Blogs from Sha Tin, Hong Kong, Asia

We left Ma Wan island and dived in the more central part of HK. Following Chris's trusty guidelines, we headed to 10,000 Buddha monastery, built on a hillside and overlooking Sha Tin. The views at the top made the climb even more worthwhile! ... read more

Yesterday my host family and I went to the races for the entire day. Sure, it was the 15thanniversary of the transfer of power back to China and there were celebrations and protests in Central, but it was also a great day for racing, and they had special events at the racetrack as well (in between EVERY race). These included presentations, salutes, a marching band, Cantonese singing, traditional dances, etc. I’ve never been to a racetrack (for animals) before. And here I was at an internationally renowned track owned by the Hong Kong Jockey Club (which is also Hong Kong’s largest charity organization, donating 85% of its profits to local communities for projects such as gyms, schools, hostels, etc). The stands and the track have a gorgeous view of mountains -- we were not at Happy ... read more

Got off to a strange start today. I'm not sure if it's jet lag or whether I am still not feeling 100% but I woke up at 1am and it took me about 3 1/2 hours to get back to sleep. The funny thing was that we were planning to get up at about 8am and do some shopping before the races however once I got back to sleep at 4.30am, neither of us woke up until 1.30pm! The races started at 1pm so obviously no shopping today and we didn't get there until race 5. I think since we have got to Hong Kong and slowed down, our bodies have also decided to get some rest. So we eventually made our way down to the train which only needed to go one stop before the ... read more

Well we left the hotel in Paris to get to the airport after a very cruisy morning which is something that we hadn't been able to have for a while. We were nice and relaxed until we reached the train station to head to the airport where everything turned to shit, people everywhere, couldn't buy tickets and then missed the first and second trains which was a major issue as they only went every 30 minutes. Eventually we said enough was enough and into a taxi and I think that's the end of catching trains with luggage! We had to fly back through London and endure a seven hour stop over before our flight to Hong Kong, we were dreading this as we weren't sure whether we could leave the airport or not however the our ... read more

Sunday 29th August 2010 We left Perth just after midnight on a Cathay Pacific flight. This was a new plane but it had seats where the base slid forward rather than tilting backwards and we found them most uncomfortable. Rags slept very little. We reached Hong Kong and caught the airport bus for a 40 minute trip to a bus station where we were met by David, a friend of Judy's, at whose house we were staying. David and Carmel live in an apartment attached to the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Carmel is a professor here, David an associate professor at Lingnan University. Rags had not met either David or Carmel and Judy hadn't met Carmel so we spent a couple of hours really getting to know each other. We had a great chat and ... read more