Jurong Bird Park

Jurong Bird Park has over 8,000 birds and 600 species including exotic and endangered birds. Sandra, her daughter Julie and I spent 4 hours there today. It was quite impressive! We were even attacked by some Lories, the red and green birds above. They were as bad as pigeons!

Amaryllis Ville

We LOVE our new apartment! It was probably good we had to live in a service apartment for 6 weeks before we moved into our permanent residence because this feels like luxury! We are having fun trying to get it organized. We spent the last 2 days buying extra storage from IKEA, a television, garbage cans and all of the cleaning supplies! It is different doing things here since we do not have a car. We have to take the MRT (metro), bus or taxi wherever we go. So getting settled is going to be a very slow process!

Our rental furniture!

We received our delivery of rental furniture on Saturday! We were very excited to see how it all fit. Our couch will not be ready until the end of the month, the one in the picture is just temporary. There is still a lot to fill in but it is nice not to have to purchase everything! We are finally starting to feel like this is home!

The pools!

The bottom right hand picture is the view from our living room! Dad, you can see the pool!

Master Bedroom

We finally moved into our permanent apartment yesterday, January 15th! We didn't want to put too many pictures of our apartment on the blog yet because it is still a work in progress! All we have so far is our mattress. The couch and the bed frame, the other pieces of furniture in the house, are just on loan! We get some more this weekend but the couch does not come until the end of the month! We will keep posting pictures as we get things! We thought you might like to see our view from the 27th floor! It is so cool!

Living room

South China Morning Post

I just thought you might like to see what was posted in the Hong Kong Morning paper the day after the game! Our small town made the news all the way over here! That is so cool! Go Broncos and way to go Ian Johnson!

HONG KONG

We’re sorry we haven’t been able to update our blog this past week. There was an earth quake in Taiwan just after Christmas that has really messed up the internet connection all over Asia. It is still not great but it is slowly getting better!

To bring you all up to speed, we had a wonderful time in Hong Kong! We stayed with Cecilia (Travis’ coworker), her husband and their incredible 8 year old daughter Chloe. Some of our most memorable moments were spent around the dinner table. Yum! Our first night in HK was spent enjoying Hot Pot at the home of Cecilia’s friends Grace and Mr. Yuen. Hot Pot is very similar to the fondue restaurants many of us are familiar with where meats and vegetables are boiled in a seasoned broth. While Hot Pot is very similar to fondue, our choices of vegetables and meats were very different…sheep uterus anyone? While some selections were a bit exotic for our American taste buds, it was still delicious and Grace and her husband were wonderful to have us all over along with Jonathan (coworker) and Fanny. We laughed all night and it was such a wonderful experience! This was just the first of many more wonderful times spent around the dinner table! Our third night was spent with the same group but this time we decided to go out to eat. We drove 40 minutes outside the city to a seafood market where we could select the seafood of our choice (see above photos). From the market, we drove to dinner where our personally selected seafood was waiting for us and deliciously prepared! It was another wonderful Hong Kong experience! Hope that you enjoy Hong Kong along with us! We’ve tried to include as many pictures as possible to give you a good feel of our time in this amazing city. Be sure to click on the pictures to see the collage closer.

THe Giant Buddha

Saturday, before the wedding, we headed to the Giant Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery. We took a beautiful 25 minute cable car ride through Lantau, a mountainous area in Hong Kong, where the Giant Buddha was hiding. But he couldn’t hide for long because he was enormous! He is 26.4 meters high, weighs 202 tons and is the worlds largest seated Buddha. He is quite awing to see. Once he is in view you can see him from miles away and other than the monastery he is the only thing up in these mountains. The weather was perfect and we both found it nice to be out of a big city for a change. It was a great, relaxing day

The Beautiful Bride

Candy’s wedding is the main reason we decided to make the trip to Hong Kong. Even before we had the offer to move to Singapore we were considering coming over for her wedding. Candy is one of Travis’ coworkers for the past 6 years and she lives in Hong Kong. Her wedding was a wonderful Chinese experience. The wedding festivities started sometime in the afternoon with a traditional game called Mahjong (most similar to our game of dominoes). Since we do not know how to play Mahjong, we did not arrive until almost 8pm but the games were still going strong by the time we arrived!

Throughout the evening, Candy wore four different beautiful dresses (see photos above). Before the wedding, she also wore a traditional red, Chinese wedding dress in the morning and also another western style dress for pictures, neither of which we saw. We ONLY got to see four!! They were all very beautiful and so was she. She looked like a movie star…so much so that Travis almost didn’t recognize her!! In one of the pictures you see Candy with all of her gold jewelry. It is a tradition in China to receive gold in a dowry and also as gifts from guests. It is a sign of wealth, the more the better!

The Peak

On Sunday we spent the day on Hong Kong and Kowloon Islands. We started our day after a wonderful dim sum breakfast with Cecilia, around 11:00am. It was a late night at the wedding the evening before so we took advantage of our time to sleep in! We first headed up to The Peak located on Hong Kong Island. We are staying at Cecilia’s on Kowloon Island so we had to take the 10 minute Star Ferry across to Hong Kong Island. From the peak we could see both islands and the harbor in between. The view was incredible from up at the top. It made us realize how many buildings there actually are in Hong Kong and how beautiful the city really is!

We Really Are in Hong Kong!

Here we are in Hong Kong, I can hardly believe that we were really there! I am still in awe every time we enter another Asian country! It is more amazing in this part of the world than I ever imagined it would be! These pictures of us are all of the things that we saw and did while in HK. They include traveling to the Giant Buddha, going to a Buddhist Temple, seeing the amazing view of the city from The Peak lookout, and Candy's wedding. We really had a wonderful time and will definitely return!