Dinner with Berkeley friends visiting from US

Meryl-Jane and her boyfriend came to visit Hong Kong these two weeks. We met up for dinner and dessert tonight. I haven't seen her for AGESsss~! Probably since I graduated from Berkeley or some time around then.


She hasn't changed much, still as skinny as ever like a little monkey girl, haha~ (Hey, don't yell at me, Meryl-Jane, should yell at ah Ki instead... u know, he called you that first, remember? hoho...)


The happy couple and I had dinner at a very crowded Shanghainese restaurant in Times Square. (So crowded that they even squeeze in a single person onto our 4 people's table.) I saw a line queuing up for this restaurant every time I walked by, but.... food quality was.... so-so only.... (disappointed)

As my "usual dinner rule" - must have DESSERT after dinner!! (yay!!! Sweets!!!) =D
We then moved base to the HoneyMoon Dessert in World Trade Center. HoneyMoon Dessert, as always, won't disappoint people!~ We ordered a different variety of stuff.

We had

Mango Pancake


Almond milk egg white


Mango soft tofu (flower)

And and and, my first try of :

Tong Bud Luc (sticky rice ball covered with crunchy peanut crisp and sugar mix)


Somebody likes their mango tofu~ =)


And the almond egg white thing was surprisingly yummy too~ (But sweet tofu is still my all-time favorite, haha...)

And guess what - I found out from Meryl-Jane that "somebody" has bought a new car and (half) a new house, hohoho~ So wealthy now, huh, Mr. L? You know what that means... The dinner that you owed me (what? didn't owe me any dinner?!l well.. you DO now!!) hehe~

It's always good to see old friends!! =)


Wish you guys have a great trip for the rest of the days in HK!!!
(And don't shop too much!! Be kind to your two little suitcases!! haha...)

Clear Water Bay Hike

This is a recap of last Saturday hike (I know i know... it's Wed night now... but didn't have time to process and organize all the photos until now!!)

One of my favorite pre-weekend activities is to pick which trail to go hike this weekend. My "Hike of the Week" this time was the Clear Water Bay trail going through Clear Water Bay Country Park, passing by the infamous High Junk Peak, one of the four treacherous peaks in Hong Kong!!

From several of the web posts by hikers who have climbed up the High Junk Peak, I learned that you actually DO have to CLIMB instead of just the normal causal hiking up. I have never done rock climbing before, so this would be fresh and fun!!


Trail begins

The sign supposedly marks the entrance of the trail, but... (for those who knows how to read Chinese... You know what I mean!!)




















The trail started with this seemingly-easy but actually pretty energy-exhausting inclined paved path. The steps looked very shallow, right? But the truth is that the path itself was on a very steep slope, which made a pretty tough start for a long trail, in my opinion~


Nonetheless, I happily embraced the challenge, haha!!!


Mike, you need to hang in there too!! It's just the beginning~


After passing through the paved inclined path, we were on the "real deal" now!! Doesn't this view look like one of those deep forest scenes in an ancient Chinese martial arts story?


The Clear Water Bay trail felt slightly more remote than the trails that we have been to before. Lots of tall weeds on both sides of the trail.


The trail kept going uphill and more uphill. At least it was still "walkable", "hikable" uphill. No hands was needed (just) yet.


Goofy girl with her Vs hand gesture!! Look, we were pretty high up already after 20 minutes.


You could almost see the sea beneath!


Part of the trail was next to a cliff with nothing preventing you from rolling down the hill~ Need to be careful!!


The view was so pretty high up!!


The best thing of hiking is that you can enjoy the amazing view while you are exercising!! Felt like getting extra bonus for burning calories!! Heh...


Climbing High Junk Peak


You can get a glimpse of High Junk Peak from a distance at the early part of the trail.


Being one of the most famous small steep peaks in Hong Kong, it attracts quite a lot of mountain climbers all year long. Just look at how pointed the peak is!!!


If you spot this sign, then you know you are onto the steeper route (there are two) to climb High Junk Peak.



This is the peak we were going to climb!!!


See the narrow, windy path up the peak?! That's where we would be climbing!!


The route was filled with small pebbles. It was quite difficult to balance and avoid sliding while climbing up the steep hill.


Due to Mike's failure to assist, my supposedly "pushing-the-hill-over" snapshot kinda became this --> "dunno-what-this-idiot-is-doing" shot!!!! Thank you SO LITTLE, Mike!!!


Okay, here we go!!! See all those rocks and pebbles? We'd probably need to grab a hold of lots of those when we climbed!!


We didn't take too many pictures while we were climbing up the peak, since it was quite dangerous, and we were busy enough using our hands just to balance ourselves (no hands to take out the camera!!) But Mike did manage to take some precious moments of me trying to "slide" down the hill when we were coming back down.


Mike's special capture of the day-
"Clumsy girl mountain-SLIDING show"

Look~ There was this fearless but (very) clumsy girl trying to walk downhill from the peak.

Take 1 - Still pretending to manage well and be able to balance~


Take 2 - O-oho, needed to make use of hands to help not sliding down.


Take 3 - Oh NO!!!! Was she going to fall? Was she?????!!!
(haha... sorry, the show owner apparently decided to cut the ending!!)


The hill was unexpectedly steep and menacing. We climbed almost all the way up (about 90%). But due to the difficulty of our shoes (I only wore my causal walking shoes and didn't wear any climbing-specialized gear) and also somebody's phobia of height (hmm... cough cough.... I wonder who....) - We didn't go all the way to the peak.

It was a bit disappointing but we both thought was the right decision. It would be A LOT more disappointing if one of us rolls down the hill without any easily-reachable backup rescue force!!! So... we didn't go all the way to the top, but the view at the "near-top" was still VERY strikinging beautiful !!


I actually sat down near the mountain top (with both hands grasping handful of grass nearby to help me balance) and appreciated the view from there!! (Also resting from the strenuous climb too, of coz!!)


Mike was exhausted too!!


Us at the "near-peak". Yeah!!!!


Large and stunning-looking rock clusters near the High Junk Peak top





Finally got down (or more like "slided down"?) safely, just with lots more extra dust on my..... (yea, you guess it. A hint - not at top...)


My "tear-up" look of failing to climb to the very top!!



Mike could care less. "It's time to drink some water," he said.

But I think we did the right thing to abort - At the end of the day, safety is still the MOST important issue!!


Picture Collection Times !!!!!!

Pretty Scenes Collection
I compiled a bunch of pictures capturing the pretty scenes from various high points of this trail. It's a different look from the Jardine Hill hike - Pretty in a different way.


The Three layers : tall green weeds (front), distant grey-ish tall buildings (middle), and shadowy mountains backdrop (very back)


The island in the middle of the sea. Looked so peaceful.


This one is called: "The City Below"


Green bushes & blue water + fresh air... always make me smile after a busy week!!


What is the white thing on the distant mountain top??!! An electricity generator structure??! (I'm just randomly guessing...)


Town by the water front



Close up of the town


Oh my gosh, is that a golf course on that protruding peninsula?


Another golf course, on the mountain top this time?


Forest


Never noticed before that HK has so many little islands and peninsula areas.


The tiny hidden land by the foot of a mountain


Paradise and Hell - this is the Hell side - industrial area on the other side of the mountains


The Paradise side - Clear Water Bay from atop


Mike's "Walking the Path" collection
Mike took some pictures of me walking on this flat path on one of the mountain tops. I kinda like them. I looked like I was mediating while walking or something, haha...





Then back to my silly crazy self ^_^

(To be fair though - when Mike took this one, I was just totally enjoying the amazing view of the hike that I literally started dancing and shouting outloud without expecting somebody to be taking pictures of me at the time!!)


And this one - yea, was just me being plainly silly, haha~


My Plants Collection

petite beautiful pink flowers





Purple-ish reeds Sea




Waving tree leaves in the wind


There are more!!!


Cute baby-green leaves


Reeds by the water


A poem on a stone (apparently was composed by a wild nature-lover)


Finishing the Trail


As usual, lots of stone steps


And as usual, I won't miss my chance to take pictures of each and everyone one of them =) hohoho~ (despite how much Mike complained about how similar they were!!)


Hiking down the narrow path



We discovered this huge bullet-shaped rock on our way down.


It was really cool-looking!!


Stone clusters on the side of the trail~ Very powerful rocks!!


Even Mike couldn't help but paused to appreciate how gripping they were.


Last part of the trail was made of all these stone steps that brought us straight downhill. Crazy!! Mike said his legs hurt after walking down those thousands of steps. (I think somebody is getting old, haha)


Finally - after 3 and a half hours~~~

Our "conquering" look of the Clear Water Bay Trail =)


Someone was seriously hot and thirsty!!~ ;)


On our way walking to the bus station, we passed by a bunch of kite-flyers, mini plane flyers and... NDS players???!!! Hmm.... (puzzled)

Back to the City and....
I usually sweat a lot when I exercise. And I sweat even MORE when I hike continuously for 3+ hours. As you can tell from my pants....

Front


Back

Mike kept making fun of me and my sweaty wet pants the whole time from when we were on the bus to the MTR - "Look!! She pees her pants!!!"
@(*@(*@(*@(*$&#$@^&*%$@(&#*$(@&#*!@##!@


Our Usual After-hiking Routine

haha... OF COZ - Our favorite burger joint - Triple O Burgers!!!


I could totally swallowed two whole burgers by myself at that point!!! haha~
Itadakimasu!!! ^o^