Three Virtues Restaurant

It's rare to find a vegetarian restaurant that has a bigger menu than Indian vegetarian restaurants. Three Virtues Restaurant, located near the corner of Jordan and Nathan roads in Kowloon, has a traditional Chinese menu, but with only vegetarian components - usually with mushroom or tofu substitues (at least in the items we had). Most items would also pass the vegan test. We went twice, both during dinner, and the place is packed - which is always a good sign with regards to quality. The cost is very reassonable, they have English menus and is at least a very a different take on Chinese food.

Chi Lin Nunnery and Nan Lian Garden

Amongst the skyscrapers and hustle of Hong Kong, the Chi Lin Nunnery is a quiet oasis, easily accessible from the city centre. It has some stunning wooden architecture, with amazing attention to detail. In addition to the shrine rooms, there are a few amazing lotus pools, some very large bonsais and quite a large focus on crystal rocks.

Across the road, the Nan Lian garden, is effectively an extension of the nunnery. It includes a number of focused displays, mostly free, including a presentation of timber architecture, pottery and a rock garden, with amazing landscaping.

There is also a stunning vegetarian restaurant behind a stunning water feature (below). The food is very good, although maybe a bit on the expensive side. The restaurant has limited opening times, but highly recommended.

Breathing Space at the Asia Society

Located next to the British Consulate, the Asia Society, Hong Kong Center is based at an old Royal Military Policy compound. Similar to the British Council, and Goethe Institut, it is an arts and cultural centre showcasing works from across Asia. There are some stunning permanent displays (as well as general architectural features) such as the Buddha and the water ature by the reception.

The centre currently showcases a contemporary art exhibition from Hong Kong focused on living in the city. Like an installation, they range from the obscure and academic to the though provoking and accessible; and the are a few cool tech inspired creations. The installations a across the centre in both outdoor and indoor spaces, some blending in amazingly well with the city itself.

Hong Kong and Kowloon Parks

There are a few free tourist places around Hong Kong, and the two big parks - Hong Kong and Kowloon stand out in terms of their size, the stunning landscaping and some of the freebies - such as the aviaries. 

The landscaping in the Hong Kong aviary is quite impressive, while most of the birds seem to be from the Pacific islands.

There are flamingos at the Kowloon Park!

Both parks have museums also, although we only went in to the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre charting a brief history of Hong Kong in Kowloon Park. Lots of Ming vases around though!

Mahler "Tragic" Symphony

I have seen circular concert halls on YouTube, but today (Saturday) was my first time sitting in one, and specifically behind the orchestra, which also happens to be the cheap seats. Concert tickets, even for the cheap seats were not cheap, but despite this, the hall was almost full. The audience was also quite diverse in terms of age group, with a number of children in attendance.

The concert started with a short 20 minute piece,"swallow harbour", by a young American composer Conrad Tao, in it's debut performance. The notes from the composer mentions that the piece is inspired by the city's jagged skyline - and thus the music is jagged with various short snippets. There isn't really a consistent theme or melody till almost the very end and the performance, to me at least, was not really that pleasant - too experimental and too distorted to make it pleasant and entertaining.

After a short interval, Mahler's 6th Symphony, was the highlight performance. It's the first time I have heard it, and the program notes made it fairly easy to follow the progression. The symphony is said tone Mahler's most personal, inspired by his wife - so it's a bit strange that it explores death and tragedy in its finale; and much of the joyous and passion are wiped out by the finale. 

It was a magnificent performance - and being next to the percussion in this specific performance was a pleasure to watch. The only complaint would be - the sledgehammer in the finale just didn't have the impact described in the notes ... but it still managed to break the box!

St John's Cathedral

Close to the Peak Tram station in Central, St John's Anglican Cathedral has a few stunning stained glass windows in an otherwise plain and bork interior.

Ferries to Macau

There is a surprising volume of ferries to Macau - approximately 7 an hour for most of the day (the ferries effectively run a 24 hour operation). Given that each ferry can take about 250 passengers, it's a lot of people! The route itself is about an hour long (on the slower ferry), fairly cheap (approx HKD 350 return) and quite hassle free. There are higher classes of tickets promising more luxury, but I can't work out the value beyond more privacy.

Hong Kong Maritime Museum

Perched on the edge of Central Pier, the Hing King Maritime Musuem is deceptively small from the outside. Located across three floors, the museum explores Chinese maritime history, the naval roots and history of Hong Kong, and general maritime topics (such as radar, containers, safety, etc). I found the Chinese maritime history most interesting tracing development of saling and marine exploration. There is also a big collection of model ships, ranging from the old to the modern container ships. 

The Big Buddha

In my last visit to the Big Buddha, the weather was cloudy and cold, and the Buddha was enveloped in the mist. Today was a clear day with fairly good visibility, although not good enough to see beyond the airport. 

The Vegetarian Restaurant and Po Lin Monastery

The Po Lin Monastery, located next to the Big Buddha, has a fairly well known vegetarian restaurant. The menu apparently changes regularly, with two set course options of approx 5 items, comprising of soup, spring rolls and some vegetarian mains. The food is quite impressive and very decently priced (given the amount); the highlight being the pumpkin soup on today's menu - a gelatinous, noodle based soup that was very different to the usual smooth butternut/pumpkin soup from South Africa.

Fujiyama Mama

Hong Kong is full of interesting restaurants; perched in the shopping complex at The Peak, with spectacular views of the city, one could just open a normal restaurant. Instead, Fujiyama Mama is themed on Japanese Rock - complete with the memorabilia, looped playback of Japanese rock bands on the sound system and video screens; and great Japanese food. It is expensive - paying the tourist tax - but the food is excellent, and the views are spectacular - so it is worth it!

Walking up to the Peak

The queue at the bottom for the funicular said 90 minutes; and that was not even accounting for the ticket office. So I managed to convince M that we should rather walk. There walk was described in a tripadvisor post as "easy" - the pathways are certainly well marked (mostly as Central Park Trail) and paved; but the incline is not easy. It's about 3.5km walk up a steep incline; the views are spectacular, the path is mostly shaded by the forest, and it was full of birdsong and flowers (could be a time of year thing). It's good exercise - and we did make it up in about 90 mins; so it beat the standing in a queue. The paths are not well lit, so we took the funicular back - and that's only because there was surge pricing on Uber - when we looked earlier; Uber was cheaper than taking a one way trip on the funicular.

The many Gods of Temple Street's Temple

Like Hindu temples, Chinese temples also seem to have a focal main God and a number of different Gods in the same temple. It's difficult to work out which are the Gods, and what are the various consorts etc. but it's fascinating to see one the less.

Above: Coils of insincere hanging from the roof

Below: A number of Gods on the altar

Above: Doesn't look like Bramha, but is very similar 

Back to Hong Kong

I don't often travel back to places I have already been - but there is something compelling about Hong Kong. There is the electronics and the great food; and there aren't too many new tourist places to go to - but it was still compelling. Hopefully, I can squeeze in Macau this time!

Xiaomi Mi Band - The Long Usage Review

There are two amazing features of Xiaomi's Mi Band - it's price of 99 HKD and its battery life of approximately 180 days.I bought mine on my first day in Hong Kong (on 2 March); and have worn it for most of the time since. The band is comfortable, although I would have preferred a band that stretches a bit more. I do take it off before showering - so I can't vouch for its water-wear.

The band has two major functions - step counting (as the general activity monitoring) and sleep monitoring. The step counter, at least when taking steps, is quite accurate. I actually tested in on the 4 odd Km walk around the top of Victoria Peak, and the distance counter was spot on. I am not sure how it works for other activities though - the reading during my bike rides seem a bit low for example.

The sleep counter has been more iffy - it largely gets it right; but I find that it sometimes gets waking up times wrong - especially if I have hit the snooze button a few times :) I do like the view of "deep sleep" and "light sleep"; but can't really vouch for its accuracy! There have been some other weird bugs - like recording sleep activity when I was not sleeping (e.g. watching a movie or reading a book for a long period of time) or not recording sleep activity during a short nap in the afternoon. Since I don't do either of those type of activities frequently, I have only noted a few examples of this occurring.

The software does integrate to Apple Health - though this aspect has been quite buggy in a few different ways:

• Apple Health and Mi Band double counts. If I have my iPhone in my pocket, and walk - Apple Health counts both those steps and those recorded by the band; and instead of correlating it adds these up.
• The sleep tracker in Mi Band is editable (to record more accurately waking time at least). However, edits do not seem to feed through to Apple Health.
• The sleep tracker in Apple Health does not account for "deep sleep" and "light sleep"

When I was in Hong Kong, the Mi Band was great to keep track of how much I actually walked in the city; and there has been a great contrast in the drop off in walking since then. I often miss the 8000 steps default target during the work days -  although this does depend on which office I am based at. The activity tracker has not changed my actual routines - but has made me aware of the level of activity that I have taken. So in that way I suppose, it is quite positive.

Queue for the iPhone

Over 4 months since the launch of the iPhone 6, I was surprised that there was still a line to buy iPhones at the Apple Store in Hong Kong. The system was very efficient - as you enter the line, an attendant takes the model, the number and colour, and then pick up once you get to the front of the queue; and then another attendant to pay.

In comparison, the Xiaomi store (I alsi bought a Xiaomi Redmi2) was almost empty, the Samsung stores were deserted. And this goes for other phone stores also - Apple seems to be the most dominant brand by far. Based on that, I think the spectacular sales numbers for the iPhone will continue for some time to come.

Hong Kong (Street) Markets

It seems that you can buy almost anything on the street markets - food, clothing, electronics, lots of variety in phone cases (and associated accessories), and even gold fish and other things for aquariums. Most of these markets are concentrated around Mong Kok in Kowloon, but there are others. The market stalls seem to run from about 11am to 10pm, at least in the Kowloon markets.

I did do a lot of electronics shopping in Hong Kong, but most of the items were from the electronics shipping malls like Sim City and Golden Computer Arcade. The breadth of variety is amazing, but you do need to know what you want to be able to look for it - it's not necessarily the best place to browse!

The Big Buddha

Built on top of the hill on Lantau Island, the Big Buddha is meant to be visible from afar, and at its base provide amazing views of Lantau. Unfortunately, today was a very cloudy day (it didn't start out that way, and the weather prediction was largely incorrect), and there was very poor visibility. So poor, that it was not possible to see the cable car in front, and only make out the shadows of the cable cars going in the opposite direction.

The hilltop is easiest to reach by the 5.7 Km cable car, which hints at some spectacular views on clear days. On the cloudy day such as today, it provided an eerie, horror film like atmosphere, with no land or cable visible.

The Buddha was built fairly recently (in the late 1980s IIRC), by the Po Lin Buddhist monastery located also on top of the hill. The cable car drops you off at the "village" which is basically a collection of tourist shops.

One of the things I find interesting about Chinese Buddhism is the amalgamation of Chinese and Indian aspects. This is quite well seen in the monastery itself, as well as then approach to the area involving a path guarded by the 12 Divine Generals, some of whom are also gods in Hinduism.

The big Buddha statue is a long walk up steps - and the platform on top features 6 statues of devotees, a small museum (with an amazing panel painting on the life of Buddha on the second floor) and the Buddha itself - surrounded by fog today.

The monastery is also interesting - the new Hall of 10 Thousand Buddhas puts mist rappers to shame on its bling, while there are amazing dragon carvings on the pillars outside the building.

The last part of the area is the "Path of Wisdom", where the Prajnaparamita (Perfect Wisdom) Sutra is engraved on massive logs arranged in the shape of infinity.