One month later!

Kowloon park

Kowloon park

Sky scrapers with style

Mong Kok...just a few people!

Want some fresh fish?

Kowloon park

Street kitchen

More Sky Scrapers

Kowloon park

@ the chinese new years fair

Lots of "orange" trees for good luck, they appear everywhere, on campus in the student halls ect.

In Kowloon park

New Year Decor

Water, lights and sky scrapers

From the top of a shopping mall

A view from of Victoria harbour from RED

Symphony of lights from cocky bar

Wow, time has gone fast....the first few weeks went into exploring the city and getting uni stuff sorted out, at this time I allso had a cold, so every time I wasn't out I just went vertical on the bed. In the end I had to just go to the doctors, which by the way costs only 15 HKD inclueding all the meds, so they gave me a big pile of pills and some cough mediscine, whitch seems to be what they do to everybody!
Some interesting things...when you have buildings as tall as they are here, you really have to get used to waiting for the elevators, seriously you might spend easily five minutes waiting to get into the elevator! This makes you seriously consider walkin up or down the stairs even if your in the 11th floor!

Sunset from my room window

The system for the visually impaired is quite advansed around the city, I only figured it out now after a month of staying here....you don't only have those beeping things close to escilators, but lines and ruff surfices all around: in buildings, stations, on some of the streets and different kinds of surfaces depending weather you have to / can turn or if there is a step! 

The little transport boat

First view of the island

Happy, getting closer to paradise island

And so before I knew it, the chinese new year was here. So after going to see the new year's fair friday evening, we did some last minute shopping on saturday mornig in the shopping district Mong Kok, witch was stuffed...somtimes to the extent that you coulden't really change direction of travel, we escaped the multitude of people the next night to the Philippines for a short five day holiday! So after a whole day of getting ready our flight finally left at 01:35 on sunday, didn't really get any sleep on the plain and arrived at Cebu airport around 4am, where we had a private car and van waiting to pick us up and take us to the resort on Malapascua! So after a three hour jurney on the small roads to the north of Cebu island, btw still had no sleep, we got to do the water crossing witch consisted of three stages. Cince there were no piers so that you could go stright onto the bigger boat, at both ends we had to take a tiny boat to to and from the land!
And so finally after a whole night of travelling we arrived on the island around 9am, where we had people waiting for us to give us a welcome drink and breakfast!

A "big" hut/house of one of the locals

It was a massive change of scene to first fly out of one of the worlsds biggest financial centers filled with scyskrapers to a third world country, where the tallest buildings are 10 storys high and even these are some of the few luxury hotels around, whilst the avarage buildings were only one or two storys high. After this going to a tropical paradise island with dive centers, white beaches and turqoise water!

Leaving Malapascua on a rainy day

White sand on the "main street" of Malapascua

Hmmm, gotta go again....I'll try and write some more soon!
This time there is more pictures than words, enjoy!

Settling in

So today is the day that school starts for most people....but for me it's not quite yet, due to an interesting schedule! So I've got basicily two more days to just hang around, get used to the place and eat great food :P
So far I've been going a little all over the place...on friday we had the orientation, but because there was so much information most of it went in one ear and out the other. So after the orientation and "tour" of the campus we headed out to IKEA with Christoph, Hanna and David, since Christoph and Hanna had only just arrived and we all wanted to get some equipment for our rooms. On the way to Ikea I noticed this weird thing by the MTR escilators, a device making a constant rattling noise...found out that it's a system to help the blind people get around and know where to go! Cleaver I say - can't remember seeing or hearing of anything like it in europe.

Earlier in the week I had agreed to meet up with a family friend, Ben for lunch on saturday. So we went to eat in Crystal Jade in IFC close to Central station, there we had some awsome dumplings and peanut butter noodels - witch were both suprisingly delisious! After lunch went to pick up the five year old son James and whent to Victoria Peak to see a view over the city. Came down on the tram and got back to the halls just in time to get ready for the "exchange students bbq-night". There was supposed to be plenty of food and drink - but run out of both before we had transport to get out from Clearwater Bay at 2200, and it was freezing cold out there! Maybe 7 degrees celcius whith a cold wind - not good!


Anyway since the bbq was a bit of a let down, we decided to go check out the nigtlife in Lan Kwai Fong. Pretty much everything in HK is small, no exeption with the bars and clubs either, so the thing to do seems to be that you get your drink from 7-11 and hang out in the street whilst music blasts out from the tiny clubs on street level. Oh yeah and all the shops / bars ext. don't have doors around here, just an open front. As the last place to explore on saturday, we went to a club called Pi...it was on the 28th floor with really loud music and awsome views.
The highlight of sunday was an Japanese restaurant called Watami, where we went to whith Christoph. We had to wait around maybe 20 minutes to get in, but oh boy was the wait worth it - every single mouthful, from the citrus cola to the double chocolate brownies with ice cream and from the scallops fried in butter to the japanese omelette were all like a lil' bite from heaven sending shivers through my body with pure delight time and time again. And the best part of it all was that it cost only 300 HKD for the both of us, can't wait to go there again :P

That should be all for now....gonna be doing some plans tomorrow for the chinese new year, when we have a whole week with no lessons, thinking about going to the philipines! :D

Helsinki to HK

Ok so here goes, the trip from Helsinki to Hong Kong...
I finally got all my packing done at about 7pm monday evenig waiting egarly for the take off wich was going to be just before midnight. Once aboard the Airbus A340 I found my self surrounded by loud speaking and constantly laughing russians, whitch made it slighlty uneasy to settle in when your acustomed to silence! Unfortunately this continued for pretty much whole of the fligh, sometime between 3am and 6am it was a little quietter since the cabincrew noticed this and asked them to settle down. So I managed to snag a couple of hours sleep during this time and felt supprisingly fresh afterwards! :)
Recently I have heard from many different sources, complaints of how poor the food quality is on flights...but unfortunately I just can't see what all the fuss is about, had a nice dinner of chicken with herbs and rice accompanied with a dark bun and piece of Saher cake for desert! It was more than satisfactory for me, so either I got lucky with the food or then ther's change to the better, on the way?
Anyway landed in HK, a little late from schedule at 15:40 local time, got through immigration nice and quicly and met my exhance buddy's friend Jane, who had come to pick me up from the airport. Got a double decker bus which took us very close to the school and student halls. On the bus ride had a chat with Jane about Hong Kong and Finland and their differences, so the one hour trip went by quite effortlessly.

Once I got registered into the student halls (picture above), we agreed with Jane to meet up a little later to go out and eat  cince we both were hungry, so then I found my room and dumped all my luggage there, filled in a pile of forms and then headed out again to meet Jane, this time she had a friend with her and so we headed out to find some Chinese food. We ended up having some rice soup, with a few snaks (dim sum?) and the girls were quite supprised on how well I could use chopsticks. BTW you can get pretty much any decent meal here for less than 50 HKD, eg a Big Mack burger costs 15HKD and a meal only a little more ~20HKD which is close to 2€! After this they helped me get some shopping done, bed linen and allsorts of basic nesessities (in my room there was only a bed and matress...) wich was nice. Oh yeah the buildings are allso freezing cold this time of the year, since the insulation is very poor and there isn't really any kind of inside heating. I found out the reason for this too today, apparently the building companies have very close links with the power industry and so the insulation is poor and double glazing pretty mutch unheard of....so if it's cold outside its allso cold inside, crazy! I met my room-mate only once I got back from the shopping trip, a french guy called Vincent who's studying something to do with the clothing industry?

So my first impression about HK? It reminds me quite a bit of Bangkok, all the palm trees and other tropical plants, hign buildings with AC fans hangin on the outside by the dosen, busy streets and lots of dark hared short people, oh and of cource the mountanous geography compared to flat Finland. Despite all these differences, I just don't feel any sort of culture shock...but then on the other hand I can't remeber having any great culture shock on any of my travels!? 

Today after waking up from my 16h sleep marathon, met up with a finnish girl Venla who's the only person that I knew somehow, prior to coming over here. She helped me get a HK phone number and a heater for our room. After this we found a awsome sushi restaurant, with one of those convayerbelts where the dishes go round on and once you've eaten all you can/want the waiter comes over and counts the color coded plates...so handy!  Overall assesment: lots of green tropical plants, cheap food, tall buildings, double decker busses....I think I love it allready! :P