Lychee! Addendum

Perhaps I spoke too soon! Today we checked another fruit stand and found two completely different varieties of lychee...

The species on the left is unknown, though the spiked skin is very reminiscent of a species called "osmanthus taste". The one on the right was labeled "rice lychee" (which is rather oxymoronic, given how huge they are). Both were quite sweet and neither were as earthy as last night's Species B. The "rice" meat wasn't as firm as the osmanthus-like meat, but that could have more to do with ripeness than the species.

Lychee is typically sold in big bunches, like this...

...and, because they are ball-shaped, Fui Fui goes crazy for them...

Lychee!

For some time I've been meaning to write a piece for the blog that compares the various species of lychee that are available here (at least, when they are in season, which is generally June and July). The problem is, the various species are available at different times, so it is very hard to do an all-encompassing side-by-side comparison. And now, unfortunately, we are in the final days of the season, so my time has nearly run out.

Since you can still find them at a handful of fruit stands, though, I thought I'd at least show you two different species...

I've learned the specific names of three species, but these two aren't amongst that set, and the fruit stands where we bought them didn't label them (or didn't label them correctly, in one case). I'll just call the on on the left "Species A" and the one on the right "Species B". ;>

Species can differ in quite a few ways: taste, skin color, skin texture, meat color, meat texture, seed size, overall size, etc. Both of these species were generally large and had large seeds, but they were slightly different in every other aspect. In particular, Species B had a rather earthy flavor (which Carson likened to carrots when he visited last year). Species A, however, wasn't earthy at all and even tasted like it was infused with rose water. Mighty nice.

Next year I'll see if I can be a little more comprehensive with my lychee display, but hopefully this will tide you over.

A trip to Ocean Park

Even after living here for over a year and a half, there are countless interesting places I still haven't seen. In an effort to help us prioritize them, I keep a kind of "Top 10 As-Yet-Unvisited Locations" list and, yesterday, we traveled to the south side of Hong Kong island to scratch off a biggie: Ocean Park.





It is Hong Kong's original theme park, opening in 1977, and aquatic adventures are the focus (as the name implies)...

From an entertainment perspective, Ocean Park is one part zoo (live animal exhibits), one part amusement park (roller coasters and scheduled performances), and one part carnival (test-of-skill kiosks with stuffed animal prizes). Its closest contemporary is probably the SeaWorld chain, though Ocean Park seems to place much more emphasis on marine life conservation, education, and research.

Its only real competitor in Hong Kong is the relatively new Hong Kong Disneyland (which opened in 2005 and is also on my to-do list). HK Disney is actually less than half the size of Ocean Park, though, and Ocean Park firmly remains the more popular of the two.

Ocean Park might be ~7000 miles from all the other theme parks I've been to, but anyone who has visited a theme park knows that they all have one thing in common...

...long lines! It took us about a half hour to buy our tickets and get inside, and this was on a day where the "real feel" temperature was 115༠F, so these customers were dedicated. (I had hoped that the high heat would keep folks away, but this is peak season, so I was delusional. ;>)

Once we were in, though, the lines really weren't all that bad. Most were 10 minutes or less, which is nothing compared to the hour+ waits I seem to remember us enduring at Universal Studios Orlando. The only attractions that seemed to take longer were those that hoisted you high in the air (the cable car, the giant hot air balloon, the sky needle, etc). Of those, we only chose to experience the cable car...

All aboard!

Heading up the mountain (note the iconic seahorse landscaped into its side)

(Don't worry that we voluntarily missed something - we actually bought a come-as-many-times-as-you-want year-long pass for the price of 2.5 adult tickets. We'll make sure to come back multiple times, focusing on different sections of the park that eluded us this time.)

The cable car, I must say, is awesome. It connects the upper and lower portions of the park and skirts along the eastern side of the peninsula that Ocean Park is built upon, affording a fantastic sea view...

Gazing across Deep Water Bay, beyond Middle Island, out to the Pacific Ocean

It also gives you a great look at the lower portion of the park...

The park is undergoing a large expansion and you can see some of that construction

We had a car all to ourselves...

...which was fortunate, because had we been separated, we would have been tempted to break a cardinal rule...

Something must have happened to cause them to post this!

There's one area where the park oddly veers from the watery theme: its giant panda exhibits. We passed through them while the big boys were snoozing, but found one of them to be quite interesting...

Pandas are native to the mountains of Sichuan, which are pretty much the opposite of Hong Kong in terms of climate. The air in the panda environments was kept quite cool, but not cool enough for these fellas - they still needed ice-encrusted boulders to get a good night's rest.

As you can probably imagine, the park held a lot of interesting marine life (especially in the giant aquarium), but I'll share just one friendly face spied in the goldfish exhibit...

Aww! So cute!

Neither of us are very interested in thrill rides, so I'm afraid I don't have any pictures of those to show you. The only one we went on involved large trampolines with bungee harnesses (allowing you to use your own momentum to jump at least 20 feet into the air). Very cool, but since we both did it at the same time, I don't actually have pictures of it. Perhaps I'll get one next time.

A note about the food: there were a number of overpriced restaurants (as one would expect) which mostly seemed to serve standard Chinese dishes. The pathways, however, were lined with snack stands of all sorts. I'd say ice cream and snowcones were the most popular foods, we saw people toting around, but they also served subs, pizza, burgers, and even...

Fried chicken!

I'm not exactly sure why, but the fried chicken really surprised me. I suppose (1) I don't think of it as theme park food and (2) I definitely don't think of it as Chinese theme park food. Still, KFC is very popular in Hong Kong, so it's not like the concept is alien here.

We had a wonderful time at Ocean Park and it will most certainly move off my to-do list and on to my Hong-Kong-favorites list!

Witnessing a solar eclipse...

The moon's penumbra fell over Hong Kong during this morning's solar eclipse, so we were able to see a partial obstruction of the sun! Well, "see" is perhaps an exaggeration. Looking directly at an eclipse can burn out your retinas, so we certainly didn't do that. We also discovered that the sun is so bright that partial eclipses can be completely blotted out to the point of imperceptibility. For example, this photo was taken at the peak of Hong Kong's view of the eclipse...

Doesn't look very eclipsed, does it? The sun's light just floods right around the moon and, by the time the camera sees it, it's as if the moon wasn't even there.

In an attempt to combat this effect, I dialed down the amount of light allowed to enter the camera (by increasing the shutter speed to its maximum, closing the apature to its minimum, and reducing the ISO to its minimum). This resulted in some very interesting sky photography...

...but still no sign of the moon. Just as I was about to give up, a wispy cloud passed infront of the sun and, for only a few seconds, dropped the amount of light enough for the eclipse to be visible. In that time, I was able to snap two shots...


Once the clouds passed, they never came back before the eclipse ended, so those were my last shots. I feel very fortunate to have captured what I did!

Pringles Fusion?

I thought I'd show you something that made me double-take while shopping yesterday...

Now let me just say that I'm completely an original Pringles man. Always have been. But I couldn't resist picking up "Thai Basil and Garlic Italiano" and "Tandoori Chicken" (they were the only two "Fusion" flavors I found).

Thai on the left, Tandoori on the right

It may not be so obvious in the picture, but the first thing you notice about these is that they are significantly smaller than your average Pringle. I'd say at least 30% smaller. The "Thai Basil and Garlic Italiano" is slightly spicy (from the garlic, I suppose) and definitely has a hint of dried basil. The "Tandoori Chicken" is the real winner, though, with strong Indian-iconic flavors of turmeric, coriander, and cumin. They are both enjoyable, but they have not seduced me away from original Pringles. Fear not.

...but I'm not so sure about Fui Fui. We are very careful about what we feed him, but once in a blue moon we let him try a taste of something outside of his normal diet. (Most of the time he just curiously sniffs whatever it is and then walks away, disinterested.) While I was trying the Pringles out today he was going crazy: licking his chops, circling like a buzzard around my chair, pleading with trill-filled meows, putting his paws on my leg, etc. Feeling sympathy for his Pringle-deprived life, Katherine and I relented...

"Ooh. Tandoori Chicken Pringles smell nice."

"Just one taste won't hurt."

"I'll just see if I can fit my mouth around it. You know, as a test."

"Once you pop, you can't stop!!"

It was too big for him to do anything but lick it, so we broke off a few small pieces and he gobbled them up straight away. Looks like we've found some human food that he'll actually eat (along with whipped cream, which he also begs for). It will be reserved as a very rare treat.

Is anyone else seeing these "Fusion" Pringles at their local grocer?

Summer views from our balcony...

This past week the weather has been stunningly clear, so I thought I'd mark the occasion by giving you three panoramic shots that show our northwesterly view at different times of the day...

Mid-day

Sunset

Night

Each of these is a software-stitched composite of multiple images (usually about 8) created with an astonishingly simple and fast Mac package called DoubleTake. Similar technology exists for other platforms as well, should you want to give it a try.

Daytripping on the 4th

The 4th of July isn't officially celebrated in Hong Kong, of course, but Katherine and I decided to have our own little celebration by crossing off two items from my "things I want to see in Hong Kong" list that happen to be close to each other: Discovery Bay and Peng Chau.

We caught a bus to the Central piers, hopped on the speedy Discovery Bay ferry, and found ourselves in Discovery Bay twenty minutes later...

DB is a small residental development (well, small for Hong Kong - about 16,000 people) on the northeast coast of Lantau Island (the same island where Hong Kong's international airport, giant Buddha, and Disneyland are located). It feels very much like a luxurious resort, especially since you are greeted upon arrival by yachts, pools, tennis courts, and a secluded beach...

It also feels very much like an enclave - a place inside Hong Kong that is itself not of Hong Kong. The population is so dominated by expatriates, in fact, that Katherine commented it was like the inverse of a Chinatown...a non-Chinatown. She's right - that's exactly what it's like.

Because it is completely surrounded by mountains and ocean, you also immediately draw parallels to an elite gated community, though its beach and shopping facilities are open to the public (for those who want to go out of their way to use them). After exploring those facilities, we decided to sneak into the private residential blocks to have a little look-see...

If you didn't know better, you might mistake this for a road flanking a beachfront community in South Carolina. I was particularly amused by the golf carts - practically every resident seemed to own one (instead of a car). They race up and down the little streets (my favorite street name: Seabee Lane) alongside the public transit buses and delivery trucks (which supply the stores and restaurants). They even have their own license plates...and their own parking lots...

So cute! But also: so practical! If you really don't need a car for use in greater Hong Kong (which you don't, since the public transit systems are so amazing), but you don't want to walk up and down the hills of Discovery Bay when you go shopping, then a golf cart sounds like a great compromise. One note of concern, though: they don't seem to have any seat belts (or, if they did, no one seemed to be wearing them). If folks were just driving 5mph, with no other cars around, I suppose that might be okay. But these babies were going at least 30mph up and down the main road (again, alongside big buses and trucks), so the lack of a seat belt seemed highly negligent.

After our sleuthing, we decided it was time to hop on another ferry bound for Peng Chau...

Peng Chau is a small outlying island that is directly across the water from Discovery Bay. It is very quiet, with a small population and a distinctly rural feel - almost like a fishing village. Pretty much the complete opposite of Discovery Bay, and a far cry from the hustle and bustle of downtown Hong Kong...

Getting off the ferry

A typical Peng Chau street

One thing that really struck us while we were there: Peng Chau has lots of cats and dogs. Lots. I'm sure some are owned as pets, but it seemed that many of them were stray (and very friendly). Since Katherine and I are so partial to cats, we couldn't help but take a few snapshots...

After about an hour-long walking tour, we started getting hungry, so we returned to Discovery Bay for dinner at a contemporary continental restaurant called Zaks...

We eat early, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves...

...and our table had a great view of the beach

Katherine decided to have linguine with fresh clams, I thought a sizzling plate of all-American fajitas (for which I have a large soft-spot) would be an appropriate way to celebrate the 4th of July... ;>

Then we abandoned all American pretense when we shared a slice of banoffee pie for dessert...

A magical invention of the British

While we were dining, this little fellow flew right up to a ledge outside our window...

He's a crested myna, and Discovery Bay was home to tons of his relatives. Easily the bird we most often saw while we were there.

After dinner, it was time for one more ferry ride back to Central...


...where the bright lights ushered us home. Happy 4th of July, everyone!