The Lamma Getaway

Wowwwwweeeeeeee.

This weekend was absolutely fabulous. It's late, and I have lots of pictures (most of which this page does not have space to hold) so I will not keep you with too many words here.

This was our first stop: delicious coffee beverages at Pacific Coffee Company. This is my Rocky Road Chillino (like a Frappucino). I decided to try something new, and sure enough it was a delicious surprise. Every once in a while I would find a marshmallow with my straw and get really excited. Lauren said I looked like a kid who just got a present.

For lunch, we were supposed to go to this Michelin Star dim sum restaurant. The line for the restaurant was 3 hours long (clearly they earned that star, huh?). We ended up going to a Japanese restaurant instead. This is my tomato based noodle bowl with grilled chicken. A lot of the noodles in Macau are chicken broth based, so this was a welcome change.

After this, we took our new German friend Andrea, who surfed our couch the night before, to her hostel. Staying in Hong Kong is very expensive, and for about $70 a night she got a room in a sketchy area that was about the size of a bed. The toilet and sink were part of the shower. She dropped her stuff and then continued on with us to JCCAC, an art museum/school/studio of sorts sponsored by the Jockey Club of HK. We didn't have enough time to go through all of the art (the building was several storeys high) but here's one of the pieces I was fond of-- a mixture of the modern and the ancient.

After the museum, Andrea departed and we went to the ferry to head out to Lamma Island, our final destination. We met our couch surfing host at the ferry pier. She was a lovely British girl in her late 20s who works in the banking sector of Hong Kong. She had a lovely flat that, although small like all places are in HK, had a couch for me and a fold out bed for Lauren to sleep on. The couch at her place was better than my bed at the apartment and my back was so grateful.

The community of Lamma Island has a lot of ex-pats and westerners, and thus the little shops and restaurants cater accordingly. The place we went for dinner was called the Bookworm Cafe--an organic, vegetarian restaurant. I had a meal of hot tea, baked beans, a bagel, scrambled eggs with avocado and vegetarian ham. During dinner, Claire (our host) talked to us about her experience teaching in China, her childhood growing up in the UK with a father in the Navy, etc. She's quite an interesting person. We went back to her flat and talked the night away. Here's a quote from the cafe:

This morning we slept in, and then Claire got up and made us coffee. I'm telling you, she was an amazing host! (And couchsurfing is also free, btw...) We then set out on our way to hike the island. Lauren and I saw many neat things, but the best part was being in nature and taking in the sound of crickets, the fresh ocean air, and the greenery....plus, we got exercise :) There is a windmill for power on Lamma Island with lots of neat little information about saving energy and such. I finally got to stand at the base of a windmill (which I've only seen on the drive to Chicago in parts of Indiana). This was pretty neat, and it was huge.

We had a late lunch at a Turkish Kabob restaurant before departing back to central Hong Kong. Here is my lamb kebab meal--it was AMAZING...healthy may have been a different story.

Back in downtown Hong Kong, Lauren showed me to the City Super, an upper scale international grocery store in HK. Fortunately my budget left only money for the ferry, or I may have gone broke in the place. They had baked goods, familiar brands, and plenty of other new foods to try...most of you should know by now that new foods (especially healthy ones) REALLY excite me. Grocery stores are a weakness of mine! haha. This is a picture of a Christmas display in the mall where the grocery store was located. I think HK must get far more excited about Christmas than Macau does...we shall see. It's still very early.

We arrived back in Macau with enough time to catch part of the Macau Fringe Festival. The acts we saw included some Indian modern dancing and two Irish guys singing. The Irish guys were fabulous, and I found myself wishing I were in a small cafe sitting and taking them in rather than standing in Senado Square. It also made me think the cafe/coffee shop I may own someday is going to need some Irish bands to play there.

Alright, this kid better get to bed. This weekend was amazing, but I burned plenty of energy too.