Visiting Cheung Chau Island

The EIGHTH day…

...of the FOURTH month…

...of the LUNAR calendar…

Every year, around Buddha's birthday, Cheung Chau hosts its annual Bun Festival.  This is the time of year when Cheung Chau fills with people in every nook and cranny from the island's tallest cloud to the lowest rock bed.

It's these times when my husband and I decide to make a trip to Cheung Chau a few days before all the festivities begin, which brings me to this week's Cheung Chau focused blogs!

Though we missed out on being smashed between thousands of excited people to view the famous parade of floats…

Though we totally decided to miss out on watching various teams climb to the top of the bun towers…

..we didn't feel too bad because we did get to spend some quality time together on Cheung Chau when there were not a lot of people visiting.  And we also managed to grab a few famous Cheung Chau buns for our ride back to Central.

The most common way to get to Cheung Chau Island is to head to the Central Ferry Piers and hop onto a ferry to Cheung Chau Island.

Once landed on the Island, there are several things that you can do:
1.  Explore the Island on bike

2.  Shop around the main downtown area

3.  Eat amazing foods

4.  Visit the temples

5.  Go for a swim at the beach

6.  Just see what the Island has to offer...

***Some cool things about Cheung Chau***

I love the bun paraphernalia!

I love the old buildings over run with banyan trees.

I love the quiet streets when there is no influx of loads of tourists.

I love the specialty shops.

I love how you can find everything you need at the local shops (from toys to slippers for the beach).

I loved finding this handicrafts boutique especially because I got a lot of wonderful gifts for my family here.  It's called My Arts if you are ever wandering around Cheung Chau and find it, please do check it out!

I love seeing the wall murals that are spotted all around the Island.

I love bumping into interesting and unique properties like the one below.

I love seeing how much this place changes over the year.  There is now a Lock of Love "wall" along one of the main streets that goes towards Tung Wan Beach.

I love the unique things that shops fill themselves with (mah zhong plushies!)

I love how every few steps is a place to find a new snack or a place to shop for interesting souvenirs.  The streets are so compacted with so much eye candy.

I love finding some awesome bargains on beachwear.

I love how you can rent bikes for an hour or for a day.  There is so much of the Island to see and having a bike will help you get out to The Ancient Rock Carving or the Cheung Po Tsai Cave a lot more quickly than by foot.

I also love how rental places now tell you that it is illegal to have someone riding in the back seat of the petty cabs, but people still do it.

And, finally, I love how you can find a peaceful bit of view along the waterfront.  It'll be forever a beautiful sight to me to see boats anchored in the water.  There is something so lovely about this sight.  It sort of reminds me of the boats anchored in the harbors around Seattle, too.  Just a lovely, lovely sight.

If someone out there has the same feeling as me…maybe you have a better way of explaining why this is such a lovely sight!

Hope you enjoyed the photos of us wandering around Cheung Chau Island!

Amazing Find: All Things Hong Kong

This post piggybacks off of my Wednesday post about visiting the Hong Kong Maritime Museum.  When we were walking back from the Central Ferry Piers to the IFC Mall, we stopped to take a look at the All Things Hong Kong Wall.  

This wall has been up for awhile.  

Definitely over a year.

Everytime I see it, I just think of it as quite a novelty, but today, we decided to stop and take a closer look.

It's a really awesome wall to check out things that are thought to be quintessentially Hong Kong.  Like above, egg waffles are one of Hong Kong's signature street foods.  I had my first egg waffle down in Mong Kok and have since found a few places to get them out here in Yuen Long.

When we were walking around checking out the products on the wall, it was fun to see how the brown folding "chairs" (stools) were also quintessentially Hong Kong.  We had bought two when we first moved into our place…thoughts of other people owning these very stools made me feel like I belonged just a bit more to this City than usual.

We slowly listed all the things we'd tried, the wind-dried sausages, the egg tarts, eating dim sum out of bamboo steamers, buying fruit from stands with red market lampshades hanging over them, seeing old men with their bird cages along the Yuen Long waterway…having lived next to one of the pawn shops that still uses the original sign…

If I had been a tourist, I wondered if these things would amaze me even more than that moment of walking around that wall.

QUESTION:  Are these things really what define Hong Kong?

ANSWER:  Definitely not, but it is, like I said, a novelty that is fun to identify Hong Kong with.

I'd started wondering if these products transcended a few generations.  I wondered if my in-laws thought these things were anything special then.  Did they think of these things as anything special now?

My husband definitely told me a few stories about playing with the windup tin toys in his childhood.  We have seen these toys being sold from $30 HKD at the Red Brick House recently and also at the PMQ.  There has, as long as I've lived here, been a revival or nostalgia over things that were Made In Hong Kong.

My favorite bit of nostalgia is over the"red-white-blue" bags, which were used for functional back in the day.  Now, in shops like Gods of Desire, I've seen the "red-white-blue" bags being refashioned into trendy wallets, handbags, and backpacks.

This wall was definitely a conversation starter.

I'd like to hear what other people think about this wall.  What are their first impressions?  What are some lasting impressions?

I think, over the summer, since junk boat season is coming, I'll have more opportunities to ask my friends what they think…as our boats usually launch from the Central Ferry Pier.

Until that time, I'm glad that we stopped to see what the wall had to offer.  The wall doesn't seem as lonely or abandoned to me as it did before…lonely sitting there at the end of the Central Ferry Piers.

Maritime Museum

We were down at the piers the other day and just found it impossible to travel out to one of the outlaying islands.  

There were just too many people in line to head over to Mui Wo.  

There were too many people heading out to Chaung Chau.  

Ping Chau was also forming a line.  

And Lamma is always popular for people to head to.  

So, we turned around and headed towards the TST Ferry terminal before my husband got the brilliant idea to check out the Maritime Museum.  

The Hong Kong Maritime Museum is just next to the TST Ferry Terminal.  It is a privately owned museum, so it doesn't accommodate the Museum Pass, which was fine because the admission fee was only $15 HKD a person.

Hong Kong Maritime Museum Information:

Central Pier No. 9

Hong Kong

Open 

Mondays - Fridays from 9:30 am - 5:30 pm

Saturdays, Sundays, Public Holidays from 10 am - 7 pm

Right now, one of the main exhibits is called Made in Hong Kong:  Our City, Our Stories.

The Made in Hong Kong exhibit is pretty awesome.  It goes through a timeline of when Hong Kong used to be a large exporter of toys, chinaware, and furniture to becoming the financial/service-based epicenter that it is today.  The exhibit also looks at how Hong Kong changed from the time it was a British colony, which is always amazing to see.

Beyond this exhibit the museum carries a great number of galleries and collections.

There was an interactive corner, where people could learn to play Jungle.

One of my favorite parts of the museum was viewing the model ships.  There were model ships in the Carrying People and the Hong Kong Ships and Shipyards exhibits.  There were more, for sure, but those are the two that I remembered.  

Looking at the details is just amazing.  It makes me wonder if I could ever have the patience to put something of a smaller scale and skill level together!

Pictured below, my husband pointed out that there was trade between Hong Kong and Honolulu way back in the day.  It's amazing seeing documents that are this old still intact.

Two other great gallery, in my opinion, were the Maritime Communications and the Navigation and Meteorology galleries.  They had a morse code simulation game that was quite fun to have a go at.  It was also great seeing the instruments used in maritime communications.  It totally gave me a Star Trek or Sea Quest moment turning those knobs and flipping those switches.

One section that I think fit in so incredibly well with the museum was the gallery on conservation of the marine ecosystem.  This actually re-inflated my push to be more of a conscious consumer.  We do recycle, but that shouldn't be enough.

I also thought this gallery was an amazing way to introduce children to the impacts of littering.  There are photos on the back wall of this gallery that show how animals are being hurt by plastics and also emphasizing the fact that we are all able and capable of doing something to prevent these things.

It was another awesome gallery to walk through.

At the lower level of the museum were a lot of the galleries that dealt with the history of Hong Kong's trade (pirates, junk boats, imports/exports).

The things I loved about these galleries were the fact that told stories.  It was a great way to present history.  There were stories of how the pirates would go undercover as friendly vessels and lure ships to them.

Through viewing these galleries it was also awesome to see the attitudes and stereotype of people back in the day.  I mean, there was a poster (pictured below) of a Chinese tea merchant advertising for the United Kingdom Tea Company that made me think of stereotypes of Chinese men being illustrated as "exotic" but in a villainous way, in my opinion.

Again, these galleries were a great way to be reintroduced to a lot of history and started a number of great conversations on how much the world has changed.

Because the Hong Kong Maritime Museum is right on the Central Piers, it is also in quite close proximity to a lot of great Pier foods.

We ended the morning with a late bite at the White Beard Fish N Chips place:  Delicious, fun music, and great location!

Nothing is better than filling your stomach with some good ole fish n chips and a corn dog.

…another great unexpected find in Hong Kong…I totally suggest checking out this museum when in the area!