The Finnish Party!

Another party weekend- with my crazy friends who I love dearly. Friday evening was the last Foreign Exchange party at Paparazzi, a club in LKF. We decided to go late to avoid the cover charge and so instead pre-partied on the roof of Lee Hysan. It was a wild and ridiculous time of course, involving Remco showing off his bartending skills and creepily saying "I put lime in the girls' drinks so they can't taste the alcohol"...or something like that. Then we shouted at the famous Jeff Shek, mostly because he has the most amazing name that is fun to shout on any occasion. Also involved Richard somehow climbing over from RC Lee, the hall next door, to the roof of Lee Hysan. And the inevitable game of never have I ever in which we shame each other since we've played too many times and know each other's secrets. Then we finally made it to LKF, and first stop while we waited for Paparazzi to be free was Ebenezer's, the delicious kabob place where many a hungry drunk likes to eat in the wee hours. We headed to Paparazzi and it was super crowded and sort of....surreal. I guess it's sort of weird getting to a club at that moment when the drunken madness has taken hold at around 1 am. It was fun, although they sort of just played the same music as the first party. Before going home, of course we spent some quality time outside 711 talking to a homeless Chinese man with a bleeding finger. And Anski got kicked out of 711. For sitting on a newspaper on the ledge of the store, even though Jeff was sitting on a pile of paper in the store. It was pretty entertaining. The next day was the Finnish party. So Saturday I went to Mongkok to buy my cheap gift offerings to the party and a shirt for my costume, and by the way had some delicious Japanese fast food. I decided to dress as the what seemed to define the Finnish, a bottle of vodka. And perhaps the reason people have heard of Finland, Finlandia vodka. We headed to Swire, and althought the strict hall rules made hosting the party a bit difficult, our five Finnish exchange student friends did an awesome job decorating the common room and cooking us up a Finnish meal which was quite delicious. My roommate and her friend from our hall came to, which was nice. We played a game to get our dessert which involved saying a phrase in Finnish and trying to find the partner with the same phrase. Krit and I found each other and shouted excitedly our phrase, Lähetääks panee! Which apparently means let's go have sex now, hahaha it was pretty funny. The cake was good and so were the cookies, but Finnish people apparently like this gross salty licorice candy (as well as licorice vodka). The party got more raucous as everyone drank sketchy punch in a metal bucket that looked suspiciously like pee, and the Finns all drank lots. Then for a special surprise we sang in Finnish, and Santa Claus appeared! Apparently he was invented in Finland originally...or something. Santa, aka Eero, played a rather intoxicated Claus with a penchant for cute girls. He even put on a Santa like voice so he was scarcely recognizable. He distributed the gifts, and I got a broom which I later tried to ride off to LKF. It was a really fun party, although the only thing I may have learned about Finnish culture is that they enjoy many varieties of alcohol but mostly vodka related. A large group of us headed off to LKF, although some of the hosts had consumed a fair amount and had to be sent home early. Although it was only midnight, since our event had begun at 6 it seemed time to go to the Flying Pan, an American style 24 hour diner. I had some fair diner food for the first time in a while. Our little band of friends did some wandering and dancing, some of us got a bit wilder than others. Overall a random and fun night.

Today,Stanley

Today, since I am finished with classes, I headed out to Stanley. It took me way to long to get going of course, so I didn't leave til 3 ish. While I stood oustide waiting for the bus, I listened to a group of old people who all seemed to know each other speak Cantonese. I realized I can finally start to tell the difference between Mandarian and Cantonese, the way they sound. Listening to them talk is so fun, the way they draw out the words make them sound so passionate and sometimes really angry but in this sort of not serious way. It's hard to explain I guess. It's a nice bus ride to the other side of the island, past the beach of Repulse Bay, very scenic ocean view of some islands. It was a gorgeous day out, sunny and cool. The bus winded up the rode and I watched expensive cliffside houses pass by my window, many with expats' children playing in the courtyard. Sometimes it feels very European. I arrived at Stanley, which I'd only been to once at the beginning on our tour. There is a mall, and a pier area with restaurants, and of course the market. It's so peaceful and lovely there, and it was much less crowded than the last time we'd visited. I headed to the market and bought some scarves which I can use here and at home, then went to sit by one of the little seaside cafes. I read Shanghai Baby, my novel for my class which I'm really enjoying, and watched little white children being chased by their Filipino maids. Next to me was a couple of French women (I swear all the French are in holiday in Hong Kong lately) and listened carefully to them talking, reveling in the beauty of their language and identifying words but too lazy to actually figure out what they were talking about. I drank coke and ate a hot dog in the most American way and looked at the paper lanterns they'd hung up to remind us we were in Hong Kong. I think part of the reason I always wanted to go to Paris was because I saw Sabrina, and I wanted to find myself in Paris, sitting at my cafe with my books and my journal. But I can find myself here too, there are all these little escapes to be with yourself in Hong Kong. All the advantages of European and American cities and the added Asian flair. That's why this place is so amazing, really. I think of it as my city now too. After that it was beginning to reach dusk and get chilly, so I got a hot chocolate and walked around the pier a bit before taking my ride back. I gotta go back sometime, probably at least to shop more in the market, but it's really such a lovely little place.

The Rest of November...

Darn I've fallen behind. Well, since getting back from the Philippines I've done lots of exciting things. The weekend after Philippines I was still a bit tired, but I did some shopping in Causeway and some karaoke with the gang. Umm, I don't really remember what else? Well I'll just move onto the next weekend, last weekend which was pretty exciting. Friday was Cornelius's birthday party, which was a beach party at Repulse Bay. We played some games and had a ridiculously good time. Met some new people. And of course ended up swimming in our underwear in the ocean. The water wasn't tooo cold but swimming at night does get a bit chilly. We ended up cuddling together on the beach (clothes back on, don't worry) for warmth. and Love, of course. I do love a good cuddle puddle though, especially on the beach. Our group decided to stay until the sun came up, of course. I mean when you've stayed out that late might as well just stay up. Thoroughly cold and sandy, we cuddled together and when we opened our eyes, it was late out and there were quite a few people on the beach. Apparently old Chinese people like to swim in the ocean at 6 am. Sooo we searched and found a Pacific Coffee for a delicious hot beverage/breakfast. And that's how I stayed out til 8 am. Saturday was Claire's birthday so we went out for "Mexican" which wasn't so bad, pricey though. It was a fun dinner and then we went and got dessert at a cool place in SoHo. Well, all the little restaurants and bars in SoHo are just cool looking and cute and fun. After that was the usual Lan Kwai Fong-ness of I don't even know what we were doing until 5 am. This was the last week of classes. It involved making a facebook event to get our entire Chinese class to wear white to class, and some assignments and finals. Boo to that. Then I have a "reading week" and finals period. It's pretty spread out as far as due dates and finals for me til pretty late, still lots to do. But it is nice that class is over. I enjoyed it, I learned a lot but didn't put in toooo much effort. ha.

The Philippines: Tropical Paradise (Bohol Days 3-5)

Saturday 11-10-07 We woke early and set off for the ferry, planning to meet Asher and Megha and Charles later at the hostel. They showed War of the Worlds on the ferry there, which was funny because they showed Jerry Maguire on the way back- apparently Weesum ferries have a thing for Tom Cruise. Anski, Aubrey and I had a pleasant ride to Tagbilaran. When we got off the boat, we knew we'd picked the right place to come. Already it was gorgeous, and sunny. As soon as we got off there were loads of tour guides. We weren't originally planning on taking a tour, we were just going to go to the hostel. But we knew it would be a while til everyone was meeting us, and the tour was pretty cheap. The tour guide was a really cool guy and we would get our own private car so we could basically do whatever we wanted along the way and skip whatever we didn't want to do. So we went for it and headed to Jojo's car. We sat around his subwoofer, haha. He had a fun mix up hip hop, reggae, and rock that he played on our trip. He was really funny, and he said, "let's rock n roll!" which was pretty awesome. We just drove by the churches and skipped right to the river. The Loboc river is really scenic. It was funny because Jojo knows everyone on such a small island and all the guys were like you are lucky, nice passengers (because we are such hot girls, obviously!). This is also where we held tarsiers, the smallest species of monkey in the world. They were so cute and soft! By the time we arranged our private boat to tour the river, it was pouring. But we didn't mind the rain, it was warm and tropical. We took our boat down to the waterfalls, where we got out and swam underneath. It was warm and lovely. Then we went to this area of clear, colder, greenish blue water where you could feel the water bubbling up from the springs. We swam there a while and children stared at us and played on our boat. The locals stared at us and waved and said hello the whole trip, as a matter of fact. We then rode our boat all the way down the river, as the sky cleared up and the sun came out, it was beautiful. Our driver even let us drive the boat a bit. We ate lunch at a floating restaurant buffet, which was pretty delish- more filipino food and fruit, including the always yummy mini bananas. After that we drove through the dense man-made forest (to prevent soil erosion) to the Chocolate Hills, a weird natural phenomenon of very round hills, so named by an American officer's wife during the occupation because in the summer the grass of the hills turns brown. They sort of look like something from outer space, see my facebook album for pics. We then drove to our final sightseeing spot, a hanging bridge made of bamboo over the river. We stopped by Jojo's house so he could give his wife money on the way. His daughter waved at us shyly, so cute! His house is small like everyone's, with his dogs and Christmas lights. He has been tour guiding for 11 years apparently, crazy. Jojo then drove us to Panglao island to find our hostel. He didn't know where it was, and as we discovered apparently no one really did, it was quite small and unknown. The sun would go down fast, starting at 5:30, we discovered. It was getting to be nighttime by the time we arrived. A German woman owned the hostel, and we headed to our hut, where Asher was already waiting. It was so cool! It had a nice porch and big beds with mosquito nets, just like in a movie or something. We then headed to the beach. The only way to get there was to ride on the back of some guys on motorbikes, 2 passengers on each. Aubrey and I hopped on the back of this guys bike and he zoomed off (on my first motorcycle ride). It was really cool, as we rode the dirt road through the dark and quiet jungle, with a million stars out. We all arrived at the beach, which was a small white sand beach with many seaside restaurants and little shops and bars. We ate dinner on the beach under a palm umbrella, I drank from a buko fruit which was delicious (coconut) and ate shrimp gambas. Then we walked down the beach, literally when you think of tropical paradise it is the Philippines. White sand, tiki torches, coconuts, palm trees, chill little bars with tropical drinks. Anski and I went for a nightswim- the water was so warm and clear! Very salty too. It was sooo nice, dark and quiet and cool. After that we went to a bar right on the beach, it was nice drinking mango and having my toes in the sand. It was sort of a disco, a small one but fun music and lights. After that we grabbed our motorbike rides back home to the hostel. Charles and Megha had made it by then. I don't think the hostel owner liked us very much as more and more of us kept showing up to the hut. But there was plenty of room for all of us, with two cots on the floor and a mosquito repellent. Sunday 11-11-07: We woke up in the morning and set off for Tagbilaran, the only place with an ATM (I had stupidly not gotten enough money) and also to buy our ferry tickets home the following day. We went to a mall, got money, and ate at Jollibee's, a fast food chain very common in the Philippines. It was pretty good, cheap, some Filipino and some more Westernish foods. After that we grabbed a driver (who of course knew Jojo) to take us to Panglao and to his friend who could rent us a boat for the day. We decided to go the island of Balicasag. We took the boat from a gorgeous white beach, sunny and light blue water, just amazing. We rented snorkels and walked to our boat which is the picture on the right at my blog. So surreally beautiful. The boat ride there was amazing, picturesque and relaxing as we zipped toward the island about an hour or so away, tanning (er, burning actually) on the front of the boat and dipping our feet in the warm deep blue water. The island was quite small, and we hopped out of our boat and went snorkeling in the coral reef just offshore. SO AMAZING! I can't even explain, it was like being in an IMAX movie, I saw brain coral and other types and colorful tropical fish, and I found NEMO. The water was quite shallow too so perfect for snorkeling. We swam out to the edge of this cliff, where the reef dropped off to a blue abyss. So so absolutely amazing. Watching the schools of silver fish swim below. After a couple hours of snorkeling, we were hungry. A random lady approached us and said we COULD eat lunch at an expensive resort, or come with her and choose a fresh fish to cook. We decided to go with her. It was basically just a family (or families). She took all of these fish out of a bucket and said we could choose (barricuda, tuna, etc). We chose one and the woman gutted it and cooked it on fire from coconut rinds. In the meantime, the ladies brought out their jewelry of pearls, coconut shells, and so on to sell us. I bargained the hardest I could for some pretty stuff. We got our fish, half grilled and half sweet and sour style. The BEST fish ever. So delish. And we ate right by the water with no company except the locals, got a bottle of coke and fresh fish to share for under $5 US. Pretty fantastic. One cool thing about the whole trip was there were often no tourists around except for us, which felt pretty cool. After that, we snorkeled a bit more and then jumped back on our boat since it was getting dark. A storm sort of passed us over, but as we headed back we saw an incredible double rainbow over the island. Perfection. The sun set on our ride back, pink and purples (lovely, made me actually miss Arizona, we still have the best sunsets in the world, I'm convinced) and as we approached Panglao, there was an incredible lightning storm over the island. Once again I felt like I was in a surreal Van Gogh painting, with the water silver smooth and glassy. The best part may have been approaching Alona beach from the sea, with the glittering tiki torchlights and dark smooth water. What a day. We headed off to find Megha and Charles, who had stayed behind since Megha was still recovering. Just as we were deciding whether or not to go back to the hostel for them, we found them at the internet cafe! Yay! Megha was getting better now too! We went to get food at a nearby restaurant, the Powder Keg, which had a variety of food and of course yum fruit smoothies. We finally had our whole group together, which was fun. It was rainy as we headed back to the hostel to our lovely hut. I sat outside and journaled a bit and watched some rain, so tropical paradise. The others did some poker playing (our latest addiction), but I was tired and sunburned so I headed off to sleep quite nicely under my mosquito netted bed. Monday 11-12-07: The next day I woke pretty early and packed up. We all packed and moved out of our tropical hut and headed to Alona Beach. It was raining by the time we ate, a yummy breakfast of native cacao hot chocolate, pineapple pancakes and an omelette. Once again we had some lovely ridiculous conversation and watched the rain. Some Europeans a bit older than us were playing Uno, things like that make me smile. It was still raining but we decided to not let that stop us. Aubrey and rented kayaks while everyone else snorkeled. I wish I had a waterproof camera, because kayaking was FANTASTIC. We got around to parts of the island more inaccessible by overland. We tried to find a cave, but no luck, just very small crevices. Clear green and blue water, tropical rain...oh, and we found a little cove with boats and fishing nets draped that looked like the set of Lost. Except it was real. Ballin. Then we found a gorgeous resort with amazing buildings, the perfect white beach with a net, hammocks, perfectly cut grass. We turned it back around as it began to rain harder. It was lovely. We found the others, snorkeling. We got out and grabbed a quick meal at Powder Keg again before heading off to the ferry pier (after a minor mix up of meeting Charles and our driver and riding back and forth to our hostel). We barely made our ferry (why are these things always so rushed) but we did, and left Bohol, sadly. We arrived back in Cebu by dark already. We actually had quite a nice dinner at the airport, I had nice fish, mango shake, hot chocolate, and banana split. I managed to spend all my money and we caught our flight. Woo. Exhausted, we got back to Hong Kong at around 12:30. And the next day I studied and took a quiz. Wooo. Overall, gotta be the best vacation ever. Literally tropical paradise. I returned suburned, motorcycle burned- got a really gross burn on my leg- but man. How lucky am I.

The Philippines: Tropical Paradise! (Cebu, Days 1-2)

Thursday, 11-8: So Anski, Megha, Charles, Aubrey and I took a taxi to the airport around 10 ish Thursday night to catch our flight to Cebu, a city in the Philippines (since we didn't really want to go to Manila). We had nowhere to stay and no plans, so we got on the flight and of course immediately began replacing the word "what" with "penis" and learning some new methods of flirting from Anski (another film should follow soonly). It was actually funny because another group of HKUers got the exact same flights to Cebu both there and back. Unfortunately, Megha, who was sick before we came, got much worse and was sick the whole plane ride. We arrived in Cebu at around 3:30 am. The customs form had big red letters that said "DEATH TO DRUG TRAFFICKERS" and of course Anski said, hey guys, let's film a movie where we pretend we have drugs! at customs. NO Anski. It was a bit sketch at the airport at 3 am but we just wanted to find a cheap nice hostel, and after a while we did and went to bed. Friday, 11-9: The next day we woke around 10, since we had gone to bed at like 4 the previous night. Megha was very very ill so Charles had to take her to the hospital. Meantime, Aubrey, Anski and I headed out to explore the city and figure out what to do with our trip. We went to a mall near our hostel and did some research at an internet cafe, and we decided that the best place to go would be the island of Bohol, about an hour and a half away from Cebu City by ferry and with white sand beaches and small islands nearby. We ate at a Middle Eastern restaurant and then decided to explore the city a bit. It's supposedly somewhat touristy, but non-locals were few and far between so it felt pretty local. Everyone speaks English, more than in Hong Kong and better, and most people are very friendly, although people try to rip you off sometimes as anywhere in which you stand out as a tourist. It's a colorful city, dirty, with lots of roosters running around and tons of motorbikes and colorful pick-ups that have seats to be taxis. We ended up at another mall that was quite cheap, and of course at the food court got a fruit smoothie. The smoothies in the Philippines are cheap and of course delicious with fresh fruit. I also decided to try a weird food, hot dog in a waffle, called "American Hot Dog Waffle" haha. It was weird. but not too bad. The t-shirts in the mall had some amusing Engrish, like Anski's new shirt: "be bear, my love" with a teddy bear. After that we headed to the pier to check out the ferry prices for our trip. We ended up buying tickets to Tagbilaran (a city which sounds like it is from Lord of the Rings when Anski says it in her Finnish accent) which is the city on Bohol island. We grabbed some sodas from a little shop by the water. It was really awesome, just this cool little place filled with wooden antiques, many Jesii and religious type things, as well as cats and a chicken in a cage. We sat and overlooked the ocean as the sun came down. That is the life, let me tell you. We headed back to the hostel to meet up Megha and Charles. The hospital luckily was quite decent, however Megha was still quite sick and needed a lot of rest. The rest of us headed to dinner at a little food court by our hostel. We had our first real Filipino food, which is sort of hard to explain what it is, but it's quite good. It was a buffet for pretty cheap, meat in sort of fruity sauce, seafood of course, fried food. After that we went to a bookstore, which had some really funny romance novels. It was crazy because they were half in Filipino and half English, like it would switch back and forth and there would just be random English phrases. We then grabbed dessert at an ice cream place-of course we could not get normal flavors. Aubrey got a purple yam, and I got rose petals-it was good, it tasted like perfume smells. We then headed to the internet cafe to book our hostel, because we had people meeting us we had to book it ahead. The only one on hostelworld was this place which had huts you could stay in, it seemed cool enough so we booked it. After that we headed off to bed since Aubrey, Anski and I were heading off on the Morning ferry.

The Curse of Monkey Mountain: The Movie

The Curse of Monkey Mountain

11-4-07: Last Sunday a group of us, aka Anski, Megha, Juho, Remco, Jeff, Amber, Sammie, and later Thao and Cindy, decided to go to the infamous Monkey Mountain. It's actually some sort of nature park with some other actual name, but it's known for the monkeys that hang around everywhere. So we headed off in the morning and pretty much immediately saw a monkey when we got off the bus. Jeff approached the one-armed monkey, who probably lost his limb from a car, and was going to take a picture when it made an angry face and lunged at him. After that we were more careful around the deceivingly cute monkeys. There are signs everywhere warning people not to feed the monkeys, but there are no rangers or any authority of any kind to enforce rules, so its basically every man for himself. The locals pick up sticks or even bring cattle prods to protect themselves from the crazy monkeys. Sammie was carrying a plastic bag, which a monkey immediately tore out of her hand and grabbed the remains of her muffin. They're quite smart. The craziest part of our adventure though, was when I attempted to take a picture of Amber next to a monkey, and it bit her right as I took the picture! It was so weird...luckily she was wearing a long sleeved shirt, but there were still bite marks and bruising. Anyways, we continued to see monkeys monkeys everywhere, babies and mommies, crazed monkeys, monkey fights, monkeys in trees, etc. After the bridge over the reservoir, though, there weren't really any more. I guess they just hang out toward the front of the park? Well this is when we began to film our epic movie, The Curse of Monkey Mountain. At first we were just fooling around making some random videos and then we decided to make a movie. It was hilarious fun. Especially when we were discussing how to film a scene and a local family would hike past us. It was a fantastic day with my fabulously weird friends. Cindy and Thao joined us later in time to take part in the filming. I will post up the movie in my next post, it's also on facebook! Pretty scary stuff. After that we grabbed some food and headed home. One of the most fun days ever.