Markus’ Blog

…means exciting times. But also stressful and anxious times. Currently, we are going through the latter. It’s also a bit like playing poker. With a lot of money.

We got another offer today and just put in a counter. Unlike the first offer (the seller just walked away in the end before even an inspection was conducted), this time asking price and offer are quite far apart (and our asking price is already lower). Our realtor is confident, though, that there is room on the buyer’s side to better their offer. We’re sure hoping so.

Now it’s the waiting game. And that’s the most stressful part. Sitting there, waiting, not being able to do anything anymore. Just hoping.

Another showing is scheduled for tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

I didn’t mean to post another weather related rant, but this fact deserves mentioning. Yellowknife in the North West Territories (Canada’s “Great White North”) is actually warmer and sunnier than Vancouver, BC.

Vancouver
Current Conditions: Light Rain, 11 °C
Observed at: Vancouver Int’l Airport
Date: 10:00 AM PDT Monday 9 June 2008

Yellowknife
Current Conditions: Partly Cloudy, 16 °C
Observed at: Yellowknife Airport
Date: 11:00 AM MDT Monday 9 June 2008

Two weeks ago, when we got home from our vacation, I thought summer (or late spring at the very least) had finally arrived. Particularly, since it was so hot the weekend we got back.

Fortunately it cooled off a bit soon thereafter, because that weekend was a little too “warm” for my liking. However, it’s been gradually getting worse and worse ever since. There were a few nice, sunny, warm days, but now it’s back to daily highs of 12°C and rain. — And it’s supposed to stay like that for the whole week.

To be fair, the weather last weekend was good, and it doesn’t look too bad for the next one, either.

Today

Day: Showers. High 15. UV index 3 or moderate.
Night: Cloudy with 60 percent chance of showers. Becoming windy overnight. Low 11.

 

Wednesday

Cloudy with 40 percent chance of showers in the morning. Clearing in the afternoon. Windy. High 18.

 

Thursday

Showers. Low 10. High 14.

 

Friday

Cloudy with 70 percent chance of showers. Low 11. High 14.

 

Saturday

A mix of sun and cloud with 30 percent chance of showers. Low 12. High 16.

 

However, I can’t help but wonder: when, just when will it turn nice for more than a day or two in a row? The weather we are having right now is suitable for October or February, not June.

And no, I am not asking for 35°C heat or anything even close to that.

…and with lots of time to spare. That’s nice. We’ll go for lunch in an hour, hang out in the lounge for a bit and then take the shuttle bus to Kowloon train station. Then, onto the Airport Express and to the airport.

The only thing neither one of us is looking forward to is spending 13 hours on a plane. Yuck! But at least we got decent seats this time, or so we think. Window and isle (no middle seat).

The morning of the last day was spent checking out the Tsing Ma Bridge. A visitor centre and a viewing platform were created to allow visitors easy access to the bridge and to learn about its construction. Unfortunately, one doesn’t get to see as much of the bridge as I was hoping. In fact, the visitor centre allows one to take pictures of the Ting Kau Bridge, not the Tsing Ma span (both bridges are part of the same road, though).

Afterwards, it was off to Aberdeen to take a look at the floating restaurants.

The bus ride back to Kowloon offered some pretty nice views:

Now, it’s time for us to start saying good bye to Hong Kong. We’ll be leaving tomorrow, May 17, at 16:35 local time. We’ll arrive in Vancouver at around 14:00 the same day, i. e. two and a half hours before leaving — the joys of crossing the date-line.

Thursday we spent in Macau. In order to get there, we took the TurboJet ferry from Hong Kong Island. The trip there was a bit bumpy at times and lasted about 70 minutes.

Once there, we first explored Fisherman’s Wharf. Parts of it were cheesy (the amusement park section), parts were nice (the restaurants and stores).

Thereafter, we embarked on a 1-hour long walk to Senado Square — except that we didn’t know it would be 1 hour long and there would be litterally nowhere to stop along the way to have a cool drink and a bit of a rest.

Fortunately, the walk turned out to be worthwhile. The square was quite lovely, and we finally found a place to cool ourselves down with some iced coffee (at Starbucks, no less).

We made our way to St. Paul’s Cathedral and up to the Museu de Macau.

The view from the museum square is quite nice:

Afterwards, it was time for some (window) shopping — we didn’t buy anything, though. Finally, we took the bus back to Fisherman’s Wharf, where we had lovely Portugese dinner.

This great day was concluded by a smooth boat trip back to Hong Kong Island. Conclusion: Macau definitely has a Caribbean touch to it.

We made a trip to the island of Lantau today. To get there, we took a ferry from Hong Kong Island to Mui Wo on Lantau, followed by an adventurous bus ride to Ngong Ping: narrow, winding road with a speed limit of 70 km/h (at least in some spots).

On the bus, the scenery was just flying by.

At our destination, we visited the big Buddha, wandered around, enjoyed the scenery, had vegetarian lunch at the monestary, explored the temple, and generally had a good time.

And, finally, we made our way back by gondola and train. The gondola ride was pretty cool. Awesome views of the landscape and the Buddha, the airport and the sea.

Good stuff. A highly recommended day trip for Hong Kong visitors.

It’s been a few days since my last post, and not surprisingly, we have seen and experienced a few more things since then.

We went shopping, Brigette mainly looking for stuff for herself, and ended up buying two shirts for me. The story of our lives. lol We rode the traditional double-decker tram from Central till almost Shau Kei Wan, making a stop near Happy Valley.

Took a few shots from Causeway Bay over to Kowloon

Rode the tram back and went for Thai food.

We had high tea at the Peninsula Hotel, which was quite lovely, with a few musicians playing. We shopped some more. We admired the night view of Hong Kong Island from Kowloon.

Watched the Symphony of Lights performance (I’ll post a video of it, it was impressive) and finally had dinner at PJ Murphy’s Irish Country Pub on Nathan Road. Interesting experience seeing a pub menu in English/Cantonese with photos of the dishes — presumably, because the translation may not mean all that much without a picture to go with it. It tasted very authentic, though — as much as a Canadian and an Austrian can classify Irish cuisine. lol Bottom line is we liked it and we got home way past our bed time.

Update: Here is the promised Symphony of Lights video:

We started our day by crossing the harbour in a ferry rather than via subway. The wind made the ride fairly “bumpy” (no comparison to crossing Burrard Inlet :-), and the views were impressive.

Then we made our way up to the highest point of Hong Kong today: the Peak. We took the tram up to get there.

The view was of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, although very misty, quite stunning.

The lunch we had up on the Peak was, unfortunately, only mediocre (even though the price for it wasn’t).

After some more window shopping, we made our way on foot back into town. It was a nice walk, but we got a bit more than we bargained for. Not only was the path down quite steep in places, it was also quite long (90+ minutes to get somewhere near civilization again). Our calf muscles are sure going to thank us tomorrow. lol

Two things come to mind: exciting and humid. Exciting, because there’s lots of interesting stuff to see and humid, because it’s, well, freaking warm and humid. Like sit around, do nothing and sweat like crazy humid. — Not that I expected otherwise, but it’s even a little more extreme than I was anticipating.

Here’s one of the side streets off of Nathan Road:

And here’s Hong Kong Island seen from the Avenue of the Stars:

I am looking forward to exploring more of Hong Kong tomorrow!