The Elusive Thailand and Malaysia Blog

Waiting for a bus in Phuket with a wonderful mango smoothie and a cup of coffee!
Tracy and Becca on the beaches of Ko Lanta after watching the beautiful sunset.

Eating dinner in Ko Lanta. I will miss all the great Thai food and the ambiance of the restaurants.

Tracy and I on an elephant in Ko Lanta



Just one of the gorgeous sunsets in Ko Phi Phi

On a boat from Ko Phi Phi to Lanta. Notice the lack of railing, something that would never fly in the States

Crystal Clear water and my sun burnt feet

Becca and Tracy relaxing in Phi Phi

Ko Phi Phi (where the movie the Beach was filmed)

Fire dancers at the beach party

Ouchpoor feet! the sun in Thailand was so strong!


Boats lined up ready to take us from AO Nang to Railey


Getting ready for a long ride on the sleeper train from KL to Thailand

The Petronas Towers- the worlds tallest twin towers

Pictures of my students dressed up for Chinese New Year

My K3 (5 and 6 year olds) whole day girls (Winnie, Nicole, Jenny, Michelle, Kelly and Tracy)

K2 whole day (4/5 year olds) Michelle and Yan

Raymond and Sam with their matching Chinese hats.

N1 babies (2/3 year olds) Kamie and Donald getting ready for the Lion Dance

N1's Chirs, Vanessa and Chelsey drumming for the Lion Dance

Sweet Max!!

Lilly (K1, 3 years old) and her red shoes and dress!

Happy Chinese New Year

I have failed at updating my blog after Christmas as I promised but I really am trying to get better. Before I embark on my Chinese New Year travels to Malaysia and Thailand, I will give a quick update. As I write this blog from school, the students are celebrating Chinese New Year in style. They have all wore traditional Chinese clothes as well as a few traditional hats. The teachers, me included, wore brightly colored traditional Chinese shirts as well. Everyone looks so beautiful and the kids are cuter than ever! The year of the tiger is approaching as we say goodbye to the old year. Traditions calls for new clothes, haircut, and shoes to bring in the new year. Myth has it that your new items will help you to become prosperous in the new year. I have a new hair cut so who knows what treasures await me!



Last post I told of a Hong Kong teacher's wedding Toby and I were attending. The reception (which is the only part friends typically go to) was unbelievable! I thought weddings in the South were extravagant but this one blew Southern weddings out of the water. It was a 400 plus sit down dinner with 13 courses! This was after two cakes had been cut and served to the guest waiting to be seated. Also, before walking into the banquet hall for dinner, the foyer displayed 6 different wedding photo shoots from all over the world including Paris, Japan, Bali, and parts of Italy. Toby and I were able to view these after we signed the 7x10 photo of the couple which doubled as their guest book. Once we were seated, the 13 courses began. These included black truffles, bird nest soup, shark fin soup, abalone, roasted pig, and soo much more! The groom not only sang the bride a love song on stage but also made a music video complete with footage of his studio time! Not a detail was missed in this incredible wedding!



Christmas at home was a blur and I loved every minute of it! I raced from both grandparents house, to sleepover with friend, to a deb ball, hunting in the mornings, and topped off with being a bridesmaid in a fabulous Southern style wedding. Then jetted back to Hong Kong.



Since coming back to Hong Kong, I have celebrated my birthday with a wonderful birthday party thrown by my friends complete with champagne and then a night in Lang Kwai Fong. It's great to know that even though I am away from home, there are still people to throw a birthday party for me!



There is always something to do in Hong Kong and Sara Beth, my roommate, is great at organizing activities. She found a great 3k run to benefit cancer research call Beat the Banana! This was probably the first race I've done since the Turkey Trot in elementary school and I was a bit nervous that I would not be able to finish this short run. It was early Sunday morning and the race course over looked the harbour. The morning was perfect for a run and you'll be happy to know that not only did we finish the race but both Sara Beth and I beat the banana!



I leave tonight for my first long backpack trip and I am getting excited for my Chinese New Year trip where I will fly into Kuala Lumpar with Becca, another NET teacher from London. From there we will take an overnight train to Krabi, Thailand and have no real plans after that. I will update after the trip with pictures and great stories! Until then....



LT

A few more updates: Vietnam, hiking, Thanksgiving, EAG

So far I have been terrible at blogging but I hoping to turn over a new leaf and post my blogs more regular! I'll give a brief run down of a few things that have happen in Hong Kong so far.

Watch out for Chicken Heads

-I stepped on a chicken head in the middle of the street and only realized what it was after Sara Beth screamed "Watch out for that chicken head!" It was fairly traumatic seeing that it happened in the first few weeks of my arrival.

Ho Chi Min, Vietnam (Saigon)

- Over a long weekend I was able to travel to Ho Chi Min, Vietnam. While I had planned to travel along, I was fortunately able to meet up with a family friend who was on business there. Having someone to show me the city was fantastic and I'm not sure what I was thinking going to Vietnam alone! It would have been disastrous if I Todd had not been there to even help me cross the street! He meet me at the airport and In Ho Chi Min I shopped at Ben Thanh, a famous market with cheap souvenirs and knock off anything! I visited the Chu Chi tunnels where the people of Chu Chi built underground an underground city to protect themselves from the fight as well as fight back. There was definitely signs of heavy propaganda here and it was interesting to see the war from another prospective. I could not image living in the tunnels for months at a time like the Vietnamese people did. Like my tour guide said, the tunnels were built for Vietnamese sizes people, very small. I walked through the reunification palace where some of the radio equipment used in the war was still on display. One of my favorite things I did was ride a motorbike (see video) around the city at night. I loved seeing the things people carried on the bikes and also that a family of four could fit on one bike! The most impressive thing I did in Ho Chi Min was cross the street without getting run over!

Hiking in Hong Kong

-Now that the weather is tolerable, I have been on a few hike outside the city. The first one, Dragon's Back hike, gave us great views of the South China Sea and the sky line. It was beautiful! A group of us also went to Monkey Mountain where we were able to see real monkeys in the wild. Even though the monkeys originally escaped pets, they have now settled about 20 minutes outside the city. It was really cool seeing monkey outsides cages but a bit frightening too! We learned quickly from the locals to carry a big stick. The monkeys were quite forceful in getting food. If they even thought you had some, the monkeys would creep closer and closer and search through any bag you had. Lucky, the monkeys didn't think poor teachers like us had any food but others on the mountain did. One man brought food specifically to feed the animals and had to consistently point a stick at them to keep them from attacking. ( No harm was done because these smart animals knew not to get near) Despite fearing for my life at times (See picture of a monkey attacking Sara Beth) I thoroughly enjoyed Monkey Mountain.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was definitely not the same as it is back home but Sara Beth, Tripp and I did make reservations at a nice restaurant on the Peak (the highest point in Hong Kong with real estate prices to match) that advertised a set traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, and a few other traditional items. The setting was beautiful over looking the city but when we order our Thanksgiving dinner the waiter told us they were sold out! I almost started crying. If being away from my family was not bad enough, I was not going to get turkey on Thanksgiving. However, Thanksgiving was not completely ruined and my meal was delicious, the restaurant was wonderful, and company even better! I feel so blessed to have Sara Beth and Tripp here to share little things, like a Thanksgiving meal and to remind me of home.

Beautiful Fireworks
The opening ceremonies of the East Asian Games (EAG) in Hong Kong gave us a spectacular fireworks display that beat out the fireworks show for the Chinese National Day. Mostly because I could see this time. But nonetheless, Hong Kong knows how to do fireworks right! 15 minutes of not stop amazing fireworks that deserved an applause at end! Seeing the fireworks show makes me glad to be in Hong Kong because no where else in the world will I get to see a show like this over the harbour with such a grand skyline and who doesn't love a good fireworks show?


Well that's just a few updates that I should have put up ages ago but it's better late than never :) I have a few things to look forward to in the next few weeks: my boyfriend, Toby, is coming to visit me, a teacher at my school invited me to her wedding ( a traditional Hong Kong wedding!! I'm so excited!), I'll be going home for the holidays, a friend from college, Sara Frances, is getting married and I'm a bridesmaid in the wedding and most importantly I get to see my family!! I'll leave you with a few pictures from my precious kids. Happy Holidays!!

A snapshot of the first few months

Beaches: The heat became so stifling that the only enjoyable outdoor activity was a going to the beach and Hong Kong being an island there are numerous beaches spotted throughout the country. The first beach excursion landed the other teachers (Sara Beth, Tripp, Amy, Rebecca, and Tracy) and I at Stanley Beach about an hour away from our apartment. There was a great little market close to the beach with little souvenirs, clothes, fabric and other random things. The beach itself was very nice with a great view of the outlining islands. The ocean though was dirty and had a ton of trash along the shore! Hong Kong gets so much water traffic that the pollution and dumping effects the beaches and oceans tremendously! Even though, in typical Hong Kong fashion, workers were cleaning and picking up trash all day, the water was still littered with trash. After catching some sun and walking around the walking around the market, we prepared ourselves the the white knuckle bus ride back to town.

Another trip to the South China was to Man Ho Tin, an island that required a ferry ride to get there. The ferry ride was more of an old timey Chinese style boat (see picture) where you felt every wave and bump on the ride. Maggie had arranged a Chinese style BBQ at this island for all the teachers. In 100* weather we gathered around an open charcoal BBQ pit and started cooking. Most of the unidentified meat was delicious but I got a surprise when I bit into a squid ball!! After a lovely day on the beach, Maggie treated everyone to a local Hong Kong seafood dinner. Located next to the open air restaurant was tanks with all types of interesting fish, crab, lobster, other types of shellfish and even starfish! As Amy pointed out to me, these were not aquariums, these fish were about to be eaten! You could literally point to a specific fish, take it out of the tank, and then have fresh fish for dinner!
Dinner was interesting to say the least and the plate that gets the award was the chicken plate with the head displayed on the plate looking back at you as you eat.This was not the last time I had close encountered with chicken heads. This was a dinner that I was happy to experience and is very typical for Hong Kong locals, but I'm not planning on making this an every week affair.