Showing posts with label temple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label temple. Show all posts

Friday, February 24, 2012

Chinese New Year in Hong Kong

This comes a bit late but I figure better late than never, I suppose. Life has been busy as usual and it does take a while before I get the motivation to write on this blog. Without further ado, here are a few things that I did for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.

CNY came as a huge surprise because of how quiet it was. Suddenly, almost everything was closed and the streets were devoid of people - a first. One place that's usually quiet but full of people, however, were the temples.


The statues at Wong Tai Sin temple were decked out in bright red ribbons.


In Macau, the Amah Temple was setting off firecrackers.


A visiting friend and I also braved the HUGE crowds in the Chinese New Year fair/flower market in Victoria Park.



Such colourful plants and flowers!


The Che Kung Temple is a popular destination for CNY. A few Chief Executive candidates went the date before I did.



What to do when you're at the Che Kung Temple during CNY: spin the wheel of fortune and bang the drums to herald the New Year!


For some reason, buying whirligigs is very common around this time. I got a little one though there were big ones as well!


There was also tons of CNY paraphernalia! So cute!


The Mandarin Oriental also heralded the new year with this centrepiece in the cake shop!

Friday, August 13, 2010

Field trip!

Hermes is backkkkk!!! And so are the picat00rs!!! Woot woot!

Today, rather than doing our lesson, our teacher decided that we should go on a field trip to experience Hong Kong culture. I approve.

Our day started with dim sum. Yum...


After dim sum, we were supposed to go to Wong Tai Sin, aka my dad's birthplace. I didn't mind going again but today began with a bout of rain and then the weather became super super sunny, humid and hot. Suki didn't want to be outside at all today and the teacher secretly admitted to Suki that she didn't want to go to Wong Tai Sin anymore either... So after some debating and discussing, we ended up at...


Festival Walk! Remember that mall I decided to check out yesterday? Well, I didn't get a chance to go skating but we did today! It made me so happy. Keina, the little Japanese girl in our class was a bit reluctant and scard at first and our teacher is obviously not Canadian, so she was a bit apprehensive that one of us would go and break our legs or whatnot. The thing is, if she was Canadian, she'd know that falling is a natural part of skating and unless it was some insane collision with another person or a fall from a figure skating move, falling is perfectly harmless. You might get bruised a bit, but you pick yourself up and go on.

Anyways, by the time we finished skating, Keina was reluctant to go and admitted that she had a lot of fun. Woot. It was nice to feel the ice underneath the skate blades since I didn't go skating during the winter. After this skating bit, class was dismissed and now we have to write a composition about the culture of Hong Kong. A vague bs-ing topic that I don't mind writing about.

Anyways, there was a little blip in the day when the teacher mentioned something about low marks. I need to pass this course to get my credit for my program requirement so I could graduate with my degree. I didn't think I was doing too badly in the class but I would never imagine that I could possibly be failing. There's also the fact that the Chinese Language Centre at CUHK has never received any of our compositions or quizzes and our teacher hasn't even given us marks for anything yet. I have no clue what's happening. I was so upset about the possibility of failing that I decided to go to Shatin and find the post office rather than go back to the hostel and mope.

During my journey to the post office, I noticed from afar a set of lovely buildings. And then I saw signs for a temple and all of a sudden, instead of finding the post office, I found a lovely temple on a hill so I decided to go up. I seem to have a knack for finding random cool places and exploring them. I know that if some of my friends were here, they'd tell me to just ignore the place and find the post office but I thought that this spot was too pretty to pass up. Even though it was a rather secluded and quiet area. It's a rather lovely temple, actually. There's a really tall pagoda according to the visitor's map but I didn't find it. If I did, I would've gone up the pagoda. Oh well. Next time...



I had asked directions to the post office before my sojourn at the temple and I was confused because I went in the direction that people were telling me but all I could see was a tall government building and the temple. I decided to go into the government building and lo and behold, the post office was there! I put all 19 postcards in this box:


And then I saw the mailboxes outside. I have no clue if I should or should not have put those postcards in here but I hope you guys get them! Tell me if they actually have that datestamp or not!

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Goin' back to the old man's hood....


Since I came to Hong Kong, I resolved to visit my dad's birthplace: Wong Tai Sin. There's nothing there except for this really lovely temple called the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple. It's Buddhist, Taoist and Confucianist! The gods there are supposedly very apt at granting your wishes but I didn't really think of that. Colourful buildings, gorgeous and immaculate gardens, there was quite a lot to enjoy as everything and I mean EVERYTHING was picturesque there. I thought I was either in a painting or a princess walking around a palace. Since I'm rather tired, I'll let the photos do the talking for me today.