HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

The ladies love Foley in skinny jeans. Haha.

There are many interesting aspects of living in an expat community.  The transient nature of the place means you tend to meet friends continually, and often at housewarming and farewell parties, as people are always coming and going.  It also means that there is a mass exodus for the holidays.  Foley and I are planning our trip home on Dec. 21st (TOMORROW!), and we are pretty much the last of our friends in town.  Anyone who isn't going 'home' is leaving for some kind of Asian holiday.

Foley getting practice

To get in the holiday spirit in 20-something degree weather, a friend hosted a red-white-green holiday party.  For those who know Foley, you'll appreciate that he went out to H&M and bought green skinny jeans (complete with tapered leg!) and a fitted red shirt, then topped his outfit off with an ugly sweater (which didn't last long because he was overheating).  Brilliant.  We met new friends there who had a three week old baby (SO cute!) and Foley got in some practice (cradling both the baby and a beer... classic).

Beth holding a friend's 3 week old baby... and her baby... champagne.

With our departure back to Canada for the holidays (hoping to see TONS of family and friends... please!!) this will be the last blog post for a while.  I'll return to HK mid-January, a day before our one-year anniversary of living here.  Foley will be travelling a while longer, because he has two work trips to add on.  From our little (growing) family to yours, we wish you a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Years!

He loves the attention.

Adios Summer!

Temperatures took a fairly sudden turn for the cold in the past few weeks here.  Foley remarked how 'soft' he's gotten when he required a sweater to go out for his morning coffee this week when it was 17 degrees outside.  Generally temperatures are still around the low 20's, but when they dip below 20, we bundle up.

I had been meaning to do a blog post on summer fun in Hong Kong... coming up to Christmas seems like I've left it a wee bit late, but I still think these stories are worth sharing.

My top 3 favourite things to do in HK in the summer:  


[disclaimer: NOTHING is much fun in mid-summer 40-45+ degree heat... It's like the opposite to Canada... There most people hibernate for the winter, hanging out in the central heat and by fireplaces.  In HK people hibernate inside in the summers, getting out of the heat and into AC as much as possible to movie theatres, malls and in our homes.  However, these activities were some of the most fun I had while sweating buckets this past summer.] 


#3 - Beaches, beaches, beaches!

Although my standards for cleanliness seem to have laxed, a lot, I appreciate the great number of accessible beaches in HK.  If you want convenience, a 20 minute taxi ride to the south side of the island will get you to several beaches (only 2 are truly clean enough for me to swim at). If you have more time to dedicate to getting there, the outlying islands and New Territories of HK offer even cleaner, less busy and more beautiful beaches.  All public beaches have shark nets in specific roped off swimming areas for extra security and peace of mind.  (Jaws played a lot on HBO this summer).  Most often I went to a beach called Shek O, with my American friend, Meaghan, where we read books and napped between dips.  Lovely.


#2 - Glamping with Friends

Safari campers... a very comfortable sleep

Glamping is glamour camping... it's camping made easy for city-folk.  My favourite camping experience here (my only one) was at a site on Lantau Island.  With a few girlfriends we booked a 'safari camper' which is a semi-permanent structure pre-set up for you, complete with air-beds, bedding, air conditioner, table and chairs.  We only had to show up with food and drinks for the night.  The sites also offer tee-pees for rent (they were booked up or we would have checked those out), water sport equipment for rental and they come by to light your campfire for you (as long as you prebook that too). The beach there was absolutely beautiful and almost completely empty (a rare treat in this megacity).  One interesting element of Lantau Island are the wild cows that roam around everywhere.  It's hilarious, but when walking around at night, you need to beware of cow patties, and not to startle them.  The campsite even had fencing to keep the cows out of the manicured grassy areas.

Bethie with the vino

Gillian and Rina at our camp table (filled with drinks.. hehe)

Rina with the air conditioner

Teepees for sleeping

Rina and I being silly in the tent

Just a random wild cow, roaming the streets (photo by Beth Haines)

#1 - My Trunk on a Junk

A common and awesome HK tradition is to go out on junk boats in the summer.  The boats can be booked for groups around 20-or so people and generally you book them through a bar/restaurant that provides all the food and drinks for all the people on the junk, at a very reasonable price for the day (about ($60-70 CDN total).  It's wonderful because the junk boats go to areas around HK where the water is cleaner, then they drop anchor and you swim from the boat.  It's a great way to beat the intense heat of summer.  I spent most of the summer with morning/all day sickness, so we only went on one day junk, but there were lots of opportunities for more junk trips, and next summer we will certainly take advantage.

Swimming off the back of the boat

Alternatively, you can also book 'night junks', which generally tour around Victoria Harbour where you can watch the nightly laser light show while drifting by the downtown skyline, enjoying music, food and drinks.  This was the way we spent my friend Rina's birthday, and it was an awesome and truly Hong Kong way to celebrate her day!  Super fun.

Stunning HK in the afternoon sunshine

Rina & Dustin on Rina's night junk party

Pat & Gillian

The beautiful HK skyline

Rhys and Natasha

The Land of Oz

I've been quite sick with a cold and bad chest cough for the past 2.5 weeks, which is why I haven't posted.  Preggers aren't allowed to take any of the drugs that make suffering with a cold easier to handle, so I've been a self-pitying-apartment-bound-shut-in for most of the illness... with the exception of 5 days in the wonderful land of Oz!

Tickets were already booked, so obviously a cold couldn't stop me from the chance to visit the land down under for the first time.  Foley goes to Australia frequently for short work trips, but it has never made sense to tag along because he generally flies 9 hours each way and is only in Sydney for about 20 hours total... truly whirlwind business trips.  I've always wanted to go, and the travel window for us is shrinking with upcoming life changes.  So although it's far, Australia is a whole lot closer from Hong Kong than it is from Canada, and the timing seemed right.  I flew there (almost 6 feet tall, 6.5 months pregnant, with nasty cold, in coach, red-eye flight from 9pm-7am... with two crying babies right near me, terrifying me for my own future) on a Wednesday night, arriving Thursday morning.

Thursday I travelled around on my own, taking in the surprisingly beautiful Sydney sites.  I walked around the city, stopped in a cafe for a bowl of soup, strolled around the harbour, gawked at the famous Opera house and Sydney Harbour bridge, all while waiting for my ears to pop from the flight (that took a couple of days).  Sydney has this gorgeous combination of old and new buildings, it's incredibly clean, and the air felt amazing after 10 months of Hong Kong smog and pollution.  I loved the city instantly.

Did you know that the iconic Sydney Opera House was budgeted to cost $7 million to build, but final costs came in at $102 million?  Wouldn't want to be in that budget meeting.  The Sydney Harbour bridge also came in at double it's budget, and although it was opened in 1932, the bridge wasn't fully paid off until 1988.

The Australian dollar is basically on par with the Canadian dollar, which was nice not to have to do conversions in my head (getting very good at my 8 times and division tables in HK).  The on-par currency made the prices that much more shocking.  Sydney is VERY expensive.  A 1.5L bottle of water in 7-Eleven cost over $5, breakfast in hotel was $42, wifi in my hotel room for 2 days was over $50, parking downtown was about $10 per half hour, (nice) hotels cost about $300-$400 per night... it was pricey.

Did you know that Australian bills are plastic?  This allows surfers to have money in their shorts and not destroy it.

Thursday evening I went out for drinks and dinner with my friend, Lisa Mains.  Lisa and I swam together on the same swim team for years, until we were about 13 years old... 20 years ago.  I have barely seen her since, but thanks to the wonders of facebook, I knew she was in Sydney and it was easy to get together.  It was like no time had passed as we chatted in a revolving lounge with 360 degree views of the city.  After 'drinks' (juice for me), we walked down to the harbour and had dinner beside the Opera house.  It was a stunning venue, wonderful company, and gorgeous night.

Friday I explored more of the city, stopping for more soup in a district called the Rocks.  It's a quaint neighbourhood with tons of museums, galleries, cafes and restaurants.  While walking around I bought a pair of Uggs, because one must do such a thing in Australia, although apparently Aussies use them as house slippers, not to be worn outside... I'm not so fashionable, so mine will be worn in Canada this winter.

Friday evening I got to meet up with dear friends Miki and Brad.  Miki and I went to university together, living on the same floor in first year, close friends ever since.  She and Brad moved to Sydney almost 2 years ago, and I was really hoping to get to visit them while we were both on this 'side' of the world.  The three of us went out for a delicious dinner by the water, then walked around the Rocks and the harbour afterwards.  Apparently street markets are very common in Sydney and there was one going on in the Rocks that Friday night.  There were food stalls, handicrafts, jewellery, and all sorts of things for sale.  Our favourite booth was the 'silent disco'.  We watched these crazy people busting a move with headphones on and had a good laugh at how ridiculous they looked... yet they didn't seem to care.  When a couple of people were leaving, and offered up the good times, we couldn't resist.  The great tunes were pumping through the headphones and you couldn't help but dance around... despite on-lookers mocking as we had just done.  I realized that I took it a step too far when I started singing along (a natural reaction when the music drowns you out in a night club)... when I remembered I was only wearing headphones I went beet red and Brad had a good laugh at my ridiculousness.




















On Saturday Miki and Brad picked me up and took me to a couple of their favourite beaches outside the city.  It was a beautiful day and I couldn't believe how empty and clean the beaches were (there are just so many to choose from I guess)!  The water was still very cold, because it's just their spring time, but laying on the sand was heavenly.  We took a short walk to a look out point in the afternoon, with sprawling views of the Oz coast.  Saturday night we went out for dinner, then Foley landed and we met up with him for after dinner drinks.

On Sunday, Foley and I took a ferry out to meet Miki and Brad, who then took us to their STUNNING home in Bondi beach.  We walked down to the beach (30+ degrees outside) and I saw a stark contrast to the 'empty' beaches the day before... Bondi was very busy and amazing for people watching.  We had lunch on the strip, played around in the water, treated ourselves to yummy gelato and napped on the beach.  A gorgeous day.

Monday meant Foley had to go off to work meetings, and I simply packed up and flew back to HK.  Although I was sick for the entire trip, Sydney well surpassed my expectations and I would go back in a heartbeat.  I was lucky to have such wonderful friends to visit with.