Hong Kong Light Show

I finally got around to watch the Hong Kong light show - one of the main tourists attractions here. The ten minutes show is on every night at eight and can be watched from various points around the Victoria Harbour. The show is called "a Symphony of Lights" and includes 44 buildings with laser beams and searchlights blinking to synchronised music. The whole thing is meant to tell a story, but there were too many people around us to really hear what was going on.

This truly is Hong Kong in a nutshell. Enjoy.

By the way, Hege and Lesley really, really want the purple Easter egg thingies!

A Week in Vietnam

The second part of my mid-semester break was spent in Vietnam. Once again I met up with Kine, Hanna and Annelin - my backpacking friends. They were doing a kite-surfing course in Muine, a charming little town on the coast, so that is were I spent most of my time.

The best part about being in Muine was that it was such a great contrast to the busy city life of Hong Kong. It was nice to be able to see grass, stars and have open space around me again.
I pretty much just chilled on the beach while the others were kiting. Also used a day to explore the areas around Muine with Hanna on rented bicycles.

People getting ready to go home after a hard day of kite-surfing.

One of the scenic places Hanna and I saw on our little bicycle trip.

Fishing is what people most people in Muine live off.

After a few days in Muine we took the bus to Dalat, a mountain village. It was raining and pretty cold when we got there, so I think we all just wanted to go back to the beach again. But, being tough Vikings, we decided to rough it and stay.

We did a tour on our second day in Dalat of the local attractions. The most fascinating part of the tour was a waterfall. It was not anything special in itself, even though tourists from other parts of Vietnam seemed to think so, but the whole setup around it was quite amusing. You could for example chose whether you wanted to walk the fifteen minutes to the waterfall OR you could take the bobsleigh (bob-bane) down to it. You could also bobsleigh back, so no walking was required unless you really wanted to. Techno music was also booming from speakers skillfully hidden in the trees and there were people dressed up as bears and cowboys wandering around the place.

The tour also took us to the Valley of Love - a park filled with mostly plastic statues of hearts, giraffes and other romantic things. With classic love songs playing on dodgy speakers in background it was true bliss.

The great and mighty waterfall of Dalat.


In the Valley of Love - Hege, Hanna, Kine and Annelin.

Cambodia

The Trip from Bangkok to Cambodia

Just had a week of holidays, so I spent the time travelling in Cambodia and Vietnam. One of the biggest hassles were figuring out how to get to Cambodia. It is not the easiest country to access, but we ended up flying to Bangkok to make our way from there. The route from Bangkok to Siem reap in Cambodia is somewhat infamous for its bad roads, many scams, numerous vehicle break downs and somewhat tedious boarder crossings. Via buses, tuk-tuks and taxis we made it in about 11 hours, which is not too bad. Actually, besides getting forced to pay more at the boarder for our Cambodian visas (we stayed there for over two hours trying to haggle the price down), the trip was rather uneventful. You have to pay for the visa in American dollars, so my personal theory is that they wanted more money because the dollar is rather weak at the moment.

Patrick posing with our taxi driver just across the boarder. Ah, beautiful Cambodia...

Angkor Wat

Our main reason for going to Cambodia was to see the temples of Angkor. The temples are over 900 years old and pretty amazing. The temples make you realise how rich this region, both culturally and money-wise, once was. Weird to think about in today's poor, war-thorn Cambodia.

Sunrise at Angkor Wat.

Floating village

I also visited a floating village in Siem Reap. Pretty much just boats, houses or sometimes a combination of the two, on a big fresh water lake. Met some really nice, local people here.

Post on Vietnam coming soon.

Weekend trip to China

I went to Guangzhou in China from Saturday till Sunday to see Chang, a guy I know from Brisbane. Even though Guangzhou is only a two hour train trip away you can definitely notice a difference; it is more crowded, less high tech, has plenty of bicycles, things are cheaper, people speak no English and the pollution is even worse than in Hong Kong. We went to museums and temples, eat lots and spent some lovely hours in spa where one of the activities included sticking your feet into a pool of small fishes. The fish would then eat the dead skin of your feet. Yummy.

Dragon in a park - all the leaves are dead as China has had an unusually cold winter. The coldest winter in 50 years to be exact.

Hege posing Asian-style. The monster thing on the door is designed to keep the evil spirits out.

Hege and Chang in front of year of the rat decoration.

Guangzhou is all about eating. What about some deep fried shrimps with cake sprinkle on them?

Traditional Guangzhou breakfast. Tastes better than it looks=)

"Wanna try some snake heads? It's good for you" - the Chinese thinks almost everything is edible and have some sort of health benefit. The next photos are from a sea food market next to a restaurant we ate at.

These worms are probably healthy too.

Not quite sure what this is, but it is probably good for you.

You can pick the one you like and they'll cook it for you in the restaurant next door.

Turtles... Mmm...

Or what about some alligator?

Tian Tan Buddha

Lesley and I spent most of Sunday visiting the Tian Tan Buddha. It is the world's tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha. Since it is located on the top of a mountain, quite far away from houses and people, I was expecting to find some sort of quiet, noncommercial religious place. Well, my image was wrong. When we got off at the end of the 30 minutes cable car ride we were met by the welcoming signs of Starbucks and Seven Eleven. I should have learnt by now that everything in Hong Kong is like a big circus. The whole area was filled with places to shop and dine.

The weather was unfortunately not the best when we were there. It was quite foggy, so the view was not as great as it could have been. However, the Buddha was still impressive and we managed to get at least a few decent photos.

On our way to the top in a cable car. The view was better than the impression the picture gives.

There's a Buddhist temple close to the Big Buddha. I didn't see any monks though. Maybe they were all in Starbucks.

If the Pulpit Rock (Prekestolen) or Kjerag was in Hong Kong it would have one of these.

Posing in front of the mighty Buddha.

Some people were praying, but most people seemed to be tourists like us.