Tramping, hiking, ambling in Hong Kong

Can you believe it.....we who have been brought up to hate winter and to moan about the weather incessantly, (its all part of being an Aucklander), actually are enjoying the fact it is cold.  We are relishing the mist that hangs over the towering buildings and hills, loving the chilly air and the fact it forces us to wear all of our polypro undies.  How could this transformation occur in only 6 months of living in Hong Kong????  How did this asian city drive out our deep hatred of winter!!!!  Just the sheer fact that we can do something outside without sweating, oh yes folks, when you have a far greater thing to hate (ie the humidity) then suddenly the lesser evil (a wee bit of cold) is a thing to be rejoiced in, complimented even.


It all began in the middle of last year when I was toting around this trendy thing called a 'bun in the oven'.  I found if I stepped outside our air conditioned apartment for a millisecond I was bathed in sweat.  And it was during this very uncomfortable season that people mentioned to me about the wonderful hiking in Hong Kong.  I have to say I thought they were insane, or just plain cruel to make me imagine walking outside somewhere (it made me sweat to just think about it, called for a full blown air conditioning face blast!).  But you know what!!!  They were right!!!  The hiking is really great....they just forgot to mention that you have to wait until January to do any.

Clearwater Bay Country Park

Our first hike was with bated breath as we had no idea how Noah or India would do walking along trails (not to mention the slightly freaky issue of snakes over here - with of course the worst part being the smaller they are the more lethal their bite :(  We were also a bit worried about Tobias and whether he would freeze his little toes off, or need to feed and then I would freeze (probably noone else was worried about this one).  But all of our fears came to naught - Noah loved it.  He was a real little Bear Grills, looking out for any monkeys or snakes (these were the two things we mentioned to get his appetite for tramping up and running, of course he wasn't going to forget those words so we had to endure a LOT of questions about when those animals were going to make an appearance).

 The only animal we saw were these prayer flags (we called them animals just so Noah would get off our backs)  We also found an abandoned sock in a tree which we called a Sock Animal.  All this made up animal stuff just to show him how varied the native animals are here :)

India was pretty good, she sort of thinks she is more coordinated than she is (this means she falls over more, means I have to carry her on my back a bit more...but hey, with 3 kids you take any outing with a grain of salt in the ratio of tears to happiness).

Here is a photo of the family before we left the carpark.  All smiles.  I didn't take a photo at the other end when 2 grim faced adults were dragging one hungry boy, and carrying 2 crying kids - it just wouldn't look as appealing.

The following weekend I suggested we go out again, and as Clearwater Bay Country park is only 5 mins drive, we opted to go and do a different walk in the same park.  Noah chose this one (why oh why did we let the 4 year old choose, he thinks a hill is a fun place to play!!)  and it was very steep.  I was concerned about coming down (didn't want our descent to be airborn) so after our chocolate stop we headed back down.


The steep steps

 The wonderful views at Clearwater Bay Country Park (second walk)

At the bottom of the hill we were able to enter the area of the park where you can have BBQ's and fly kites (I told you about this in an earlier post) and it also has a tree walk.  We decided to do this one to finish up our Sunday afternoon stroll.  No photos of this walk, but just wanted to prove that we aren't total babies for coming down the hill before really doing a good hike.

Then during Chinese New Year I convinced Paul that we should try a slightly longer hike.  I told him about one that was from The Peak down to Aberdeen.  It said it should take 2 hours, but as it wasn't hot, and it was all in the bush, and I had lots of chocolate with me, I figured the worst that could happen was me freezing while feeding Tobias.








Well the first challenge was actually finding the start of the track.  I was following some written instructions (ie no map) and Paul and I were having one of those adult conversations you have in front of your kids where you don't want to openly come out and blame the other person for not knowing what they are doing, but you just say things like "so don't you know where to go?" or "well I have the same instructions as you, so you read them and tell me where to go" - you know the kind of conversations I am talking about right.  The tension was rising as we wandered around and around.  I was so happy when Noah and I found the rather well signposted hike.

This hike was the best yet.  I could not believe I was in central Hong Kong.  You could not see anything except trees (ahem, maybe the odd electrical pylon was lurking around but I could block that out the odd time I saw them).  The tramp led us down a valley, over both the upper and lower reservoir bridges.  It was so picturesque.  That description should let you know that this entire walk was down hill which was just fantastic....except my legs were killing me the next day as going down hill is actually really hard on your thigh muscles (especially as I had India on my back for a lot of the tramp - our fault for having her out late the night before).

It is really interesting that the people in charge of all public areas over here cannot let you just have a nice experience, you must also either learn something, or physically benefit in some way.  You know in the park the playgrounds all have the alphabet all over them, and numbers stuck everywhere, and stupid games that no kids plays but makes the adults feel better about letting them play for a bit.  Well, on this hike they had exercise stations, can you believe it!  I mean it wasn't enough to just do 2 hours hiking, oh no, you might have some extra energy lurking around and well, they had to get rid of it quick fast to make you totally satisfied with your hiking experience.  So I noticed these exercise stations and wondered what sort of people would use them - no idea there as I didn't see anyone on them.....until we came to one station that we convinced Noah to do.  The foot massage area.  It was brilliant!!!  The best Hong Kong thing I have seen so far.  Here is a picture of it.

Basically they just put a whole lot of smooth stones in the concrete and you take your shoes off and wander around on them.  What a lovely idea to have part of the way through a walk - imagine that at the end of the Tongariro Crossing, bliss!

The end of the tramp hurried up to meet us and I have to say it was a bit of shock to the system to pop out of the bush onto a busy Hong Kong road with whining mini buses and smelly exhaust fumes....but there you have it, even though you can't see the city it is still there, brimming with life.  Of course a big tramp calls for some sort of treat so here is a photo of the troops chomping their almond cookies while waiting for a taxi.  Happy and sated once again.....

1060sqf of fun for Christmas

Getting in the Christmas spirit on the 1st December....

Thats right folks, we had the NZ crew staying over Christmas in our wee apartment....oh the fun we had!!! Lynne was in Tobias' room so she had to live with his cot in her face (the room isn't wider than a cot and single air bed next to each other). She tried several arrangements in there, cot at the side next to the air bed, cot at the back and air bed at the front etc....all because of the loud squeaks the air bed made when it touched the wall, the thing was, there was no configuration that didn't mean the air bed touched the wall - the room is just too darn small!! And then ma and pa were staying in the kids playroom, and well you know grandchildren assume they can do anything anyway, well my parents had to contend with the kids playing in their room, rifling amongst their stuff finding all sorts of interesting things (glasses, presents etc).

But sleeping arrangements aside, we had a blast!!! I had planned a full on timetable, trying to take in all that Hong Kong had to offer (I failed miserably, but I suppose a tummy bug that took us all out for 2 days could be to blame?? or the fact that Hong Kong has so much stuff to do that multiple trips are required hint hint to everyone reading :)

We took them up the peak tram on their first day. Its just great fun trying to fold up a Mountain Buggy and fit it onto the tram. Just imagine trying to fit a people mover into a parking space for a mini - good old Paul, he always gets the security people coming up to him reminding him to collapse it at least 10 mins before the actual event of getting on the tram....they are obviously freaked out by the size of a buggy like this and fear it will get stuck and hold up their tight schedule. But he managed to wrestle it on and Tobias had a brilliant time lying in his Moses basket on our laps while we went up. Unfortunately the weather was not so good so the view was average but still a pretty exhilirating ride. We chose a noodle place for lunch so had some sweaty upper lips and happy campers about how authentic everything was :) Check out the video of Lynne trying to use her chopsticks, notice I am filming rather than being filmed...I am useless with them!!

Believe it or not Hong Kong actually gets quite cold, so we were looking for somewhere a bit warmer to visit next....what better place than a shopping mall - but it was with a very specific purpose (but hey, if you are in a shopping mall you need to shop too right!!) - too visit the best Santa in Hong Kong (or so the chat rooms said). We rocked up to Pacific Place with high expectations....

Santas pad looked pretty impressive, there was a long queue, so we joined in. Thankfully there was a cafe right there next to the queue so we took turns sitting having a drink and acutally manning our place. I was telling everyone that this Santa was flown in from Canada each December just to do this role so he must be the shizz...well we finally got inside and maybe Santa has changed from when I was a kid, or maybe this one was on drugs?? But I had to prompt him with his lines...I mean Noah had been practicing what to say during his long wait in the queue and we were just waiting for the questions "have you been good?", "what do you want?" you know come on, not hard script to follow, but apparently the Santa from Canada just plain forgot and just wanted to put his hand on my shoulder and smile blankly at the camera. Finally I prompted him with a gentle "Do you want to know what he wants for Christmas?"....and Noah turned around and said one word of his speech "Lego" and we were ushered out. When asked by his grandparents how was it, Noah replied "Well I told Santa what I wanted but he didn't say anything" - I should definately go back to the chat room and say the Canadian Santa is a drongo!

Next day - shopping!!!! Oh yes, the girls were in heaven....Ikea etc...Paul had to man the kids at the indoor playground (thanks honey) and we just had Tobias who was very obliging, and only woke up when we got to Starbucks.

The thing is you see, moving that many people around takes time (much to the frustration of my dad who can't seem to understand why little humans take twice as long as big humans to get ready) - so we never seemed to get anywhere early. This proved to be a real big problem on the day we went to see the Reclining Buddha. It is over on Lantau Island so we had the fun of driving over these massive bridges, but that was were the fun stopped. The line to get on the cable car was going be over an hour and with 2 wriggly toddlers that was going to be hell - so we called it a day and whizzed over the outlet malls, yet again the ladies were in raptures. Everyone loved the Espirit store and it was only restless toddlers that forced our exit (mum and I were already talking about when she came back how we would visit there again with no kids next time)

We really wanted to give the parents a Chinese 'experience' for Christmas and toyed with the idea of wonton classes or a Chinese cooking class. Finally we decided on a junk boat ride so Christmas Eve saw us cruising around on the Hong Kong harbour. It was such a lovely thing to do. This ancient teak junk motored (a nod to modernisation) up to the pier and a very small group of us jumped on board. Noah was just old enough to come with us and he was so excited to be aboard a real "pirate" ship. They put up the sails and we had an hours cruise looking both at Kowloon side and Hong Kong island.

We had a lovely Christmas Eve over at our friends house. Apparently it is a custom of theirs to have this big party for those ex-pats still in Hong Kong for Christmas. We all had to do an item (thanks Paul for the reindeer rap you made up)and then we had a lovely festive meal followed by candle lit carols. It was so nice being surrounded by people (and some of them being family) all singing about the real reason for Christmas. We all had such a great time...the kids just loved it as this family has a tramp and lots of lawn for running around.

Christmas Day dawned and we actually all got to sleep in until after 7am as we had the kids up late the night before. Each of them chose one present to open before breakfast and yeah, Noah's pressie took him all morning to construct so we were free to chat, yawn and cook until neally lunch time. India was happy with her dolly and spent all that time either 'helping' her brother with his fire station construction, or attending to her dolly's rather over active bowels (frequent nappy changes were required, always involving number 2's). It was such a relaxing Christmas Day. Only one house to visit. No driving required and we had ordered in the turkey and only had to heat up the ham and cook roast veggies, I think I got out of my pj's around 4pm :) Oh and did I mention the mulled wine was lovely (Tobias slept well that night!)

I had plans for ferry trips out to one of the islands, a small spot of tramping on one of the beautiful walks, visiting Noah's Ark and of course taking in some markets. We got through none of it. Instead we enjoyed shopping at the local shopping centres, great shoes! And all of us didn't enjoy being laid up with something that Lisa called the Hong Kong Dog....the most dreadful tummy bug I have ever seen. Lynne, Mum and I did manage a walking tour of Sheung Wan which was lovely. It is one of the older areas on Hong Kong island so we had fun trying to guess what the weird looking things in the baskets were (dried innards of some animal I think). We found this lovely cafe and just generally enjoyed being kid free for a couple of hours in an exotic location. Of course China has this way of being so very authentic, what with half goat carcasses hanging beside the sidewalk, or sharks fins in baskets outside, or people carrying very long bits of bamboo around just for the heck of it. Funny though, its those experiences, that make a holiday memorable.

Speaking of memorable I forgot to mention about New Years Eve. Dad had flown back by this stage, so now we were down to 4 adults and 1 baby to move around on this big night.  I had booked us into this renown Pekking Duck restaurant which happened to be down at TST (downtown Kowloon ie very, very busy!!!) - what was I thinking??? about the food of course, and the authentic experience.....I was not thinking about the parking, the driving, the crowds...but so glad I wasn't thinking about those things because it would have put me off booking and as it all panned out it was a brilliant night.  Being the every vigilant kind of people they are, the police had put this entire lockdown in place on the roads around where the restaurant was so we were out of luck trying to park close by.  As we were also trying to watch the laser light show Lynne, Mum and I jumped out of the car and left Paul and Tobias to find a car park.  We managed to catch the laser light show which required us to turn 360 degrees continually for 10 mins or so that the show went on - not sure if all the tourists were looking like spinning tops but we didn't want to miss a single beam of light.

After all the hullabaloo settled down we got in contact with Paul and he had only had to park a short walk away - he hadn't accidentially left the sleeping Tobias in the car so we were on schedule to make it to our restaurant at 9pm (they sure do eat late over here :)  It all would have gone smoothly if only we could have A) understood the Cantonese instructions from the restaurant, or B) got our google maps to actually decide where exactly to put the restaurant as the pin it had WAS NOT THE RESTAURANT!!  Got to say its a good night to get lost on, we just wandered around looking at all the lights and people, but finally we saw the road and raced upstairs to partake in a very, very yummy dinner.  We were obviously the waiters comedy show that night as they loved gesturing and running to show us different things we could/should have.  They carved the duck right at the table (half the ruddy thing stayed on the carcass.....we wanted to pick that little quacker to bits but alas they wheeled the little fella off and we never saw any more of him)

The holiday came to an end too quickly.....and we sadly said goodbye....Noah keeps telling India that its not long until we go to NZ (no idea of time yet bless him)....but we will see everyone mid June...

Theres one person who could see the funny side of our farewells....little Tobias.....