A month ago, we had a chance to fly down to Bali, Indonesia and opted to stay at the Novotel in the secluded town of Nusa Dua. We chose Nusa Dua because of its isolation (the point of the trip was R&R, so leaving the town was not something we were planning to do anyway) and we were upgraded to a suite on arrival, not that we made much use of the kitchen. Nusa Dua has no beach parties, no temples, actually aside from the beach, there is nothing too noteworthy to see or do. But because of this, the beaches were pretty empty, I am talking kilometers of beautiful beaches with only a handful of people.

In the mornings, we would eat before heading down to the beach and in the evening we would head back to our resort and swim in the artificial lagoon (although it was a fairly large lagoon, it was still crowded and full of kids while the sun was up, but it transforms into a peaceful place to swim at night… By the way, random frogs occasionally swim in the lagoon too). The resort had a restaurant down by the beach where you could get drinks or food and at night, they put some tables out on the beach for dinner.

On our first night there, we decided to go down to try it out, and we ended up being the only patrons there. It was pretty amazing, having dinner on the beach that we had all to ourselves. To make things even better, the full moon was out and it was so bright that we could see our own shadows on the beach!

We also found this little shack near another resort, I believe it was meant for the workers of the resort to eat there, but we ate there anyways. I mean Nasi Goreng for $1US ?? Can’t really beat that. We also got to try Tebs, a carbonated “Tea Cooler” and Tehbotol, a sweetened cold tea.

We did spend the last day exploring south east Bali, most notably, heading to Uluwatu Temple, home of these extremely cunning monkeys. If you are not careful, they steals your belongings and will only return them when you trade for them with bananas. orz

As usual, Flickr photostream here (if you saw the photos on Facebook, then there aren’t too many additional photos on my photostream this time)

I was in Taiwan for a quick long weekend trip, it was pretty relaxing. Didn’t do anything special: ate alot, slept alot and free wifi in the hotel room!

As per my usual custom, I went out and tried alot of strange drinks:

• Ice cream beer floats : Ice cream is yummy and beer is not bad either. You would think putting those two together would be a good idea. It is not. Actually the beer was just really bad beer, maybe if it was in something a little more … fruity, it would totally work (I’m gonna have to try this).
• Asparagus juice: sounds bad but tastes pretty amazing (kind of tastes like sugar cane juice)
• Yogurt flavored green tea: uhh gross (apparently it tastes like Calpis, which I hate)
• Yogurt flavored lemon juice: uhhh gross x2

Other things that happened:

• Almost missed my flight (boarding was at like 7, flight was at 7:25. I didnt get to the airport until 7:18)
• Saw fireworks in mid-flight en route to Taipei
• Taipei 101
• Binge eating
• Night market
• Taxi driver felt up my friend
• Also, bought some stuff

The hilight for me was definitely the night market:

Full flickr set here:

Its autumn! You know what that means? American Sitcoms, cooler weather and hockey season is just around the corner. But yesterday was Mid-Autumn Festival. You know, mooncakes, lanterns and such? Yum.  I was out near my apartment and attended the famous Tai Hang Fire Dragon / 大坑火龍 (I’ve seen it on TV before, always wanted to go).

It is pretty much a very long (75-100 meters?) dragon covered in incense. SO MUCH SMOKE. But so pretty.

Setting up incense (this is the dragon’s tail)

All lit up and ready to go!

Lanterns!

RAAAAAAAWWRRRRR (or whatever noises a dragon makes)

They had the kids hold lanterns and walk in circles. There’s probably some symbolic meaning in that.

Looks heavy~

It was really intense, trying to get the rest of the dragon’s body to keep up with the head. The whole dragon took over 35 people to operate and countless more on the side directing where and how the body should be moving. And the whole time, burning ash is falling onto the people carrying the dragon!

More photos can be found on my flickr stream

Ultimately, we ended up in Haikou (海口), capital of the Chinese province of Hainan.

How did you end up in Haikou?

We had evening tickets up to Guangzhou out of Hong Kong so getting into China was pretty straightforward. A 2 hour train ride later, we were at Guangzhou Eastern Rail Station and at this point we had our sights set on Sanya (三亞) located at the southern tip of Haikou. After a brief subway ride to Guangzhou Central Rail station and we discovered that we had made a huge mistake; You would think a station with 15 ticket counters and hundreds of people lined up would have some tickets for sale, but sadly, that was not the case. Since virtually all tickets out of Guangzhou were sold out for the night as well as the next day, dejected, we decided to have dinner instead (it was already 9pm) and re-think our plan.
At this point we were still set on going to Sanya, and so, we decided to try our luck over at the bus station. Luckily for us, we ended up on the 10:40pm overnight bus to Haikou, which was at least part-way to where we wanted to be. The overnight bus ride was as comfortable as any 10 hour bus ride could get (read: not comfortable at all) and we were dropped off at some port at 9am and took a 1.5 hour ferry ride over to Haikou. After arriving, we had lunch and decided we should try to cath a train to Sanya, but it left a little too late so we decided to stay in Haikou for the remainder of the trip (we did not want to take a bus back to Guangzhou so we also bought train tickets since we were already there)

we travelled by train, bus, boat, tuk-tuk (above), taxi, and a train that goes on a boat

Oh we stayed at this lovely hostel, across the street from Hainan University and down the street from some amazing street food. Oh, and they make a great (Western) breakfast!! I even had grilled cheese for the first time in four years (I know, I know, it’s not difficult to make, but I’m lazy) :

Haikou? There’s nothing there.

Wrong. There was plenty to do for the adventurous.

Haikou was a very relaxed and tropical city- there were many times when I completely forgot I was in China. The fruits were very tropical, and amazingly fresh; mangoes, pineapples, coconuts, watermelons and longans! Our hostel was actually across from Hainan University, which was a humungous campus. Actually, in therms of area, Haikou was huge.

Fruit shopping after a very late lunch

That’s it?

Well. Yes and no. To be honest, I didn’t see alot of Haikou. I didn’t get a chance to visit the volcanoes , nor the beaches (I did pass by them, if that counts for anything), but boy oh boy, do I have stories to tell. We met a whole bunch of people from all corners of the world at the hostel, one guy was even nice enough to take us out and treat us to dinner our first night there (seeing how we couldnt speak the local dialect there). Then there was the random binge drinking – we were just finishing breakfast at the hostel when this guy walks by with two huge jugs and goes “Who wants rum?”. I later found out that he made the rum himself and we just sat around in the middle of the day drinking and talking to complete strangers for about 4 hours.

Later some of these “strangers” (at this point, they were not complete strangers) decided to get some food, I had some great noodles at the sketchiest shop ever, and we topped it off with some watermelon served in a plastic bag. We also wandered around the campus of Haikou University and topped off our trip with some street food. There was this one street near our hostel that had about 50-60 vendors selling everything from noodles in soup to fried condensed milk. I also had some very interesting coconut ice cream – first the lady put grass jelly, pineapple, watermelon, tapioca, some chewy noodles, corn, and a quail egg topped off with two gigantic scoops of coconut ice cream, coconut shavings and peanuts. I Know, it sounds absolutely disgusting right? But take my word for it, it was AMAZING (ok except for the egg in my ice cream, that was totally wierd).

Watermelon in a bag!!

Having fun on campus at Hainan University

Sure, my leg totally go eaten alive by mosquitoes (I have no idea how it happened, we went out for dinner and I came back like that!  Also, I don’t know why its only my right leg), and I couldn’t understand one word that was said to me, but I’d definitely go back to Haikou (and probably try to get to Sanya) again in the near  future. Perhaps next time, I’ll fly (but I actually enjoyed the train ride between Guangzhou and Haikou, I mean, the train goes on a boat!!!).

Flickr photostream:

I think I totally ruined this shot… me and my stupid peace sign. Sorry

Actually the only time I really like taking photos of people are when they don’t know I’m taking the photo (yes, I realized that came out kinda creepy. Trust me, I’m not creepy … I think.)

Anyway, enjoy the set!

And yes, I finally got the Flickr photostream embeds working (it wont work, however, if you are reading this via an RSS reader like Google Reader or Facebook Notes)

What was I doing there? Nothing in particular I guess… I ate alot of food though! (note: I normally don’t take photos of food. Well I do, but I normally don’t take photos of food and put them up on the net. This time someone made a request so I’ll let it slide. You can find the food-only photos here)

This was my second breakfast of the day. Pineapple bun with a huge ass glob of butter.

Some half cooked eggs with soy sauce and some sort of slat mixture? It was actually quite good

It wasn’t all eating…

… I wandered around Orchard Rd, absolutely amazed at how much things had changed.

Apparently you can play air-guitar for money on the streets -_-; (well its better than sitting there and begging I guess?)

At the scene of the crime where an alien was murdered!

.. subway entrance o_o

Concluded the trip by eating a stingray! (it was quite good)

All in all, a short but satisfying trip!

A general overabundance of butterflies along the 50km trail. Side note – I almost swallowed one while running through Stage 7 of the hike.

Oh, did I mention the GIANT SPIDERS?

“No horses allowed” … wait, what?

Beautiful day on Jardine’s Lookout. Must come back to watch the sunset one day

My hike not only took me through forests and over peaks, it also brought me through Tai Tam Reservoir

As I try to finish the trail before sunset on day 2, I find myself taking a break from the peak of the Dragon’s Back. To my right; Big Wave Bay, to my left; the sun setting over the rest of Hong Kong.

Full flickr stream here.

While I won’t go into details about the hike, I would like to mention the fact that I never expected such grand (and relatively clean) rivers in Hong Kong, nor was I expecting such infectious mosquitoes (3 applications of “OFF!” and I still got around 10 mosquito bites -_-;)

You can find the (more detailed) walk report here (scroll down abit)
Flickr photostream here (yeah I still haven’t fixed the flicker embed yet!)

Total hiking time: 14k in under 5 hours, stopping once to get our rain gear out, once to eat lunch, and once for a beer by some remote store while cleaning the mud off our boots.

ps. I’m mildly surprised that I managed to keep up as they were hiking at crazy speeds due to some time constraints and even more surprised I wasn’t really tired the next day. Legs were sore for a few hours after I woke up, but were gone by lunch.

pps. Next time I’m bringing a snack.

edit: seems like Flickr photostream embeds are not working right now. Too lazy to fix so you’ll have to go to the stream directly via the link above.