Hong Kong (a little late)

So, in a recent perusal of our photos, I realized I neglected to post any of our Hong Kong photos (besides the explosive New Year's Eve ones) when returned from our Christmas holiday. Being to Australia so completely overshadowed everything else we had ever done... we had, afterall, gone to the bottom of the world and discovered it much to our liking. We couldn't wait to share our koala and kangaroo experiences, the blue skies, and famous skylines. Somehow, in the frenzy, we minimized Hong Kong.

Hong Kong should never be minimized. We very much like Hong Kong and had several lovely days there in route back to Qingdao. Sean spent time perfecting his long exposure shots with the Victoria Harbor offering the perfect nighttime backdrop. We love the smeary look of the boats, and the thousands of lights flahsing across the bay. 

We spent time at a lovely aviary, floated to various destinations on the iconic Star Ferry and visited the Hong Kong museum which was very nice.

So, sorry for the tardiness, but without further ado, I offer you our Hong Kong photos.... just six weeks late. We are afterall the very random Johnsons in China!

Props to Mr. Johnson!

So, in my previous post, I perhaps painted in an unflattering light the care the children receive on Mr. Johnson's watch. I felt instantly guilty of this when I stood in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza in Beijing Friday night on my mobile phone listening to the report: Bea had a fever. 

I had just dined on a delicious can't-get-it-in-Qingdao Mexican meal replete with chunky guacamole and was about to share a glass of red with my friend Rita. I was scheduled to spend the next 48 hours unencumbered of children, in the company of 10 other adult women. We would dine at restaurants where I would not have to ask for a kid’s menu. I would converse without interruption. And… we would be shopping. I was planning a gluttonous weekend of eating, chatting, shopping, and, did I mention, a trip to the spa. By contrast, 600 kilometers away, my husband’s weekend promised to be demanding. 

My guilt increased Saturday morning when, on a subsequent phone call, I discovered that throughout the night Bea had been both feverish and croupy. Anyone who has spent a night, or in all probability many nights, dripping with sweat in a steamy bathroom, or bundled up in the cool night air with a barking baby, knows that coup: a parental right of passage, leaves one worried and tired, and in Mr. Johnson's case without a spouse to take a wee hour shift.

Mr. Johnson successfully navigated the croup, managed to corral three kids and schlep them to the dentist. (Bea's fever subsided by Saturday morning.) He arranged Millie's play date. He invited the ayi for a cooking class: Saint Ayi Lucy taught him how to prepare his favorite Chinese dish... gan bian la jiao (spicy dry fried beans.) And then invited her to stay and eat dinner as our family’s guest. Which leads me to a second confession: the kids had vegetables. I had all but accused my husband of feeding the kids a diet completely filled with carbs, but he arranged a veg!

Sunday morning Mr. Johnson (aka Superman or Mr. Mom) presented an acceptable (though perhaps not coordinated) ensemble, complete with brushed hair and teeth, in our row at fellowship. He showed his further skills by then single-handedly teaching Sunday school we were assigned to team-teach.

When I walked in the door at 5:00 p.m. Sunday night, he had the table set, and the remnants of the cheesy baked mosticioli I had prepared for them in my absence ready to serve. The girls had prepared sweet Welcome Home signs, and by all reports had behaved beautifully. And to top it all off --homemade cinnamon rolls were rising in the oven.

I’m not planning any girls’ trips in the near future. But in case I do, I know I can leave our troops in the capable hands of Mr. Johnson.

 

So... while I was blogging a lament about this Lenten season in our expat life it was my impression that the little girls were playing with Barbies in the playroom and Millie was doing her homework.
 I was half right!

The Very Random Johnsons in China...

Hi... Remember us? We're the Johnsons in China who publish, very randomly, a blog about rather random events in our daily life and adventure while living in China and traveling inside and out of the Middle Kingdom.

Only... now we don't have any big trips planned ... only little ones... Sean's in Beijing for a couple of days this week, and after he returns, tag I'm it and I join a not-so-small group of expat tai tai's on a weekend shopping trip to said capital city while Sean keeps the home fires burning. I always tease him that when I come home from a weekend or day away, the kids, under his watchful care, have dined exclusively from one food group (and I don't mean fruit or veg) and have smeary and/or snotty faces that look like they are planning to audition as extras in a movie set in an impoverished highland hamlet during medieval times.

Life is feeling a little less random, and a bit more mundane. Chalk it up to the global economic crisis, February fog, and the fact that we stored our suitcases last weekend in their proper location. Other than a quick jaunt with the Qingdao girls this weekend to the Dirt Market and other shopping adventures in Beijing, the calendar is empty of travel plans in the near future. The end of our adventure, though not imminent, is plausible. It feels a bit like being on an airplane at the beginning of its decent, or on the Metra as the train begins to slow several kilometers before reaching Union Station. Our China years have been a great and thrilling ride, and I am dreading the announcement, "Ladies and gentleman, thank you for flying with us today, we hope you had a pleasant journey...." 

What our calendar pages do include however, are visits from family, who are braving the crazy long flights, the Beijing airport, and jet lag to come catch a glimpse of what our Asian adventure has entailed. We are grateful for the visitors who are seeking to come (or come back which is the case for all but one of our scheduled guests). We find great consolation in the fact that the moments that we will, as a family, collectively treasure forever in our hearts will be understood by a few handfuls of people who have seen, smelled, tasted and experienced part of our China time too!

 

If you Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em

So where, exactly did you expect to find the Johnson's on Lantern Festival? Holed up in their apartment listening to the windows rattle and car alarms blaring in response to the syncopated booms being blasted throughout their host city?

Oh no! They took a more risky approach, and joined their neighbors outside for the chaos. Dodging the debris from the larger explosives, which rained down on them, they watched the brilliant blasts overhead. And in between, their girls enjoyed incredibly long sparklers ($1.25 for 10 nearly meter long sticks).

And... Big Firecrackers

"Little" Firecrackers

Fireworks Everywhere

Fireworks on Lantern Festival

Lantern Festival

We've reached the end of the 15 days of lunar New Year festival, which culminates in Lantern festival. 

Here's a quick Chinese equation:
Lantern Festival = Fireworks > 4th of July displays

Which of course has made us feel like we're living in Gaza rather than China!! There is no end to the crazy fireworks ... as in the huge kind, the likes of which are displayed at, say the White Sox games, under the supervision of professionals. These are launched at random between concrete apartment buildings, and lit with cigarette lighters. There are also the seemingly more dangerous ones that stay on the ground and sound like rapid sniper fire. While the larger, more brilliant colored ones certainly are beautiful, it seems the ground dwelling pyrotechnics are used simply for their demonstrative loud noise.

The air is hanging with smoke this morning, and there are bits of red paper and larger chunks of debris (that we could hear landing on the tile roof of our six-story apartment building last night following brilliant displays of red, green and white fireworks.)

I've got my I/T guy working on downloading some video clips. The soundtrack of the event is definitely what helps give you a better idea of what we're talking about.

So.... check back soon!

 

Chainsaw Chicken

Saturday night, Sean and I tried a new-to-us Vietnamese restaurant in Hong Kong garden (with very cheap prices) and a Chinese-only menu. 

"We'd like those," we said pointing the order of vietnamese spring rolls on the table next to us, "and a bowl of beef and noodles." We pointed to a picture of beef noodles in the menu. 

"They take a long time," our waitress said.

"Which ones are fast?"

"Zhe ge," She replied, which is the generic and oft used phrase for, 'this one.'

We said we'd take it.

"Hao de," said our super serious fu wu yuan, and quickly snatched up our menus.

"Do you have spicy chicken?" we asked.

"No spicy chicken," she replied, and then irritated that it would take us even longer, proceeded to plunk the menus back on the table. (This woman was serious about getting things done quickly!) Obviously irritated, she began to point out to us, like we were small children, the Chinese characters on the menu, which of course was of little use to us since we don't recognize characters.

"Which one is chicken?" We asked.

She pointed to some more characters. We decided to go with it.

Literally moments later, the beef noodles arrived. Curiously they arrived through the front door. The food apparently was being prepared at a different location.

About this same time, I watched as a raw chicken made an exit from the restaurant to be prepared at the mysterious off-site location.

Thirty minutes later, after we had enjoyed our beef noodles, and rice paper rolls (that were delicious, so we ordered another order), our chicken came back in the front door. (Presuming, of course, that the one I saw go out raw had been ours.

 In China, there are very few utensils required in the kitchen. Basically two, in fact: a meat clever and chopsticks. You can, apparently, prepare just about anything in a Chinese kitchen with these two culinary tools alone.

It is still unsettling to us the way chicken is served... usually hacked up with a meat cleaver into pieces manageable with chopsticks. Sean calls this approach "Chainsaw Chicken," which is an apt name as it truly looks as though the poor fowl has meet with a Stihl chainsaw.

 Though unappetizing to look at, the meat at the funny Vietnamese joint was in fact very juicy and delicious. I carefully prodded around the serving tray, trying to avoid sharp looking bones before I found a surprisingly fleshy piece that I popped in my mouth.

 In a matter of moments a series of thoughts passed through my mind... Why is this roundish and fleshy? and What is the sharp thing poking my lip? “It's the head!” My own head quickly processed, or more precisely, half a head! The sharp thing was of course the beak.

Poor Sean, who was sitting across from me, realized something was amiss, though he couldn’t pinpoint what, as he watching me expel the offending half-a-head-with-the-beak-intact into a napkin and then down nearly all of my beer in a single go.

Sean called for the check. Our speedy waitress got it for us quickly!

 

Alternative Strawberries and Good Ovaries

Perhaps the only thing "alternative" about me is my love for Coldplay (whom i-tunes has informed me falls into this genre) and the fact that I very nearly got my nose pierced in Kuala Lumpur. I was "this close" to adding a little bling before learning that the trendy mall where we were shopping while on holiday didn't do that sort of piercing. I caught the clerk at the jewelry store's drift, and her disapproving glance, and shrugged it off as something I'll have to do next time I'm in a country with sterile equipment and a low rate of hepatitis.

Earlier in our holiday I sat on the beach in Penang with my i-pod, waiting in line for my turn at the beachside Chinese foot massage. Coldplay was crooning in my ears, "It's such a perfect day," and from my vantage point I had to agree that those alternative British boys were spot on. 

The emerald water (which is a nice way of saying the island's water is a little less than pristine at the mouth of the Melacca Straight) was lapping up along the coarse, light colored sand. A barefooted Malay boy of Indian decent was on a horse galloping quickly along the beach front, much to the delight of his client, a chubby Chinese boy who sat behind him in the saddle. Other Chinese tourists were trying their hand at motoring along the same stretch of beach on quads, while the sandy strip was also being shared with shrouded female tourists from Iran accompanied by their bearded spouses. The sun was brilliant. The paragliders who risked the highflying experience were silhouetted against the bright sky. The scream of jet-skies punctuated the environment.

It was the kind of happy frenzy Asia is famous for. There were, to my knowledge, no forms to sign, no fine print to note, and no particular promise of safety... simply adrenaline and the knowledge that a day as warm and gorgeous as this was meant to be enjoyed. 

My particular pleasure was found in the beachside foot massage. Under an unpresumptuous black awning stretched across three surprisingly comfortable massage tables, I brushed the sand from my feet before retiring to the terry-cloth covered bed and surrendering my feet for scrutiny and massage. Chinese medicine has so many strange and fascinating facets, but for me foot massage tops the list. From the tips of my toes and the balls of my feet the practitioner suggested: I don't drink enough water, I don't get enough rest and have no problems with my liver or ovaries. You can image that this was a great relief to me, as certainly I came to the beachside for a consult on my internal organs! 

Their hands are magical however, and worth the weird and sometimes accurate predictions they offered. This guy, for example described where I get headaches (front left) and the accompanying neck pain on the opposite side (I call them my chopstick headaches, because it literally feels like a bamboo chopstick is skewered on an angle through my head. I only get these headaches rarely, like on the occasions that I really do not get enough sleep and when I'm jetlagged.)

The next afternoon, we checked the girls into the fab Kids Adventure Zone, and Sean joined me under the black tarp (which is the same kind they use at greenhouses in China to grow fruits, like strawberries, outside of their normal season.) 

We opted on the second day for the one-hour full body massages, which were given simultaneously. 

"Your ovaries are very good!" my guy announced. (Again, he found this from the bottom of my feet.)

 "Your reproductive organs are very good," announced Sean's guy. "90 percent chance of a boy next time!" 

"I'm going to need a little more than that!" Sean replied. He was used to the harassment. Already in Little India he had been cajoled by Indian-Malays who suggested, "Next year a boy," while he walked down the streets with his trio of girls. He got good at their game, quickly saying that they were not to worry when they raised three curry stained fingers, "Next year is a boy," he told them reassuringly with a wink.

We're certainly pleased to have reached the "no-more-diaperbag" stage of parenting. We're quite enjoying the ages and stages of our girls these days. They are increasingly mobile, allowing us to be so too. Before we know it, it could be they who seek weird body piercing!

They were sitting
They were sitting
In the strawberry swing
Every moment was so precious...

Cold, cold water
Bring me round
Now my feet
Won't touch the ground
Cold, cold water
What ya say? 
It's such
It's such a perfect day
It's such a perfect day

 

@ the Shangri-La in Penang

More of G-Town

An Armful of Bangles

Our girlies are urban warrior princesses... they have hiked the streets of KL at the height of Hari Raya frenzy, joined the masses for New Year's Eve in Hong Kong, and most recently toured, on foot, the vibrant Little India neighborhood and the pulsating Chinese district of Georgetown on the predominately Chinese island of Penang on Chinese New Year's Day. (There is no crowded area they can not handle after living in the most populated country on the planet.)

Still, it took a little coaxing to keep them going. An armful of bangles each was the bribe. They went for it! (They also collected more sticker jewelry for their arms and foreheads along the lines of what Eliza wore with her Halloween costume.) Across the street from the bangle shop we found a new Bollywood CD and a pirated copy of BOLT for $5 (which is 5x the price we pay in China!)

 

Georgetown's Little India

A trishaw driver hailing passengers

 (in most countries it's quite the other way!)

Loads of Tourists in Trishaws (bicycle rickshaws)

The girls pose in their neclaces with the flower vendor

The vendor's spouse and business partner.

I really think constant exposure to flowers
might be a great profession!

Some of their handywork

Sri Maha Mariamman Temple

We made a pitstop along the street where the flower vendors hawk their fragrant creations to Hindu and Buddhist devotees. While we sipped our Gingerbeers and cold water, we watched tourists flooding this popular Hindu temple. I saw a pair of Chinese tourists enter. "They didn't take off their shoes," I noted. Very quickly the temple officials noted as well, and shooed them out the door to remove their footware before entering again. There were load of rubber flip-flops, sandals and other shoes littering the area in from of the on-the-street temple (which lacks a front courtyard area.) Millie wondered if shoes ever get stolen. But we guessed that would sort of betray the goodness they hope to propagate.

A very tired Eliza 

 too hot and sleepy to eat her favorite Indian food:Naan

The Set Lunch Special

Garlic Naan with Tandoori Chicken & Dahl

It retailed for about $2.50

The bustling streets of Little India

Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia

More of the E & O

Yeah... the guys at the front door are wearing pith helmets... and knee socks with short pants. I had read about the pith helmets in the Lonely Planet guide, but still found them remarkably like something out of a Rudyard Kipling story (did I mention that Rudyard himself was once a guest of the E & O?)

When we arrived, we sat in the foyer sipping our welcome drinks and toweling off our sweaty necks with cold, lavender scented cloths. Slowly, discretely, I slipped the coaster out from under my drink and into my purse. Not so discretely apparently, as Sean smirked and said, " I knew you were going to do that!"

This place was right up my alley... I loved the marriage of Anglo-Indian architecture with Chinese inspired decor (the population on the island of Penang is more than half of Chinese decent.) I loved the telephone @ the reception desk, and the old tableware @ breakfast with the timeless E & O logo. I loved the idea of stepping back in time, and in Georgetown it is in some ways possible since they have somehow moved slowly into the 20th and 21st centuries without loosing all evidence of their colonial roots. 

Who cares if the hallways are loud echo chambers with hundred-year-old hardwood floors, that the screen less windows lack soundproofing, or that the plaster walls, in some parts, were showing their age? (My husband, for one, cared... he found the place quaint if not a bit itchy... but the girls jumped hook, line and sinker on the bandwagon with Mom!)

 

Check it out @ www.e-o-hotel.com