As a memory

I took a walk around campus the other day, trying to take some last photos. It started raining and then I had other things to do, so here are the only pictures I took. I'll be sending my computer to Sweden, since I don't want to drag it along transmongolia for a month, so I don't know when I'll have the time to blog again. Anyway, it's been a pleasure to be here in Hong Kong, I will always remember it. But now it's time for some new adventures, and then I'm coming back to Sweden in perfect time for the summer. I'm leaving on Sunday, first stop is Shanghai. 

Misstakes and hangover in Macau

 Yesterday Diana and I had decided to finally visit Macau, which is located just one and a half hour from Hong Kong by ferry. We had been to an "all you can eat and drink wine and cheese" buffé tha previous night, so we ended up leaving  campus around twelve. The rain was pouring down.

 Since we were both pretty hang over, we did not realize that the ferry went to another terminal than the one that we had our minds on. Maybe in a normal condition we would have paid more attention, but now we just followed the crowd on to a bus, and got shutteled to this shopping mall, hotel, and casino.

 We entered in hopes that we could exit on the other side and find our way to the ruins that we wanted to visit. The place was quite 'golden'.

 We walked around and around and tried to figure out where we were.

 We ended up in something as surreal as 'little Venice', with a fake sky and chinese people in gondolas. The whole situation felt a bit bisarre in our condition. After maybe an hour of looking at maps and walking back and forwards we finally realized our misstake, and the whole thing ended up with us taking the shuttle bus back to the ferry terminal, jumping on another bus that took us across a bridge and to the "real Macau" (we had been in another area). By this time we both felt a bit ridiculous.

 When finally there, we tried to find something to eat. We both wanted something steady, like pasta, so we determendly started looking for it, in the even heavier rain. Meanwhile we were amazed by the contrast between the chinese and the portugese architecture.

 We ended up in this area (after a way to long time of being lost) and found a nice french place where they had pasta. I was determined to eat something vegetarian, so we skipped the portugese food since the reasturants we saw did not offer any.

 Once again, the contrasts of the city was striking.

 Somehow it felt like being in southern Europe, but in the same time it was very chinese, and on top of this there were a number of casinos as high as the sky.

 Before leaving again (after a pretty failed trip) we decided we wanted to visit some of the historical sigts, especially the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral which is very famous, and as Diana put it "the one in all the pictures".

 This narrow street suddenly made us both feel much better, it was very nice.

 Here, as in Taipei, you could make your own noode soup.

 I tried one of the famous egg tards, it was very good.

 The street names!

 They also sold a lot of compressed meat,apparently a portugese delicacy. We did not try that...

 Here is the ruins of the cathedral, which burned down in the 19th century (I think). Now only the front remains.

 The view from the stairs was this, pretty cool we thought and wished we had come in a sunny day, without hangover, so that we could have sat here eating an ice cream.

Diana got a message about typhoon varnings so we decided to hurry back to the ferry in order to get home. We thought about staying the night, to be able to see more of the city, but we had all ready bought our return ticket and I had to much packing and cleanng to do before leaving Hong Kong on Sunday. So we took the ferry back and after a long day it felt greater than ever to be back at the campus.

On top of the world

Yesterday it was my birthday, I cant believe that I am 22 years! It will take some time to getting used to. Anyway, after solving some important things like going to the bank, Diana and I went out for lunch in the city. We went to Sf Veggie, which is located at the 12th floor in this building at Stanley Street in Central.

 The place is a crazy mix between American dinner in the 50's, christmas decorations and vegetarian food from Southeast Asia. We had tried to go here before but it was full, so this was a perfect oportunity to try it.

 I think the characters for 'Exit' are the only ones I actually know, which feels a bit sad. I guess my only excuse is that Diana and I could not take cantoneese as a course and transfer the credits for it, also it would have been too much to take language classes on top of my five other ones... To bad though.

 We had some delicious carrot and sweet corn soup as a starter, it was great with some real soup instead of the ones made from powder that we get at campus. (I really look forwrd to cooking again by the way!)

 The floor was covered in clever quotes.

 We both had this tasty balinese food for main, with tomato sause and lemongrass, which was a very nice combo that I will deffinity use in my own cooking.

 Any place with a counter looking like that is interesting to me. The food and service was not as great as I had hoped though, but it was fun to try it.

After lunch I took of to go to Admiralty and pick up my visa at the Mongolian embassy, the best birthday present I could imagine. This ment that I have all my visas ready and that I will really take the Transmongolian railway (plus some other trains) all the way back to Sweden. I am so excited!

 Diana had gone to a café at the top of Mid-levels to Skype with her boyfriend James while I was gone, so when back in Central I went to do her company.

 The café called Filter Lane was very nice, and the walk there really made me realize the size of this area. They had someone taking photos of the place, probably for advertising and I gues the place was new. The coffe looked great and also there were some really cool kinds.

 Afterwards, we walked around in Central for a bit, looking at the markets (for maybe the last time) and searching for a camera stripe for me. I did not find one that I liked, so it just has to wait.

 The street art is one of the things I like the best in this part of the city.

 In a while it started raining and we went to a restaurant in Soho, where they had a beautiful floor, to get some wine. It was Happy Hour and we ended up spending a few hours there until we went to meet Lena for dinner at a vietnamese restaurant called Nha Trang, which was the same place that we had dinner at for Diana's birthday. The food there is so fresh and amazing. Mmmm, Vietnamese food might be my new favorite.
 

 We also walked pass this cool mini-temple during the afternoon. It is located at Peel Street, which is the place where Lena and I had been to a jazz bar the previous night.

 After dinner Lena took us to a roof top bar with the most amazing view.

 Here you see Tsim Sha Tsui, we live on that other side but further north.

 This was the view from our table.

 The drinks were quite expensive, but we did pay for the view too. However, Lena and I got feeling and ordered Dark Chocolate Martinis, for someone who basicly never drink cocktails I can just say that it was amazing.

 We spent an hour or two until it got to cold and we decided that to try to catch the MTR back to campus, I am very happy I got to experience this before leaving Hong Kong (which is now in less then a week)!

 On the way home we did another great thing, or I did. I asked the girls to be my witnesses as I voted for the European Parlament, something I belive is very important to do. Somehow I found this a perfect activity to do on my birthday.