Beihai (Guangxi) and Haikou (Hainan)

Oke just some links to pictures for now:

http://picasaweb.google.com/wilcozhou/BeihaiAndHaikou

http://picasaweb.google.de/Kloonemagi/ChinaBeihaiGuangxiUndHainan

Hiking in New Territories (Tai Po)

The day before I went to ocean park, I went on a hiking trip to the new territories. To get there we had to take the MTR to Kowloon Tong, and change to the KCR towards Shenzhen. Then get off at Tai Po Market KCR station and take a bus. We went to the Brides Pool, or at least we wanted to go there, but the taxi driver took us to some other place. Not a real problem, but it was nice if he would just take us to the place we wanted to go. We hiked from our drop off point to the Brides Pool. First we were at the top of the waterfall. We wanted to get down, but there was no way to climb down next to the waterfall. So we continued and found a way around and were finally at the bottom of the waterfall. Being there we of course had to take a swim in the fresh water. Being used to the warm water at the pool in HKUST this was pretty cold. But after getting used to the temperature it was really nice.

There was another waterfall in the area, so after swimming we hiked up to that one. Actually we wanted to swim there too, but some Chinese were having a photo shoot at that waterfall, and as the nice people we are we didn’t disturb them. I took some pictures of the subject though.

Ocean Park

Hi everyone. Didn’t post anything for a long time. Had to do some studying too. But last weekend I went to Ocean Park. (www.oceanpark.com.hk) It’s one of the two theme parks in Hong Kong (The other one is Disney). They had a Halloween party there, so the whole park was dressed up for that. There were a lot of ghost houses, and people dressed up as scary people, and randomly try to scare the visitors. Pretty funny. The ghost houses are a lot more fun than in the Netherlands, because they use real people to scare the guests instead of robots like in NL. But they were still not scary. For entering a ghost house there were queues of around an hour. That was annoying, but the regular rides had practically no queue at all, so for the roller coasters we had to wait no more then five minutes.

Macau

It has been a while since my last post. I was at Macau saturday 15 september. We went there by boat (TurboJet, I didn’t know that Boeing made boats) at 8:10 am. One way tickets were $150. It took about 2 hours to get to Macau because of the bad weather. But I didn’t mind that because we bought economy class tickets, but got seats in the upper class :D. I slept on the boat so I don’t know how the scenery was on the trip, but probably only open sea, so not that interesting. After arrival and going to customs we were finally in Macau. Actually Macau is a pretty small city. We first went downtown to take a look at the historic city center. It was really beautiful. It looked like a village shopping center. We visited some church and a wall, don’t know what the name of it is. At the wall it started to rain, but luckily the Macau museum was next to the wall, so we went to have a look there. It was free entrance that day. At least the sign said it was free that day, but maybe it’s always free and the sign is just there to attract more people. The museum showed the history of Macau.

After we left the museum the rain luckily stopped, so we could continue our journey through the city. We had lunch at a weird restaurant. The food wasn’t bad, but the service was horrible. First we sat down and got dishes we didn’t order. Then we ordered and they forgot half of the order. Strange that they are still in business, must be because of the tourists.

After lunch we went to a park. Here there were only old people sitting on the benches listening to the radio. We sat there to relax for a while and then decided to go to the casino’s. At least the guys were, the girls wanted to do some shopping.

Macau is the casino city in China. Casino’s are forbidden in the rest of China, so a lot of Chinese come here to gamble. The first casino we visited was the Sand. This was a huge casino housed in a gold colored building. We noticed that over 80 percent of the tables were bacarat. The Chinese must love this game. There was also a live show with dancers on stage in the casino. After wandering around we decided to go to another a casino. So we left and went to the Grand Lisboa. The building wasn’t finished yet, but the casino was already open. The building is really impressive. The casino was not as big as the Sand, but still pretty large. I tried some slots there and lost 20$. They have Macau local money there, but one can use HK$ too, so we didn’t chnage any Macau money.

After the Lisboa, it was getting late and we were going for some Portugese dinner. I never had Portugese, but the menu was kind of like French food. I ate a beef steak. It didn’t look so good, but it tasted good.

The international fireworks competition was there, but we missed it, because it was during our dinner. We thought it would start at 10 pm but it started at 9 pm, so we only saw the end of it.

After dinner we went to the Venetian. It is the largest casino of Asia. The building was really large. They have a shopping mall inside, and even water with gondoliers in it. It was as if we were in Venice. In te casino we were playing some roulette, blackjack and some game which I don’t know the name of. You get one card, and the bank gets one card. If you have higher than the bank you win, if you have lower you’ll lose. Won 400$ at the Venetian :D.

Ferries from and to Macau are going the whole night, so we went back at 2:45 am. I don’t have the pictures of Macau yet, because I didn’t bring my cardreader so I have to borrow one to get my pictures on the computer.

Qiang’s Visit

Last week my cousin Qiang and his girlfriend Laura came to Hong Kong. They were here for a week on holyday, and then went back to Beijing. Of course I had to meet up with them because I haven’t seen them in almost a year. We to have dinner together with Veronique, a friend of Laura, to an Indonesian Restaurant called Dirty Duck Diner in Wanchai Hong Kong. The restaurant has a funny name, but the food was great. I never had real Indonesian food, so for all I knew it is the same food as we sell in our restaurant. But it wasn’t. It was a great experience. The only bad thing there was the music. It was some classical Indonesian music, but none of us liked it. We then learned that there was also a terrace on the balcony of the restaurant, so after finishing dinner we went outside to sit there. There was a lounge on the terrace. We sat there and talked a bit, and had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures.

Food @ HKUST

It has been a week since my last Blog post. So it’s time to post a new one. The food here is great. First I’ll tell you about the university canteens. There are canteens on LG7, LG5, LG1 and on 1^st floor. (LG=lower ground, as in lower than the floor where the main entrance of the building is). The first two are the largest. They have all kind of Asian cuisine, like Japanese, Chinese, Thai, etc. The food here is ok, but not really good. There is also a McDonalds on LG5 so we don’t have to go off campus to get western fast food :P. The canteen on LG1 is better. There are two canteens that share the room; one is a Chinese restaurant with half service half self service, and the other sells sandwiches and bread. I like to go to the Chinese restaurant. Then there is the canteen at 1^st floor. This is a western (American) restaurant. They serve western meals. The prices of the canteens are pretty low. You can get a meal for 25-30 dollars.

Next to the canteens, there is also a restaurant on campus. It’s a Chinese restaurant and they have a great assortment of Dim Sum, so it’s nice to have lunch here. Too bad they are popular and if you don’t make a reservation for noon, you can’t get a table. But at noon all the canteens are full too.To get better and more variation in meals you have to go off campus. But I’ll talk about that later.

I’m going to Sai Kung tonight to get dinner. Sai Kung is a fishermen’s village, with lots of seafood restaurants. So I’m curious about that.

Sightseeing

A quick post before school starts. I went sightseeing on Saturday. This was part of the exchange buddy program for undergraduate students. I didn’t participate but we went along anyway. We found out that we were probably the only two postgraduate exchange students in the engineering school. So we just went along with the UG exchange students. First we went to Stanley Market. This was some kind of seaside view. It was a real tourist place, but I didn’t think it was that special. The view there was great, but the view at HKUST is also great, so I kind of got used to that. Here are some pictures taken at Stanley Market. First one is of me alone, and the second one is with one local student and exchange students from Shang Hai.

After that we went to Victoria Peak (太平山頂). It is located on the highest mountain of Hong Kong island and it gives you a great view of the great buildings in Hong Kong, and Victoria Harbor. I’ve heard the view is even better at night, but we went down before it got dark.

We went down on a tram. This tram had a route straight down. It was in a very steep slope. I think it was 45 degrees down. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of this.

At night we were going out to dinner. A regular student from Shang Hai, I forgot his name, took us to a restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui. It is in the south of Kowloon, just across the bay. Here we went to a Chinese restaurant. They had really great food. It was on 北京道一号, or No. 1 Beijing Street on the top floor.

After that we went to the Avenue of the Stars. This is the boulevard in Tsim Sha Tsui. In the road there are tiles made with the names and autograph of famous Hong Kong people. Some of them had the hand print of the persons in them. But the best thing is the view of the Hong Kong Island skyline.

That’s all for today, classes starts tomorrow, I’m getting a sleep now.

First Days in Hong Kong

Ok, I’m in Hong Kong now. The weather is nice here. It’s 30+ degrees Celsius every day, but the humidity is also very high, like 85%.

I flew here with Cathay Pacific Airline, from Frankfurt to Hong Kong. It was a nonstop flight, so it was quite comfortable. The flight took about 11 hours. I only had to wait six hours at Frankfurt airport because I took a train earlier. The NS, the Dutch railways had some problems at the track which I was traveling on and I didn’t want to miss the train. Frankfurt airport is easiest the most boring international airport I’ve been on. There is only one tax free shop and one restaurant/bar after customs.

I arrived on Saturday 25^th of august, where I bought a local GSM card. Mobile phone calls in HK are really cheap. It costs HK$0.20 a minute. Too bad you have to pay to receive calls as well, but it’s only 20 cents or 2 cents in Euros. After that I bought an Octopus card, which is the local public transport payment card. It is a card based on RFID so no contact is needed between the card reader and the Octopus card. You can even use it in a lot of shops. Really convenient, it is what the Dutch wanted with the chipknip I think.

After that I waited for Frank, my fellow student who is also from Eindhoven University of Technology. He took a different flight, and arrived an hour later, so I waited at the airport and drank a fresh mango juice at some juice bar. It was really good this juice, I should try it more often.

Then together with Frank I went to the MTR station at the airport and took the airport express train to Hong Kong central. Here we got a connection to another MTR train to Mong Kok and finally to Diamond Hill MTR station. From here we took a taxi to the HKUST. The driver couldn’t speak English, but we managed to get there.

When we got here and unpacked I noticed I forgot some critical things, like my camera battery charger. Also my laptop battery charger broke down just before I went to Hong Kong, so I had to buy those. I got them at some market place in Mong Kok.

On Monday we had to register to the university, and get our student card. We also looked around campus. The scenery is great. The university is built against a mountain. So there are a lot of lifts. When you take one lift from ground floor to floor 10, there are bridges to other lifts where you’re again at ground floor. This lift will also go to floor 10. Most of the buildings are connected this way. You have to find your way around campus by lift number, because not all floors are completely connected.

In the evening we went out to Lam Kwai Fong. This is the place to be in HK for clubbing. So we went there to take a look. It was a great place to be, lots of bars and clubs. But, it was still a Monday so it was not that crowded. It was better when we got there again on Wednesday. This day we were with a lot of people from HKUST. We had a lot of fun. Only drinks are quite expensive compared to the Netherlands. A beer costs $50, which is a little bit less than 5 Euros.

Tomorrow is the welcome for exchange students, so we’ll go there and have a look. All the students we’ve met so far are Undergraduate exchange students. And their all in business and not in engineering like we are. This is a bit odd, but we’ll see tomorrow when they will separate the engineering, business and science schools.

 I’ve put some pictures of the HKUST, so you can have a look at how it’s like out here.

Wilco’s Blog

Hi everyone,

I’m going to Hong Kong on exchange so I thought I’ll start a Blog. Well I’m still busy arranging everything. Have to book a ticket, arrange a room, choose my courses, and get my visa. So a lot of things to do. I’ll keep you updated.