To Macau

As a missionary, Macau was considered the "Golden Land" because of rumors of humble people and a more laid back environment. Indeed Macau was a great place for missionary work, and we got to go back today. We went to Sedona Square, a walk and shop area with little boutiques, and some interesting portuguese architecture (macau was a portuguese settlement founded sometime in the 15th century, I think...).

Macau is famous for a couple things:

Gambling.

Jerky.

Portugese mission ruins.

And motor scooters.

We got an eyeful of all of them. The jerky and pastry shops were a lot of fun cause we got to sample a lot of different chinese snacks, including yummy almond cookies.

We ate at a yummy portugese restruaunt and had pork knuckle, which kevin assured us was a good traditional dish, and coconut chicken. sooo good. It's always nice when dad and venus have the day off to play with us.

Stanley Market

Today we went to the south side of the island and Stanley Market. Stanley is the district that has the prison, and is also where there are lots and lots of white people. This is probably because there is a beach nearby that is rather famous. Stanley Market is a lot like the ladies street and temple street bazaars, but has the benefit of being covered. Pretty much the only thing we bought were post cards and a dress for riley because the prices were not as good as mong kok. We went and looked at the expensive restruants on the beach, and then caught the bus home with money in our pockets.

Afterward we headed back over to ladies street for some more shopping. It was raining a bit, but that didn't stop us from getting some good deals on souveniers!

In a grocery store we stumbled on a box of... prophelactics... with a curious description. your guess is as good as mine since we didn't purchase them.

Lunch in the Park

On Sunday we had a rather lazy morning (at least Dan, Jade and me did). Stef, Kevin and Rylee got up early to attend church and the rest of us lazed around and slept in. We met some friends of Venus' at a restaurant in Hong Kong park called L16. They had Italian and Thai food, I had a Margherita pizza, Dan had the lunch special, Stefanie had the pad thai, and Kevin had cod with risotto. It was delicious.

The park was beautiful with a waterfall and a pond with several koi and lots of turtles. It also had an aviary that we went through with many beautiful birds, including pelicans!

Llama Island

Click me!

Today dad is off from work, so we packed up the kids and took them to lama island. At the last minute uncle kit decided to come with as well, it's always fun to have uncle kit along, he has really cool information to share about everything and makes the adventures feel more grounded.




Llama island is a tiny little island off the south east coast of the hong kong island. It has a big power plant that helps power hong kong, but is otherwise severely rural. There are still fish farms in one of the harbor, and people that live on boats. We had dim sum when we first arrived on the ferry pier, and then walked all the way from one side of the island to the other, where we took a ferry home. The walk was nice because there are no cars on the island, and the path takes you right across the ridge of the islands mountain, so you get an awesome view of the harbor. The walk also takes you through some more shaded forests, where some HUGE spiders live. The girls were totally freaking out and covering there heads, cowering from the obviously stationary, though admitadly large (about the 6", or the size of a hand with thumb and pinky extended) bugs.





Afterward, we went to a shanghainese restaurant in causeway bay, it was so yummy.

History Museum!

Today Venus had the day off, so we went with her and Alex to the History Museum. First though, I have a pic. of the McMinn and Chow family together so I want to post it. It's taken in front of HSBC (the bank dad and Venus work at). We are able to take an HSBC shuttle from dad's flat to the HSBC building for free. The picture is in front of the lion's at the HSBC building.

Anyways.... the museum was pretty cool. It was nice because the babies (minus Jade) could run around. There were movies and lots of displays and pictures. After we were done, Kev and I figured we needed some food for Ry so we set out to find a McDonalds. It began raining and then pouring, and there were no McDonalds to be found. That is about the only frustrating food moment we have had here in HK. No worries, we found some bread and lunch meat, and made Ry her standard lunch of a plain meat sandwhich.

We then set out to experience high tea, a British meal with sandwhiches and scones and pastries. We went to the Peninsula, a fancy hotel in HK and were waiting to be seated. We were then informed that apparently they had a dress code that Kevin was not meeting. His flops were simply not appropriate for high tea....so we left. Instead of eating high tea at the Peninsula, we went to Temple Street to bargain with the street vendors for souvenirs. To our disappointment we were too early, and they were not quite set up. However, for the third time on our trip, a lady asked if Jade and Rylee are twins. I'm posting pics. of Jade and Rylee to see if there is any reasonable explanation these people would believe ten month old Jade and one and a half year old Rylee to be twins. You decide.

Lots of Walking

We're a little behind on the blogging, but on Thursday we went to Wang Dai Sim (spelling??). We spent the day looking at more traditional chinese monuments. We first went to a temple that was right in the middle of the city. It looked sort of out of place. There were lots of people there burning insensce in memory of their ancestors. It was very pretty with the old temple and the waterfalls and streams flowing through.

Of course we ate delicious dimsum, and because the menu was only in chinese characters, Daniel had to guess on the ordering a little, and we ended up with some mystery dishes. One of the mystery dishes was curry squid. Dan and Kevin seemed to like it, but Tish and I decided to not partake of that mystery dish.

We then went to The Monistary of 10,000 Budhas, which could have been called the place with 10,000 steps because that's about how many we had to climb to get to the top. Between the 10,000 steps and the grueling heat and humidity, it was exhausting. Along the way the path was lined on both sides with these big budha statues, each one different. We even saw a monkey fairly close, but the only picture Dan managed to snap was from the back, and somehow only focused on an inappropriate body part of the monkey, so we will not be posting it.

Once you get to the top to the Monistary, there are more budhas. The monistary is big, and the walls are literally lined with tiny budhas. Probably 10,000 budhas lined the walls, and that is where they get the name. Rylee saw one budha riding on a blue dog, and thought it was cookie monster. She was excited until we made her get a picture by it, then it sort of freaked her out.

#8 Typhoon!!!!

Wednesday was spent inside almost all day because there was a #8 typhoon warning all day. We had gusts of wind up to 53 mph and lots of rain. Dan and Venus got to stay home from work because of the storm, because everything shuts down with a #8 warning or higher (#10 is a hurricane). We all have cabin fever from staying in all day yesterday. We played Tripoly and watched a few movies. I also got quite a bit of reading done in my text book.

We did brave the storm for a while to get some good footage. At one point Stef and Tish literaly were blown away by a gust of wind. I couldn't get a good video of it because Tish grabbed onto me to stop herself and it was all I could do to stay in one place without filming.

Later in the day we crossed the parking garage to the gym where Rylee and Alex played in the squash court with lots of balls. The fun came to a halt when Rylee threw up (no, she isn't sick, just threw up). It was all we could do to keep her from eating the Oreo pieces that came out. I think maybe she got one before we could stop her. She really loves Oreos!

The weather looks better this morning so we hope to have more adventures today. Most of all we are all excited to get out to the great food we have been eating every chance we get.

Time to spend some money

So today we finally went out for some good old fashioned hong kong bargain shopping. The best place for that is a little place called Mong Kok. At some point in time, a particular corner in Mong Kok was the highest population density area in the world due to the amount of foot traffic in the area. Fortunately for us, we didn't encounter any human tidal waves. We spent the morning in Tsim Sha Tsui getting breakfast and buying a replacement lens filter (mine broke that morning). First deal of the day : 60% less than the broker's first offer. He then attempted to sell Dan a video camera that we later found to be about a sixth of the price he quoted.

After TST, we went on to Mong Kok and Tish and Stef bought some tu-tu's for the girls, they are sooooo cute in them! We also went to Lady's street (tung choi street for those of you google mapping our routes) which is a sort of bazaar. Unfortunately for one young vendor, by the time we got there, and dan had haggled is way down on a pair of table runners, he realized he didn't have anymore cash and tried to tell the lady he couldn't buy the goods. The prices really started to drop at that point, which was too bad because he really didn't have any money with him to complete the transaction.

After a long day of shopping, we came home to some yummy curry made by the house helpers, and watched some TV. A fun day!

Disneyland....again!!!!

Since we got annual passes to Disneyland, we decided to go to the happiest place on earth again.
We were not disappointed. We saw two parades, one in which we were on the front row, and Rylee refused to make eye contact with any of the characters, and screamed at one that approached her. The second parade was a water parade, which was extra exciting because the heat and humidity here is almost unbearable. The only downfall...all the chinese people and their umbrellas blocked most of the water from falling on us.

We got fast passes for Magic Mountain so we took turns watching the babies and riding the ride...it was awesome, except for the two chinese girls behind Tish and Stef who laughed at the picture of Tish at the end of the ride.

The interesting thing about the workers at Disneyland is they all have nametags of the American names they have chosen for themselves. We have met people like Kinki, YoYo, Map, Circle, Ice, and Pinki just to name a few.

One of the best rides at Disneyland was a 3D musical. The chinese seem to have no spacial awareness and we were all packed into a little area waiting for the doors to open. Once they opened, the madness began. People were pushing, not even slowing down for the old people. Tish had to literally push a woman out of Dan's chair. After the mayhem settled...the movie was really cool and Rylee watched the whole thing with her 3D glasses.

One last note, people here are very interested in Rylee and Jade, the babies being a mix and all. They are always talking to them and touching to them. One lady even took a picture of her son with Rylee...this would all be ok if Rylee didn't have a people phobia. Jade on the other hand never fails to impress and socialize with the Chinese.

Church in a sky scraper

Today is sunday and we found an english speaking branch of ex-pats to attend. This is technically the same branch that I served in as a missionary, although the location has changed. Previously it was located in the "gam tohng" building, an old pirate mansion!!! Just kidding, it was really the residence of the first chinese citizen permitted to live in the mid-levels of hong kong.

The church offices are now in a new 14 story building in wan chai. There were a few familiar faces and we had a nice church service. Blogspot doesn't want me to upload pictures now, so we'll add some later.

After church we went to crystal jade, a yummy restraunt in the International Finance Center in Central, Hong Kong. They're famous for their siu luhng bau, dumplings with soup and meat in the center.

Today is the day that Riley showed signs of getting jade's virus, as she was feeling hot and a little more irritable than usual. Fortunately she was able to get to sleep and her symptoms didn't last as long as jade's.

After Crystal jade we went home and watched pirates of the carribean, and a chinese war movie while dad ordered pizza. A great day with the family!

The Hong Kong Jockey Club

Yesterday we got to go to the Jockey Club. We were better prepared to eat there this time than we were last time we got to go. They have a dress code so we made sure to comply this time. We left all three babies with Dan and Venus' helpers Jessica and Glenda, even though Rylee wasn't feeling too well. They said that everything went good though and we got to eat at a fancy restaurant without worrying about the babies getting too wild. That evening we had a barbecue here at the house. Uncle Kit and Aunt Connie and their son Calvin came. Uncle Shunwai and his son Phillip also came. Uncle Kit made a delicious yet spicy curry and we ate Lognans or (dragon eyes). They're a kind of fruit with a soft shell you peel off and they have a dark pit in the middle. We found out that if you drink diet 7up after eating these Lognans that the 7up will taste like dirt, or trees if you ask Dan. It was a fun evening, we all started to doze off at about 8:30 though. I guess we still have a bit of jet lag.

Disneyland!!!!!

The happiest place on earth lived up to it's name!!!! We rode the train to Disneyland. The last section of the trip we transfered to the Disney train line with Mickey shaped windows and character figurines between the seats. It was a very hot and humid day. One of the favorite stops was a water fountain play area. Jade loved Its a Small World, but Rylee was kind of freaked out. The Mad Hatter's tea cups made us all a little sick, but we definitely were the fastest spinning cup out there. It was funny to see High School Musical performances done in Chinese in their parade.