People Watching at the Beach

Posted by Shelly

I visited Clear Water Bay recently to enjoy a morning at the beach. It took 3 subways and 2 buses to get to this beach in the New Territories. I had a great time people watching. This is some of what I saw.

This gentleman and his yellow ring are all set for a day at the beach. While inflatable rings are very popular, I was surprised also at how many adults were wearing the inflatable arm bands children use when learning to swim.


It is common to see HK people do warm up stretches/exercises before entering the water. This man has to win the prize for most enthusiastic with his rolling stomach crunches. He was like the Energizer Bunny. He just went on and on and on…


This is another example of someone doing their stretching before entering the water. However the added twist here is that this woman obviously does not want her skin to be exposed to the sun (yes she actually entered the ocean in these pants and long shirt). I wonder why she is at the beach instead of at an indoor pool.


There were some cute bathing suits. I call this one Miss Ballerina Butt.


There were also some not so attractive swimming outfits. I have never seen the t-shirt go under the bathing suit before.


The beach was in a very nice bay. To the left you can see 2 sets of shark nets.


These surround all the public beaches in HK. The sign below shows why they are important.

Ho Chi Minh City

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm in the Rex Hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. Shelly was here for a night before heading back to Hong Kong to work. It's been an incredibly convenient location for my work here, and it fulfills a long-time desire of mine.


The Rex is one of the city's most famous hotels. It's been there for over a hundred years, and its roof-top bar was a favorite hangout for war correspondents in the 1960s and 1970s. It occasionally shows bits of its state-owned status (there's a perplexing maze of hallways and elevators and a bar located in a most unlikely spot), but it was comfortable and convenient if a bit cheesy. This crown design was replicated on another lamp in our room and on the bed's headboard, and the room's chairs were shaped like thrones, if thrones were made from wicker.


Most law firms in HCMC are located in the same part of town, so I walked back and forth past the same landmarks time and time again. They're good, photogenic places, and it was a pleasant walk. I really like the post office. I'm left wondering, though, if post offices in the US couldn't be improved by enormous paintings of George Washington hanging in the lobby.



The outside of the building is covered with the names of great scientists, including Ampere, Foucault, Ohm and Benjamin Franklin:


The other landmarks I walked past every day were the Notre Dame cathedral and city hall, with its bronze statue of Ho Chi Minh in the foreground:



That's most of what I saw, but I did find a few other interesting photos in HCMC. Harry Potter came out there the same day it came out everywhere else. By the end of the day, there were bound, photocopied fakes available on the street. The street vendors I talked to were asking US$10 to start. I'm sure I could have talked them down, but I didn't want to buy a counterfeit book and so my heart wasn't in the bargaining.


I took this relatively interesting shot -- it shows how prevalent motorbikes are in Saigon these days -- from one of the offices I visited.


I found this fire hydrant from Alabama that must be 40 years old, although its manufacturer seems to still be in business.


And finally, Colonel Sanders has come to Vietnam, where you start to realize that he bears a striking resemblance to Ho Chi Minh.


Of course, as the saying goes in Vietnam, Harlan Sanders was only a colonel. Ho was president.

Hoi An

Shelly and I have just arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, where we are staying at the famous Rex Hotel. More on that later.

After my excellent Sunday in Hanoi, I spent the rest of my non-working time sound asleep, trying to shake the nasty stomach bacteria I picked up somewhere along the way. (It have been the ice in the lime juice. It could have been the ice in my drink at dinner. It could have been the salad at breakfast. None of those seem particularly likely as they were all at fairly upscale places, but I don't know where else it would have come from. I'm not particularly careful about what I eat when I travel to places like Vietnam, and that's sometimes to my detriment.) It was intense but short-lived, and after sleeping, avoiding the heat and eating bananas, white rice and 7-Up for two days, I arrived in Hoi An for a long weekend with Shelly in pretty good shape.

Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its historic buildings and old houses, and is also well-known for its dozens of tailors and its proximity to China Beach. You might remember the TV show of the same name.


Hoi An is in central Vietnam, not far from Da Nang, which is actually where we flew to to get to Hoi An. The city has only 75,000 people in it, so it's definitely a different pace than Hanoi or HCMC. Shelly shot some great pictures on a bike ride around town and the surrounding countryside.






One of the highlights of our trip to Hoi An was an afternoon at the Red Bridge Cooking School, which is a relaxing 25-minute boat ride outside of town. The chef taught us how to make rice paper, spring rolls, warm squid salad and some great chili eggplant.


At Shelly's urging, I sat in the front row, with her belief that students who sit in the front row get better grades than those who sit in the back. (There might be some truth to that. She got much better grades than I did in college and grad school. Guess where each of us sat?) The chef taught us how to make food decorations, too -- Vietnamese fans out of cucumbers and roses out of tomato peels. It didn't do me much good to sit in the front row.


Shelly, on the other hand, did a great job:


We spent a fair amount of time at the beach, where we hung out at the creatively-named "Restaurant No. 3."

Hanoi

I haven't been to Hanoi since 1995 and, like the rest of the country, the city has changed a lot, but in different ways than Ho Chi Minh, where I stopped last summer on my way back from Cambodia. In HCMC, the city center has really been built up. In Hanoi, much of the city center remains as I remember it, with a few tall buildings thrown in, but the outskirts have been developed. I took the early flight to Hanoi so I could spend the afternoon playing tourist.

While it was hotter in Hanoi than in Hong Kong, it's a much more pleasant place to walk, especially when you're in the old part of the city. Whether you're walking on a broad boulevard or in a narrow street, there are loads of trees shading the sidewalks. There was a very pleasant breeze on Sunday, too, which made the 38 degree heat (100+F) very tolerable.

I started my tour walking around Hanoi's old quarter, where shops are still frequently clustered by what they sell -- a group of fabric stores are on Fabric Street, while rice stores are on Rice Street, for example (with those street names in Vietnamese, of course). Although the street hasn't been renamed, there are also about a dozen laptop stores on the same street, all of which look pretty much like this:


One thing Hanoi doesn't have many of -- at least that I found -- is supermarkets. It does, however, have loads of small shops selling groceries and other goods:


While HCMC's cathedral is more famous, I've always like St. Joseph's Cathedral in Hanoi. It looks positively medieval.


After my walk around the old quarter, I headed for more recent history in a park completely dedicated to Ho Chi Minh. My hot walk took me past Hanoi's citadel, with its iconic flag tower and, across the street, what must be one of only a few statues of Lenin still standing anywhere in the world:



I stopped across from ol' Vladimir Ilyich at the Highlands Coffee shop and had an icy lime juice to cool off. It disappeared so quickly that I had another. I might have one every day that I'm in Vietnam.

A few blocks further on was Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. I didn't stop in to visit because you have to be there quite early in the morning to get in, and you have to be wearing pants and -- did I mention? -- it was quite hot. Plus, I saw Ho in 1995, and I can't imagine he's changed much in the past 12 years. He apparently visits Russia each year for, um, some touch-up work.


Next to the mausoleum is the an area where you can tour Ho's old house and the palace where he lived as president. You can also get a glimpse of several of Ho's cars, which are parked neatly in Ho's garage:


And even better, the exit took me past the back side of the mausoleum, where Ho's cleaners were hard at work polishing the building. I think this will be a long, long job:


I walked back to my hotel via the Temple of Literature and stopped for dinner at a place that's popular on the tourist track because of its combination of good food and its training program to turn street kids into hospitality workers. My last stop after dinner was the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison. Most of it has been turned into condo towers, but the developers also created a small museum, which didn't exist in 1995, so while progress has marched on, the city has managed to keep a small piece of history, too. The museum was closed by the time I got there, so I hope to get back during business hours this week if I can squeeze it in.

Back to Vietnam

I'm heading to Vietnam on Sunday to research a chapter in an upcoming book my employer publishes. It's nothing terribly exciting -- it's a legal directory, after all -- but I am always happy for a reason to visit Vietnam. I'll be working in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, with a long weekend holiday with Shelly in Hoi An in the middle of the trip.

It's Been 10 Years Since the Hong Kong Handover

Last week -- July 1, to be exact -- was the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's handover from the UK to China. It resulted in a nice day of holiday for us, and an interesting walk around a pro-Beijing rally. Here's the news brief I wrote for the magazine I write for, with some of our photos below:

***

Hong Kong
City marks handover’s 10th anniversary

With the People’s Liberation Army parachuting into Happy Valley and fireworks over Victoria Harbour spelling out “Chinese people”, Chinese president Hu Jintao warned Hong Kong residents on the 10th anniversary of the city’s return from Britain that “two systems” cannot be separated from “one country”.

Invoking the name of Deng Xiaoping, who ruled the Communist Party of China until his death in 1997 and negotiated for Hong Kong’s return to China, Hu said that “‘one country’ is the prerequisite of ‘two systems’. ‘One country’ and ‘two systems’ cannot be separated from each other. Still less should they be set against each other.”

Hu’s words of caution reflect China’s concern that a majority of Hong Kong residents don’t identify themselves as being part of mainland China. A June 2007 survey by the University of Hong Kong said that 55% of respondents identify themselves as “Hong Kong citizens” or “Chinese Hong Kong citizens”. Banners at a pro-Beijing event at the Happy Valley Race Course carried messages of China-Hong Kong unity in both Chinese and English.

A pro-democracy march attracted an estimated 23,000 people, though rally organizers claimed a much higher turnout. While many Hong Kong residents have expressed lingering concerns about the lack of democracy – Hong Kong’s chief executive is elected by an 800-member election committee which is largely pro-Beijing – Chinese officials pointed to the march as evidence that Hong Kong’s freedoms have been maintained.

Unlike 1997, British diplomats had no official role in the weekend’s festivities, and consular officials were seated with other members of the diplomatic corps. Foreign secretary David Miliband said, in a printed statement, that his country hopes that “the UK and Hong Kong will further develop [an] already close partnership”.

***

The pro-Beijing rally was held just a five minute walk from our house, and we managed to see the tail end of it -- including the banner at the top of this post -- though not, regrettably, the PLA parachute team. The entertainment included traditional dragon dancers and not-so-traditional marching bands.



I also managed to get my hands on a couple of the flags used at the rally. Aren't I adorable?

Toilet Paper

Posted by Shelly

Toilet paper has regional characteristics – In Hong Kong the toilet paper is all 3-ply and each roll is individually wrapped in plastic. In this land of tiny apartments it is surprising to see that the standard pack size is ten rolls.

Before coming to Hong Kong, I had never considered the sanitation level of my toilet paper. I guess it was something I always took for granted.


Many brands of toilet paper advertise “100% virgin pulp” and “450°C Steam Treatment". Vir Joy also goes as far as print on the packaging what are their acceptable levels of yeast, mold, coliform, staph and pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Vir Joy also advertises that it is “Possibly the ‘Best Deal’ in Town”. With such great advertising, you can see why it is has become our toilet paper of choice.

Junk Mail

Digging through the pile of paper and detritus that is my desk, I came upon this envelope I brought back from Washington just for blogging purposes. (When was I in Washington? Oh, waaay back in December. I've just been waiting for the perfect occasion.)

When I went to Washington in December for the foreign service test, I stayed with my old friend Cliff. By "old" I refer to both his age and the amount of time I've known him. He's lived in his cool old northwest Washington row house for 50 years, and is an incredible source of Washington history. He used to watch President Truman take walks on his lunch hour. The empty lot next to his house was seized by the State Department during the Iranian hostage crisis back in, what, 1979? He's seen a lot, and I always enjoy spending my time in Washington with him.

After their kids grew up and moved out, Cliff and his wife started renting rooms in their home to students, interns and, mostly, scientists who were in town for four or six months. I first lived with him in 1990, shortly after graduating from college when I spent five months in a Capitol Hill internship. (I met him through a friend of a friend of my father, when Dad was spending plenty of his time in Washington as president of a trade association.) I lived with him again a decade later, when I moved from Guam back to the mainland and worked at a different DC trade association.

Imagine my surprise when I saw Cliff at dinner and he handed me an envelope.

"You got some mail today," he said.

I thought that Shelly had been really proactive and had sent me a good luck note or something, so the reality was quite a let down.


"You still get mail here all the time," Cliff said. "If it looks important, I forward it. But most of it, I just throw away."

I get mail there all the time. I haven't lived there in more than five years, which makes me wonder how much junk mail is showing up at our house in Maryland right now, where I have lived within in the past 20 months.

To make matters worse, Discover knows where I am. Now if I could only persuade them to send my bill to Washington, where Cliff could throw it away.

Construction Across the Street

Remember this from my March 29 post?


Well, by the middle of this week, the construction project across the street was nearly finished, and we currently have a lovely mountain view, which we have never really had before. We can see the buses running up and down the road, especially at night when their lights are on.


When we looked out the window today, even the first floor was gone, leaving only piles of rubble behind.


From the looks of things, the building behind the rubble is next to go. It's hard to tell from this photo, but the windows have been removed and the flats are all empty. I'm guessing that means that in six months or so, we'll be losing our mountain view as something bigger than either of the two previous buildings goes up on the combined site.