It’s easier to leave than to be left behind….

This is the last post on Bonkers In Honkers, it’s been a blast…. Hong Kong will always have a place in my heart (right next to my right ventricle I suspect).

I would love if you could follow our further adventuring in Singapore and other countries over on our new blog, A Strange Horizon (no more place specific blog titles!)

There will always be a link back to here from our new blog as it’s fantastic looking back at our time in Hong Kong.

So please, follow us as we make the move. See you on another strange horizon at some point….

Soooo Singapore….

We’re stuck wired up to the internet in the YWCA Fort Canning Lodge where the ants come free with the room and the breakfast is made by people who don’t taste their own food. But today, we move to our new apartment! Woohoo! I have no pictures or videos until we get internetted up in our new pad. I will say this, though, the balcony is bigger than our Hong Kong apartment and we are very very happy about that.

Singapore is expensive. More expensive than Ireland. There is nothing cheap here. NOTHING!! It’s outrageous. I’ve lived in Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong and there was always something in each country you could rely on being cheap. I have found nothing here to be cheap. NOTHING!! I will get more into this phenomenon when we are settled in to our new place and my wallet comes out of its shock related coma.

We’ve made our ubiquitous IKEA run which is basically a maze of household goods designed by a maniac. It’s a horrendous experience. Also have our TV ordered from Harvey Norman (got a good deal on a display model 40″ Sony HD).

Anyway, I don’t feel comfortable writing this in our hotel room as ants tickle my fingers (I’m constantly and paranoidly scratching here). I look forward to settling down and writing up more posts about our new experiences here in Stingapore..I mean Singapore.

I started this blog to record our new and exciting experiences in a strange and wonderful city and I’m a bit disappointed I couldn’t keep up with the regular postings. As I have stated before life just moves on and sights and sounds that I may have goggled at before became common place. Still awesome but I just found the posting of it to this blog to be a bit cumbersome and I would often forget.
Even being one of the Hong Kong blogs featured on CNNGo.com couldn’t keep me going. Silly me.

I am hoping that the new experiences in Singapore will reignite my passion for blogging. I will probably get a new domain and set up forwarding information from here so you all don’t miss a thing! I will look forward to looking back at my time in Hong Kong through my posts here, just wish there wasn’t so many gaps of time in between posts…

Hong Kong is an amazing city. Visit it. If you have the chance to work here, do so. You won’t regret it.

Camping with 80 or so Grade 4s on Lantau Island was actually good fun!

The views from hiking around Hong Kong Island can be breath-taking.

The mixture of old and new is always a common theme in Hong Kong

Yes, this is actually on Hong Kong island, one of the pre-conceptions I had of HK was that it was all concrete but even on the island there is greenery!

Foooood! Another of my regrets is that I didn’t get too experimental with eating here. There are so many different cuisines to try.

It’s so hard going through the hundreds of photos of stuff we have done over the last three years. The experiences have been many. Who knows we may, one day, end back here. You just never know..

Stay tuned while I come up with a witty website name (which isn’t so place specific) for our continuing adventures. Suggestions welcome!

As soon as we stepped off the boat (with my normal nausea) I found myself walking on a cobble stone plaza. It took me back to my days in the Dorf! We hopped on Bus #7 and took a short ride to Jovial Court, where our hostess was waiting.

First things first, we join in a traditional toast of Slivovitz (Croatian Plum Brandy)!

We were also greeted by our new friend, Ruby!

After I recovered from the Slivovitz, Tania invited us to the table, which included a bottle of Malvazija, a special Croatian wine. The feast included a Croatian salad (vegetarian), a cheese pie (vegetarian), homemade salsa (vegetarian), and a bacon topped lasagna. The vegetarian was not at a loss for choice!

After we ate, Ruby was ready for a walk! She has her favorite spots for munching on mint flavored leaves!

There are a few things I had heard about Discovery Bay over the past three years which I found to be true. There are a lot of dogs and children and the people who live here use golf carts as their means of transportation, no cars!

There were also a few surprises on this quaint little island. Everywhere you turn, a new cat is ready to greet you! There are also little secret corners of garbage/litter that defy the beautiful reputation DB has.

After a long afternoon of eating, drinking, being spoiled by our hostess, and playing with Ruby, it was time to take the ferry home! Hopefully Ruby will sleep well tonight!

The Skyzone Bar and Restaurant is all the way up on the 33rd floor. Decor is a bit “The Shining”  (and the music was in accordance with the decor at times) and the service a little lacklustre at the start when we were the only ones in the place but the service improved  as the night went on.
I think our bill was about 300HKD for salad, garlic bread, pasta main, dessert and 2 beers and 2 wines. Pretty good for a hotel in Hong Kong! And, you know what? The food was really good! The bread was fresh and hot, the mains were tasty and just the right portions and the ice cream for dessert was, undoubtedly, “home-made”.

The views are pretty, prettayyy good. It’s a strange vantage point that you may not see as a visitor to Hong Kong; looking over Victoria Park, HK library towards Tin Hau. Normally people get to places to look over the harbour or down towards Central. So it was a nice change.

And going in to the men’s bathroom you are met with another interesting view and quite a…strange bathroom experience!
I hope you like the authentic sound effects…

Here’s a little stitched together panorama from the main bar area. Click for biggy!

from https://bonkersinhonkers.wordpress.com

Basically hot pot involves a pot of boiling water, raw vegetables and meat. And an accoutrement of  sauces and spices to mix together as your dipping concoction. It’s a very communal, social affair with everybody ladling out various things to people who can’t reach the bubbling broth of earthly delights.

This was my smorgasbord of sauces. I like soy so I  had two types of soy, some spring onions and a little sesame oil. It was niiice!

Various fish balls, beef balls and tofu bits.

The pot for veggies only. VEGGIES ONLY!!

Pre-dipping into my special sauce. Yum!

The other entertainment of the night was our friend’s aquarium. I love a good aquarium and could stare at one for evvahhh.

Hi Mr. Turtle!

I think this guy is called an Axolotl; a type of salamander. We think he’s blind…

If you’re heading down to Bangkok from Hong Kong for whatever reason you can get the most reasonably priced flights on, strangely enough, Emirate’s sparkling new behemoth double-deckered Airbus 380! I’ve wanted to fly on this bird since I watched its maiden flight live streaming back in 2006/2007, I can’t remember exactly.

On board, it’s got great leg room; you are actually disadvantaged sitting at a bulkhead row as you can’t watch your TV while taxiing, take-off or landing. And the extra leg room is minimal. Emirate’s entertainment system is also full of stuff to keep you entertained. Flight times between HKG and BKK are only about 2 and a half hours anyway.
The downsides of flying this size of plane is the extra bodies on board, everything takes longer and is more stretched out due to the numbers involved. We were delayed both going and coming back and I’m thinking this is quite regular. The more the people the more the chance of things messing up!

You can really feel the sheer weight of the A380 when turning and taking off. It’s a great experience and if Emirates keep their prices low then it will be number one choice for many people doing the Bangkok route from Hong Kong.

from https://bonkersinhonkers.wordpress.com/

The overwhelming high point of my time at HKU has without doubt been…..the cheapest Starbucks in Hong Kong!!

Yes for $35 HKD all this could be yours too. I seriously looked forward to this every week. They don’t card you either so yes you can just be a normal skinflint and get some cheap Starbucks too!

For your information in the first year of the PGDE at HKU you gotta go on a Tuesday and Thursday night from 6-8. Now in my second year I only have to go once a week. It’s been…an experience. There was a dead cockroach on the staircase leading up to my class for quite some time. A few weeks ago it disappeared…I miss it.

If you ever go to HKU prepare for stairs and elevators; it’s all levels Jerry. Levels. It’s a very easy university to get to though with numerous buses running right past the gate so that’s been good.

I’m getting my Masters somewhere else.

Reasons for not blogging

We are in our third year here in Hong Kong. Life has a habit of just being routine. Here we are in one of the most exciting cities in the world but when you throw in a 07:30-16:30 day job you become part of the normal working day life everyone has around the world. We travel back and forth to work in between towering apartment blocks, past local eateries, go through a tunnel through the middle of Hong Kong island and we get on with our lives. My family always ask me where the updates are to Bonkers and I look back and the last one was in September; that’s life getting in the way right there!

For sure, I find myself wandering the streets of Causeway Bay at times slaloming through the sea of humanity looking up at the awesome buildings old and new and realise how awesome it is to live here and to be experiencing what I am. I know  people find it interesting what we go through but it’s hard for me to find it interesting enough to blog about after two years. So I need to get back to basics. I need to think about what people who have never been to Hong Kong would find interesting or at least semi-interesting. I look at the Cleveland SGS blog that I know very well and find the various scenes of Cleveland fascinating and I think I need to be doing the same here.

I will try. With a kick up the backside and a fresh perspective from WordPress, Cleveland SGS and also the 365 Project. I will try.

Which leads me on to this mess of a lunch and a passing nod to my recent foray in Hot Sauce Williams in Cleveland. I get this delightful tray of earthly delights quite a lot from the International store at Cyberport. It’s breaded and fried pork, a dollop of mayo, two sushi rolls (this varies every day) and a slab of boiled rice with a Jackson Pollock helping of a soy sauce type thing all over the top. It’s lovely and fattening and delicious and it’s about $25 HKD which is about $3 USD/2.50Euros.