegas. The Lisbon side of the town had a lot of historic churches and forts, but the skyscrapers where normal people lived were very run down. The food on the streets offered Portuguese options in addition to the noodle soups. The casinos were grand and tall and sparkly and flashy and kitch. We went inside a couple of them, and spent some spare money on number seven on the roulette (we're both born on 7th July) and lost it all of course. It all was a bit absurd, the casinos and the numbers of people going there just to play. The contrast within the city was so steep, that it seemed obvious that any made made by the casinos didn't trickle down to the society. Or maybe they had inherited the Portuguese chilled out attitude that led to run down building fronts?
On our first night in HK we went out to see what the night life was like, and after several pints of beer in SoHo (South of Hollywood Road) we wanted to see more of the island took a completely random bus that took us to the south side to Aberdeen. We found a nice noodle shop and ordered some food, and started talking to the people in there. We made friends with King, who then invited us for Sunday lunch. So yesterday we went for a very nice Dim Sum lunch in a floating restaurant with King and his wife Bella, followed by a popular Hong Kong pasttime - horse races. We betted again on number seven, and literally lost by a neck. Oh well, even 10/10/10 wasn't our lucky day!
And then finally a bit of good news. We went to the Fortune Tellers near Wong Tai Sin temple and had a look into next year's events by stick fortune telling. My question was if my boyfriend will finish his studies, and the answer was yes as he will work hard, but unfortunately he will not find a job straight away and will have to take some time out to travel to six countries! And then he might become prime minister later on.
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
Manila madness
The weekend in Manila was not exactly what I expected. There was the sights-seeing as planned, but also lots of things that I never thought I'd saw. On Saturday morning I arrived at the hostel and over the breakfast we discussed the local politics and how there are so many poor people. How there is a lot of hope for the new president, and how the attitude of the Catholic church is ruining the attempts of the government to promote family planning by offering free contraception. The hostel staff were great, they were keen to discuss everything and also offered advice on what to see, eat and drink in Manila. So I headed out to see the vicinity of the hostel.
My first stop was the Ayala museum which probably is the best museum I've been in. I typically get exhausted in museums where the collections are extensive and you just see so many things of the same type that it ends up dulling you out. The Ayala museum was different, as each of the floors were completely different to each other AND very interesting on their own field. The Filipino gold items from a thousand years ago; the progression of modern Filipino art of 20th century (Fernando Zobel!); the history of the Philippines until 1980s; amazing art made out of plastic and light by Olivia d'Aboville. After exploring the museum throughout, it was time to see some shopping malls. Philippinos apparently love their shopping and not getting sweaty, so Manila is covered in massive shopping malls. I felt like I was in the States so it wasn't too exciting.
For the dinner, I teamed up with three other people from the hostel and we ended up going for a couple of beers after the dinner. As the hostel was located next to a dodgy bar street, we had a look at the options. Every other building seemed to be a church, and the rest were poledancing bars, ladyboy bars, bars with girls with very little clothes on... and we ended up choosing the Ringside Bar that had oiled midget wrestling. I kid you not. We found the idea hilarious so we went in, ordered our "expensive" beers (2.50 eur) and after a round of lady boxing, the wrestling was announced. And because me and the other girl from the hostel were the only female customers around, we were asked to oil up the midgets. Eek! In a way the show was hilarious, but I felt very exploitative. Laughing at someone's disposition? But on the other hand, it offers them a job, and they seemed to laugh a lot themselves... whereas the girls in the bar seemed bored out of their wits and were giving us an attitude because we paid no attention to them. It is a weird industry, all the old white men and the beautiful young girls, and apparently most of the girls are happily in it, hoping to find a husband to take them away. What can you do if all of the parties are willing and happy with their end of the deal?
On Saturday I headed out to the old Intramuros area with another traveller I met at the hostel. We spent the morning looking at the old fort and the walled city and talking a lot about philosophy, life, science, politics, history etc, and the morning was amazingly good fun mainly because of the company I had. Towards the afternoon another friend from the hostel joined in, and we saw the Rizal park and the monument, and by a shaded bus stop near the park, we saw a local guy flashing his private parts at us. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, but we all took it calmly, walked away and laughed at it after we were a safe distance away. But it made me think, what is the logic of the people who flash? To scare? To show off?
We saw the sunset over Manila Bay sitting in this lovely rooftop Korean restaurant, with quite a few local beers and tasty Korean food. Others were keen for a crazy night out, so we headed to the central bar area (not the one near the hostel), but I felt tired and not really up for bars. I wasn't a big fan of the music or the topics of conversation, and I felt irritated and I decided to catch a cab and head home, and I actually enjoyed my chat with the cab driver more! So I got a full nine hours of sleep and woke up feeling good, and headed to the airport to catch my flight to Hong Kong. I'm now at a internet cafe in HK, the hostel is not great as there is no communal area and I was upgraded into a private room instead of a dorm. So I haven't met anyone yet but my friend from home is arriving later today.
I realised quite a lot of things in the hostel in Manila - that people are very different. They travel for very different reasons and with very different attitudes. There was two travellers who had done all of Southeastern Asia and carried their tan and their wrist bands with pride, and loved to discuss the places they've been, the best bars, how intoxicated they had been and where, the stories of these countries as the adult playpark only designed to provide them entertainment. One of them said to me that she was on a holiday and really didn't want to talk about philosophy or politics. It irritated the hell out of me, but I still don't know exactly why. Because she could dissociate themselves from the surroundings so strongly? She wasn't ignorant no, it was an informed decision on her part. It probably was the fact that she had just chosen to be on a holiday for a year and ignore her environment. I think that the best part of the travelling has been understanding the different countries and peoples better; seeing what their history is like, their current conditions, and how it reflects on everything. Maybe she did that too much in her everyday life and wanted a break from it - fair enough then!
The Southeastern Asia travellers were obviously keen on places that weren't destroyed by tourism but which had a fair population of their type fun-loving travellers. Oh the irony. The stories they told made me crave for the beaches, but I'm not sure if I want to go to the destinations they recommended if they indeed are crowded by people with their attitude.
My first stop was the Ayala museum which probably is the best museum I've been in. I typically get exhausted in museums where the collections are extensive and you just see so many things of the same type that it ends up dulling you out. The Ayala museum was different, as each of the floors were completely different to each other AND very interesting on their own field. The Filipino gold items from a thousand years ago; the progression of modern Filipino art of 20th century (Fernando Zobel!); the history of the Philippines until 1980s; amazing art made out of plastic and light by Olivia d'Aboville. After exploring the museum throughout, it was time to see some shopping malls. Philippinos apparently love their shopping and not getting sweaty, so Manila is covered in massive shopping malls. I felt like I was in the States so it wasn't too exciting.
For the dinner, I teamed up with three other people from the hostel and we ended up going for a couple of beers after the dinner. As the hostel was located next to a dodgy bar street, we had a look at the options. Every other building seemed to be a church, and the rest were poledancing bars, ladyboy bars, bars with girls with very little clothes on... and we ended up choosing the Ringside Bar that had oiled midget wrestling. I kid you not. We found the idea hilarious so we went in, ordered our "expensive" beers (2.50 eur) and after a round of lady boxing, the wrestling was announced. And because me and the other girl from the hostel were the only female customers around, we were asked to oil up the midgets. Eek! In a way the show was hilarious, but I felt very exploitative. Laughing at someone's disposition? But on the other hand, it offers them a job, and they seemed to laugh a lot themselves... whereas the girls in the bar seemed bored out of their wits and were giving us an attitude because we paid no attention to them. It is a weird industry, all the old white men and the beautiful young girls, and apparently most of the girls are happily in it, hoping to find a husband to take them away. What can you do if all of the parties are willing and happy with their end of the deal?
On Saturday I headed out to the old Intramuros area with another traveller I met at the hostel. We spent the morning looking at the old fort and the walled city and talking a lot about philosophy, life, science, politics, history etc, and the morning was amazingly good fun mainly because of the company I had. Towards the afternoon another friend from the hostel joined in, and we saw the Rizal park and the monument, and by a shaded bus stop near the park, we saw a local guy flashing his private parts at us. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, but we all took it calmly, walked away and laughed at it after we were a safe distance away. But it made me think, what is the logic of the people who flash? To scare? To show off?
We saw the sunset over Manila Bay sitting in this lovely rooftop Korean restaurant, with quite a few local beers and tasty Korean food. Others were keen for a crazy night out, so we headed to the central bar area (not the one near the hostel), but I felt tired and not really up for bars. I wasn't a big fan of the music or the topics of conversation, and I felt irritated and I decided to catch a cab and head home, and I actually enjoyed my chat with the cab driver more! So I got a full nine hours of sleep and woke up feeling good, and headed to the airport to catch my flight to Hong Kong. I'm now at a internet cafe in HK, the hostel is not great as there is no communal area and I was upgraded into a private room instead of a dorm. So I haven't met anyone yet but my friend from home is arriving later today.
I realised quite a lot of things in the hostel in Manila - that people are very different. They travel for very different reasons and with very different attitudes. There was two travellers who had done all of Southeastern Asia and carried their tan and their wrist bands with pride, and loved to discuss the places they've been, the best bars, how intoxicated they had been and where, the stories of these countries as the adult playpark only designed to provide them entertainment. One of them said to me that she was on a holiday and really didn't want to talk about philosophy or politics. It irritated the hell out of me, but I still don't know exactly why. Because she could dissociate themselves from the surroundings so strongly? She wasn't ignorant no, it was an informed decision on her part. It probably was the fact that she had just chosen to be on a holiday for a year and ignore her environment. I think that the best part of the travelling has been understanding the different countries and peoples better; seeing what their history is like, their current conditions, and how it reflects on everything. Maybe she did that too much in her everyday life and wanted a break from it - fair enough then!
The Southeastern Asia travellers were obviously keen on places that weren't destroyed by tourism but which had a fair population of their type fun-loving travellers. Oh the irony. The stories they told made me crave for the beaches, but I'm not sure if I want to go to the destinations they recommended if they indeed are crowded by people with their attitude.
Friday, 1 October 2010
Salamat po!
I've now finished my share of the review writing! I think I've worked hard, but it doesn't feel that way really. And given that the review has been heavily edited by my supervisor, I don't even feel that much that it is my writing. But it is written now, and as it is a special sort of paper I don't think there will be problems with the review. I think everyone's happy about it - the busy supervisors who didn't have time to write one but wanted one to show off to the funding bodies, and me getting another precious first-author publication and to come to the Philippines for free!
Tonight there is a house party to celebrate all kinds of things (house-warming, birthdays, people leaving) and tomorrow morning I'm going to Manila. When I've asked people what there is to see in Manila, they've asked me back what sort of stuff I like shopping for. Luckily it is not only malls and there seems to be the Intramuros area from the old times when Spain used to rule the islands. It will be interesting to see how Manila compares to the small towns I've seen this far!
On Monday I'm flying to Hong Kong where I will be meeting up with friends. Then a week later I might take a three-week holiday from travelling. This would be to visit my boyfriend to inspire him with his thesis writing, or to give him a hefty kick on the ass, or to make sure he doesn't go crazy inside inside the four walls, or to be his domestic goddess whilst his family is away, or whatever you want to call it. I call it love! This wasn't exactly in the original plan, but on the other hand there was no plan anyway! And whilst travelling the world one can visit all kinds of countries!
Tonight there is a house party to celebrate all kinds of things (house-warming, birthdays, people leaving) and tomorrow morning I'm going to Manila. When I've asked people what there is to see in Manila, they've asked me back what sort of stuff I like shopping for. Luckily it is not only malls and there seems to be the Intramuros area from the old times when Spain used to rule the islands. It will be interesting to see how Manila compares to the small towns I've seen this far!
On Monday I'm flying to Hong Kong where I will be meeting up with friends. Then a week later I might take a three-week holiday from travelling. This would be to visit my boyfriend to inspire him with his thesis writing, or to give him a hefty kick on the ass, or to make sure he doesn't go crazy inside inside the four walls, or to be his domestic goddess whilst his family is away, or whatever you want to call it. I call it love! This wasn't exactly in the original plan, but on the other hand there was no plan anyway! And whilst travelling the world one can visit all kinds of countries!
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