Relaxing in Cambodia

I love holidays!! Abi, Anna and I have arrived in Cambodia and have already done a full(ish) day at Angkor Wat temples, explored the Night Markets, have thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful pool at our hotel, and we have even watched the sunrise over the temples!

Cambodia is beautiful. It is green and lush and relaxed and friendly, and we are having an awesome holiday.

It's hard to describe the temples - I guess you have to see them to believe them. They are so big! It's hard to imagine them being built by hand... I've taken heaps of photos but I'm sure there won't be many good ones that actually capture what I tried to. I'll put some on here when I get back to Hong Kong.

I did wonder yesterday if I would ever write any blogs again - I thought I was going to die from hotness. The sun beat me up good and proper and left me a sweaty mess. That's partly why we went back this morning, I just couldn't handle being in the heat any longer. Cambodia is gorgeous and I love it but I would love it even more if we could turn the heat down a notch or two.

Anyway, the pool is calling me.

Happy Easter

This has been the quietest Easter weekend I've ever had! Still good though - it's still holidays so of course it has been good! I've just been hanging out at home doing all the things I like doing while on holidays.



It has been fairly quite here, which is unusual for Hong Kong. I think a lot of people have left town for the weekend, so many of the shops around here were closed. As they should be!



But today there was another out-of-the-blue parade down my street. I can never quite figure out what they are for, as I can't read the signs they are holding. But today's parade was better than the other few I've seen, as it started off with a huge brass band that actually sounded really good!



I think it was very kind of them to combine Easter music and an Anzac Day parade for me, right outside my building!

Anyway I'm off to Cambodia at stupid o'clock tomorrow morning, and now that the final of Junior Masterchef has just finished, I can go and check I have packed everything!

A nice walk in Hong Kong

These are just a couple of photos I took today when walking home from school (catching up on stuff while the school is empty). I always like the walk along the hill where you forget you are in the city, and today I saw my first Hong Kong squirrell! It was very well-behaved and sat very still while I got my camera out. It's pretty rare to see an animal rather than apartment dogs and scrawny cats and cheeky rats. They say you see a lot more when you go out hiking in the New Territories, but since I haven't been hiking, I wouldn't know.

The other photo is of one of the little prayer points dotted along the hill (ok I don't know what they are officially called, but it's where people come to light incense). What a great backdrop!

Rain!

Thought I'd add another quick post - it's raining! I'm sure it was nice and sunny this morning, and all of a sudden it got as dark as night and started pouring down, with thunder and lightening. We haven't had rain like this since the weather cooled down in October or November, so it's a bit of a novelty again. I think this must be the official start of summer! Uh oh, here we go. I can handle the rain, but am NOT looking forward to stinky, hot, muggy weather. Yuck.

Holidays, woo hoo!

It's holidays, and it's about time! That was a long term, and there was so much in it.

We now have 2 fabulous weeks off. I thought about going home for a week but decided I would just stay here and have a big catch up week. I'm going to catch up on reading, cleaning, school work, odd jobs, sewing, shopping, emails etc.

I have a feeling the next term is going to fly by just as fast (it's a bit shorter, only 9 weeks). There'll be lots to do in the library to get ready to move to the new one, and there is a trip to Bangkok and Singapore, and I have lovely friends coming to visit. So it will be nice to start the term having caught up with everything.

In the second week I'm going to Cambodia with 2 friends from school, Anna and Abi. I can't wait for that, and am looking forward to posting something a bit more exciting again!

Mango bites

Ok this might not be new for some people, but it's new for me. Look at the size of these cute little mangoes! They are so little I didn't believe the shop assistant when I asked what they were.

But yes, they are small bite-sized mangoes. There's only a teaspoon full in each half, and delicious!

And no, I don't normally eat fantails with mangoes, I just needed something small to compare the size with.

Raise the Roof

I've just had a night of music! I went to the Raise the Roof Choral Concert, which is where the primary school kids from each ESF school gets together to make a massive choir.

There were 750 kids, and they sounded awesome!! They sang for an hour, and had some fantastic songs. I used my camera to try and record some of the singing to post here, but I've just listened to it and it sounds pretty crappy. I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression.

So here's a photo instead. It's not a very good photo either, but it is of the 750 kids in front of me.

Ching Ming Festival

Today is a public holiday (hooray!). It is called the Ching Ming Festival, where families go to their ancestor's and relative's graves and clean/sweep them. Some people also burn paper money, paper clothes or other paper items today, as they believe the relatives can receive the goods this way. There is high fire danger on the hills today, as many graves are just on a hill and not in a cemetary. They burn their paper offerings but never have any water to put out the fires! It makes the week seem nice and short, especially as yesterday was a CPD (professional development) day and we had no kids at school.

Weekend in Manila

A group of us flew to Manila after school on Friday, to start celebrating Chris C's birthday. What a good weekend we had!

I didn't really think much about what I expected from Manila, so it was a surprise to me that it was probably more unsafe than I had expected. My first clue was when the taxi driver demanded I lock my door as we were passing a couple of army trucks full of men with guns. I hadn't expected that!

Manila is very busy, dirty, full of beggers and electricity wires that look like they could blow up the city at any moment. But it was also really interesting, people were friendly, and we had some great food (I'm still not convinced Chris' fish was any good, although he says it was!).

We did a tour on a horse and cart around all the old Spanish and Portuguese areas which was really interesting. Chris and I were led into a dungeon by a man with a gun, and he locked us down there! Gotta say that did make me a bit nervous.

We had some time by the beautiful pool at the hotel, and found an awesome shopping centre, and the boys all had a great night out at a drag show. So all in all, even though I'm glad I don't live there, it was a great weekend!