It's harder to be green in Hong Kong

Yes they recycle. Yes they have recycling bins.
But we often could not find one when we needed one.

Also, it is hard work avoiding the plastic. When we bought takeaway dim sum it came in polystyrene and plastic bags, along with plastic cutlery. Yeah we could have brought our own reuseables, but I didn't want to buy any. So instead we mainly ate in (when we weren't having lovely lunches or dinners with my aunt).

It is also really really hard not to eat meat in Hong Kong. I knew there is a vegetarian eatery in Mong Kok, but I never managed to go there. And all the relatives are meat eaters - so I decided we would just go with the flow rather than make nuisances of ourselves when eating socially. Usually when eating out there is just one vegetable dish on offer - and it's cooked with meat. (Though I will add the food is delicious.)

Though I was pleased to be able to avoid partaking in the shark fin soup, it was unfortunate that this dish was on the menu.

In Taipei, the plastic thing is slightly better in that there is collection of used cardboard. But the main great green thing about Taipei is that you can get great vegetarian and vegan food there (but there are plenty of meat eaters so vegetarian isn't a default option). We had great vegetables and great fake meat (made of tofu), our favourites of the latter being the fake kung pow chicken the the fake sweet and sour pork.

Hong Kong and Taipei - the final episode

Our other leg of the trip took us to Taipei to visit our friend. Because we would be staying with her, it was just for a few days, and I knew we would want respite from sightseeing after a very busy week and a half in Kowloon - I didn't bother to get a map of the place before we went. I did get a book out  of the library and make notes about places to see and things to do though.

It turned out to be a week of food. Our friend does not do walks, so despite living at the edge of national park we didn't get to go there. But we did get to sample a large variety of north-Chinese influenced foods (including dim sum and spicy pork schnitzel); wonderful tropical fruits; and smashing frozen desserts.

Mango ice plus fresh strawberries at Ice Monster

Almond and black sesame with red beans, also at Ice Monster. This sounds like an acquired taste, but it is well worth acquiring!

deep fried bread roll at Celestial Restaurant - the crust is thin and crisp, the insides are a soft cloud of  mmm

The first course of Peking duck (at Celestial Restaurant) - pancakes, duck skin etc. The second course, of duck flesh, arrived soon after but I was too busy eating to take another photo.

On day 3 in Taipei I forgot to look where I was going and sprained my ankle going down some stairs at the National Palace Museum (about ten minutes after going in). I was totally bummed out at missing seeing the contents of the museum but the staff were great about wheeling me off to the infirmary, packing ice around the ankle and so on.

However my ankle was still not up to scratch for the long flights home, so we arranged for wheelchairs and assistance. Wow - flying is a breeze when you are a special needs passenger...

Hong Kong and Taipei - Part 6

I read an article about the Kowloon Walled City before we left for Hong Kong, and I was fascinated by the idea of a lawless, super-crowded city that was still going strong when I was doing my OE (it was only demolished and replaced by a lovely Chinese garden in the early 1990s, and it's now called Kowloon Walled City Park).

What it looked like in 1972. Due to a legal weirdie this piece of land was not overseen by either the British government nor the Chinese one. Unlicensed dentists and doctors did well here, as well as factories and the "legal" businesses that bought from the factories.

What it looks like now.

Days after we left there I continued to be utterly fascinated by this place when it was a bustling mini-metropolis full of people trying to live away from the prying eyes of government officials. There's a book about this place called City of Darkness but it seems to cost around $US200 per copy so I can only hope there's a copy at the public library...

There's some good information about the city and about the book. This is the best site I found.

Hong Kong and Taipei - Part 5

We went to Tai O, a village on the island of Lantau which is famous for it's houses on stilts. Hong Kong's airport, their Disneyland and a whole lot of designer shops are also on this island - but on the opposite end of the island. So Tai O still feels remote.

Apparently a fire in 2000 destroyed many of those houses, so there aren't so many in the traditional design.

The streets are only wide enough for pedestrians but they are still called streets.

This abandoned stilt house is in the traditional shape

Above and below - views from the boat

Hong Kong and Taipei - Part 4

Wong Tai Sin is a big temple complex north east of Shamshuipo. I remember going there with my mum, my bother and my aunt.

It's popular with people wanting to get their fortunes told, and that time the fortune teller told me not to try to have everything my brother has because he is older and bigger than me. I think my mother might have taken that to heart...

This time around I didn't bother with the fortune telling as I wasn't sure my Cantonese is good enough to understand the answer. But we did enjoy the personifications of the 12 Chinese astrological signs, and the lovely Chinese garden that apparently wasn't there last time.

The dragon

The front of the temple gets covered in smoke because of the burning incense - and the cauldron of burning logs.

Hong Kong and Taipei - Part 2

We went to visit a tomb from the Han era. It's in Shek Kip Mei I think. The tomb itself was interesting-ish but the really interesting bit was the exhibition about Hong Kong's earliest government housing. My mum and her siblings lived in one of these - shared a tiny apartment with other families; there was one bathroom shared by all occupants of one level; and some families lived in the corridors.

We went on to visit the last remaining of these buildings, which is now a (pricey) youth hostel with a museum section. This had mock ups of the apartments, as they were originally and over the decades.

My aunt lived in an apartment like this when I first visited as an 8-year-old. The trauma of my experience of a squat toilet at her place has never left me!

One view of the living space/bedroom

And another.

When I find the photo of the kitchen I'll add it here.

Hong Kong and Taipei - Part 3

We went to Ocean Park. It's a lot more over-the-top Disneyland-like than it was last time I was there (about 30 years ago!), but the aquarium is still a fantastic way to see marine life.

Hong Kong and Taipei - Part 1

Happy New Year!
TLM and I just arrived back from visiting our Hong Kong relatives and a dear friend in Taipei. We had a great time, ate lots and saw lots - but it is soooo good to be home again.

Just so you know, I'm not going to be posting about our rellies and friend here, since I don't do the personal blog thing. This is strictly a travel series.

Have a look at our hotel room in Shamshuipo (Kowloon) -

Our room was literally two beds wide, though we had a deep window sill that we used as storage.

That's the view of the toilet/shower, with basin at the foot of one bed.

The view of abroad - from our hotel window.

Yes it was a piddlingly small hotel room - but it was very clean and located really close to the airport bus; fabric shops; Apliu Street flea market; the quirky fashion shops of Cheung Sha Wan and many small eateries. It was also quite close to Shamushuipo MTR station, which is on a central line.

Also, the reception staff a helpful and there is a social space occupying one level of the hotel which is handy for hanging out in the afternoons and evenings while the cleaners are working on your room or for meeting friends. The one thing that would have improved our stay immensely would have been a fridge.

My brother and his family had been in Hong Kong for a week already, and due to fly out a few days later. One of our joint activities was walking around the flower market and the bird garden,

Sorry about the boring photo. It was much more impressive than this!

Most of these birds are "walked" here by their owners, usually in cages. They are left here while the owners take off for tea or shop for live bird food (which I really should have gotten a photo of).

New phone, new excuse for a quilting project

I'm off to Hong Kong soon to visit the cuzzies, and the boy thought he would do me a favour by getting me a tablet so I can continue to do web-related activities without having to peer at a phone screen.

He thought maybe it could take the place of my iPhone 4 while I'm away. So I installed WhatsApp, which is what I've been using to chat to my Hong Kong cuzzies (on the iPhone).

After I did this I had trouble using WhatsApp on the phone, and then found out I wasn't supposed to have the same WhatsApp account on two devices at the same time.

So I uninstalled it from the tablet. When it made no difference to my WhatsApp on the phone, I uninstalled it from the phone and re-installed it.

But I still couldn't get it to work. And that's when I found out that iPhone 4's are too old to be compatible with the recently released latest version of WhatsApp, and you can only longer get it to work on an iPhone 4 if it was already installed at the time the latest WhatsApp version came out.

And that is why I have a new phone.

The new phone is a Samsung. It's larger than my old one and feels slippery and damage-prone.
So I made it a quilted case -

It's a bit soggy

Yes I know it's winter and I shouldn't expect anything different, but - I am getting pretty tired of it raining all the time. It would be nice to have just a few more days of clear, sunny days interspersed among the days and weeks of showers, drizzle and downpours.

I've been waiting for like 4 weeks to pre-wash and line dry the bamboo quilt batting that I bought to make my "real" Tamarack jacket from, as well as the burnt red linen that I'll use for the top layer. (I decided on a mid blue chambray for the inside layer, and that I'll do patch pockets instead of welt pockets because then I can make it completely reversible!)

In more upbeat news, I am taking a week off over the school holidays, so I'll have more chances to do the aforementioned pre-washing and drying, plus cutting, quilting and construction. (If you're a quilter and the idea of line drying bamboo batting sounds like a really bad idea please tell me!) I may even finish it before the end of winter.

And in even more exciting news, I am planning a trip to Hong Kong to see the relatives at the end of the year. The last time I was there was maybe 30 years ago - so I expect it will be even more crowded than it was then. But hopefully there will be more and better public loos than I remember...

Three nights in Roto-vegas

In the second half of our family week 'o' fun, we stayed in a two bedroom, two bathroom motel unit (Ascot on Fenton) that was close to town, the supermarkets and the shopping mall.

 Not that much non-food shopping was done though. The fruits of our shopping labours from this time is limited to:

• one pair of tramping trousers with zip off legs for TLM, to replace the ones she'd paced because they are now too small.
• one iPhone USB recharger because I mistakenly thought the boy was looking after packing the rechargers ("they're only, like, two bucks" he said. No they weren't. They cost 25 freaking dollars).
• A Nintendo DS game for the boy because he finished playing the one he'd brought with him, and he'd foolishly neglected to pack any reading material.

The highlights of our time in Rotorua:

• swimming in the Blue Lake
• walking around Lake Rotorua
• visiting Wai-o-tapu thermal valley
• going up in the gondola and taking the luge down

We did also stop off at Huka Falls on the our first day coming into Rotorua - it was before that guy was arrested for boogey-boarding down the falls.

I'll leave you with a photo of the Champagne Lake...

One night in Turangi

On our way to Auckland we stopped off in Turangi for one night. Our motel (Judges Pool) was just across the road from the Tongarairo River so I had multiple walks along there. At this part of the river it was relatively calm and quite a few people were there sunbathing and swimming.

Unfortunately the long drive didn't do the boy's back any favours (yes I did some driving, but not as much), so he missed out.

Two nights in Onehunga

I haven't seen my elderly aunt in many years so the aim of our summer holiday was to go see her before it becomes impossible. We'd never been there before, but when we found her house and peered through the glass in the door it was pretty obvious that an elderly Chinese lady lived there.

It looked like a much tidier version of my mum's place, plus I could see some chairs that had been covered by a protective layer of plastic. A yellowing photo of her late husband had pride of place on one of the low tables which were otherwise decorated with doilies and Chinese ornaments. The remote was covered in a layer of clingfilm.

Once we were inside I was amused to see that she - like my mum - had a second fridge. It was in the garage, along with an assortment of pots, pans and woks, a cupboard full of dried ingredients and a couple of gas cooker thingies. The sheets on our beds smelled like the parcels we used to get from Hong Kong when I was a child and were decorated with florals on a peach background.

Needless to say we were pretty well fed those days, on pork ribs, soy sauce chicken, stirred green beens, almond cakes, coconut jelly and lashings of Chinese tea.

In case you were wondering,  I didn't get a chance to go to DressMart, which came up at the top of Google's list of things to do in Onehunga.

Holiday weekends wait for no virus - and beware of errant undies

TLM is getting over her second cold of the month - normally for her a cold is done and dusted within a few days with maybe two days off school, but this time around she stayed home for the 4 days before Easter and has only just started easing off on the nasal dribblings.

After demolishing three boxes of tissues and about 5 loo rolls I was worried that there'd be nothing left of our grocery budget by the time she's done.

Then I got her cold, which was also my second cold of the month. (Though lately my colds don't manifestly nasally; it's more a case of terrible headaches and brain fuzz followed by wheezing and coughing. )

But dammit, I'd already booked for our accommodation in Ohakune and would lose my deposit if we cancelled - so we went.

It went swimmingly well actually. TLM, newly introduced to reusable tissues (that is, handkerchiefs),   kept her snots under control and the boy and I didn't feel the urge to pluck dried snots that were stuck on TLM's septum. My own cold has been arrested and I put it down to finishing a whole bottle of lemon, honey and manuka syrup over three days. We went for forest walks, played board games and relaxed with the friends we were holidaying with.

We stayed at the Top Ten Holiday Park there, in a kitchen cabin. That means your cabin has a kitchen (as well as beds, a bedroom and a tv) but you have to use the communal bathroom. Normally it wouldn't appeal but their communal bathroom is actually pretty nice and the showers are amazing.

The only problem with external bathrooms is that when I go there to have a shower I always forget to bring all of the clothes I want to change into post-shower; and I always forget to bring a bag for the dirty clothes. So when I got dressed after my shower I had to tuck my unclean undies into the waistband of my leggings (so I wouldn't have to be seen clutching them in my hands).

Of course I forgot to remove said undies after returning to our cabin - and only remembered after we'd packed all our stuff into the car, the boy had started the car and I was trying to sit down and put my seat belt on.

A respiteful Easter

On Monday morning I got a call from the manager of the rest home - there was a place available for my mother.

So we booked her in for a week of respite care (she's entitled to two weeks funded). It was really short notice, as we had to confirm with them in about 24 hours or else they'd offer the space to someone else on the waiting list.

After the rigmarole of getting mum moved in, her medications list signed and faxed by her doctor, her dietary restrictions discussed and her slippers brought in from home (which had been omitted during the packing), I wondered whether it was going to feel at all like respite for me.

After all, I still had to take her to the podiatrist to get her talons trimmed and to the dentist to get her new false teeth.

But after at the first two stressful days (and the onset of a cold for me), I suddenly felt like this was actually working:

• Because she has no personal telephone (and doesn't know where the communal one is), my mother has not been calling me frequently to remind me of things I already remember. 
• Due to my cold, I'm not expected to visit every day to check on her (neither of us are, but my brother seems to be doing it anyway).
• I'm not having to chase up carers who run late or don't show up at all. This last one is a real serenity-buster.

These (especially the last one), plus the fact that I've made a conscious decision to prioritise sleep this long weekend, mean that I really am feeling rested right now.

Mmmmmm...

On the occasion of my fiftieth birthday...

Astonishingly (and refreshingly), there is no McDonalds on the island of Rarotonga.

If I'd been told this at the beginning of our stay, I would have expected a very un-tourist-y family holiday.

We stayed at the Edgewater, which turned out to be the largest resort on the island. With hundreds of hotel rooms and villas (we stayed in a villa), it probably covered more area and had more inhabitants than Avarua - Rarotonga' downtown. So yeah, it is touristy - but not actually not all that touristy.

Some of the resort's more charming aspects, which made our stay all the more enjoyable, include: the super friendly staff; the very attractive floral prints they wear; the free range chooks that wander about unimpeded looking for tourist-borne snacks; the tropical fish-laden lagoon and the Ika Mata (raw fish marinated in coconut cream).

The boy introduced TLM to snorkelling, which quickly became her favourite daily activity (I myself took a couple of goes to get into snorkelling - breathing through a tube whilst under water freaks me out). TLM's second favourite activity was splashing me in the pool.

I painted my own sarong, TLM and I learned how to make a head garland from the gorgeous array of tropical flowers, and we all learned more than we ever thought we'd want to know about coconuts.

We also took a tour of the sights, on our last day. I was highly amused at the "sights" that we took in - the local hospital, several schools, the Cook Island house of parliament (which looks like a low-income boarding house) and so on. But there were some highlights too - the spot where the seven waka were supposed to have launched, carrying those who would become the New Zealand Maori hundreds of years ago; the beach at Muri; and the interesting but tragic story of a particular church built from huge chunks of coral reef (sacrilege, I know), whose builders died in the hundreds from lime poisoning.

And now we are back home. It's a relatively chilly 17 degrees Celsius but at least it won't be too hot to sleep tonight.

A bach by the sea

We had a lovely time at Waitarere Beach, in a bach (seaside holiday home) big enough for two families of three.

Expecting foul weather, we packed warm clothes, raincoats and enough board games to hold a convention.

But there was plenty of sun, enough to allow trips to the beach itself, walks to the playgound, and outside play on the back lawn. TLM and her friend had a go too.

There were swelter-y moments which convinced me to forget about propriety and just roll up my jeans and sleeves and show the world my manly hiking shoes - just for the sake of getting some airflow about the limbs.

I have no photos, alas. Because we were all there to relax and I was just too relaxed to get out my phone and take any.

I did learn something though. I learned that if I leave my fully-charged phone on for two days without using it at all (except maybe twice to check the time), it will go utterly flat.

Is it that time of year/her life already?

Easter is a couple of months away, but - having looked at a couple of holiday accommodation websites - it seems that a lot of well-organised folk have already decided where they are going for the long Easter weekend.

At first it was looking quite desperate (bringing to mind our last-ditch attempt to book a weekend by the beach last summer, only to end up in a place absolutely miles away and with a terribly uncomfortable bed - though everything else about the place was fine).

But then I realised that it's just the places on one particular website which are all going fast. If I picked a less popular site there seemed to be more availability. So there is hope for fun in the sun with our favourite family-to-holiday-with.

The other thing I've been busy thinking about is the retirement village which my mum wants to move into. She's probably got in mind one of those one-two bedroom independent apartments which pretty much leave the resident up to their own devices (possibly even cooking odorous foods). She was looking at those a couple of years ago and very nearly went ahead (until a chance remark by a total stranger put her off).

What my brother and I have in mind is a serviced bedsit or smaller one-bedroom place which provides main meals and some housework, and is much closer to the communal areas. But they are much, much smaller ( and because they only have a kitchenette, there's no overhead thingy to whisk away the scent of salted fish and other "interesting" smells.)

It doesn't take much, but my mind is all full up with the above...

The colour pinky-purple

We had a lovely long weekend at Castle Point, joined by some friends who are similarly inclined to play boardgames on rainy (or not-so rainy) days.

There was a day of summery sunshine which allowed our respective daughters to frolic in the sea, roll around in the soft grey sand, and run around until they fell over.

This was followed by a day too windy for sea frolics, but it did clear up around 6pm so we went for a second walk up to the lighthouse.

In between, we played lots of board games. One of the games was Lords of Waterdeep, which - when we play at home - I often win.The boy should not have said this out loud though, because for two consecutive evenings I came last. I can only put it down to either performance anxiety, or the fact that TLM was not playing (and therefore not backstabbing her daddy).

I took my knitting with me, a hat. It took far too long for me to finish it, because I was making up some of the instructions myself. It's finished at last though. More details here.

 And I also finished this super-cropped cardigan (just perfect for those days when the top half of your boobies are feeling a little cold, but the lower half is just fine). More details here.

Seems it never rains in southern North Island...

So we are in the midst of a drought which has hit the whole of the North Island, and even where we live which is normally never short of water.

How liberating to be able to hang your clothes up on the line, knowing for certain that they will be nice and dry when I get back from work (and not damp from an unexpected downpour). How nice it would be if we were barbequing types, because we'd be able to organise an outdoor social event knowing we won't end up shelter in a bus stop instead.

But it's a bit difficult to fully enjoy the beautiful sunny weather, because there's a drought on. That means everyone's garden is brown and dusty (unless they've got one of those rain water tanks, or are organised enough to use pre-shower water or grey water on their gardens).  I feel I should be hoping for lots of rain, so that our farmers and growers don't go out of business (since they are apparently the backbone of the NZ economy).

But - hey! At least our local tourism industry is flourishing, because Kiwi families all over the country can go camping - and not have to pack up after 5 days of "unseasonal" rain and gale force winds.

And we are going away too, for part of the Easter holidays...to the beach!