I just want to buy an ice-cream

Well, and eat it.

Friday night = treat night.  If I'm lucky.  I was lucky - we headed to a Gelato stand in Greenbelt 3 which a huge selection of flavours.  I went for Amaretto.  In a cone.

The ice-cream lady scooped up a nice big ball of ice cream, placed it on the cone.  And the cone broke.

She tried again.  The same problem.  This time, some of the cone attached itself to the ice cream, and landed up back in the original tub.

She handed over the scoop to another lady.  I could see she was about to try the same thing again.  At this point, Mr H couldn't watch any longer.  I suggested that I just get a cup, instead of a cone.  Ah, problem solved!  By the customer.

I still really wanted the cone though - I ended up with an ice-cream that might be served at a children's party, to look a bit like a clown.  All that aside it was delicious.

5 days in Hong Kong & Shenzhen

At the end of August we had 2 Filipino public holidays quite close to each other - Wednesday 21st August was Ninoy Aquino Day and Monday 26th August was National Heroes Day.  This meant that by taking just 2 days of leave from work, we could have a 5 night trip away somewhere.  We decided to go to Shenzhen and Hong Kong as we have a few friends there, and we had loved Hong Kong on a previous trip.

First stop: Shenzhen.

We were amazed at how easy it was to get to Shenzhen from Hong Kong International Airport.  You simply follow signs for the Sky Pier, buy your ticket, hand over your baggage tags (if you had checked baggage on your flight), and then go to the pier to board.  Someone picks up your bags, and you pick them up when you get to the ferry terminal in Shenzhen (Shekou).

Unfortunately though, we arrived into Shekou at lunch time.  This meant that the visa-on-arrival desk was closed.  You need a visa to get into China.  We had to wait for an hour in the terminal until it opened again.  It was closed from 13:30 - 14:30.  But that aside, it was a seamless process.

We met our friend, Petula and her daughter, Viola, for a late lunch at Gaga (I think).  We had delicious salads and fruity ice tea.  I was so hungry I'd forgotten what I'd ordered and started eating Mr H's salad instead of mine.  Oops.  Both were delicious.

Shenzhen is a new city - developed only in the last 30 years.  The financial district (the very new part) is very well planned and laid out, with some impressive buildings.  Back in 1999/2000 I had spent 6 months in China (Suzhou).  Shenzhen really didn't feel much like the China I remembered from 13 years ago.  This may be because China has changed a lot, and probably because Shenzhen is such a new city.  It still felt different to Hong Kong though.  A bit more 'China' than that.

There isn't a great deal for tourists in the city.  But we enjoyed wandering around - the huge squares (some with line dancing - something which was familiar from my time in China at the turn of the century), the new smells and scenes.  And we did visit one tourist attraction - Window Of The World.  It has replicas of famous landmarks from around the world; some huge, some tiny.  Everything from the Sydney Opera House to the Pyramids to Niagra Falls, the Eiffel Tower etc.  An odd place, but something different!  It was so hot and humid that Mr H had to go and buy a new shirt afterwards!

We ate some great meals whilst in Shenzhen - dimsum in the shape of little piggies and homecooked Chinese food being the highlights.

From Shenzhen we took the train to Hong Kong.  It's an easy ride, which takes about 40 minutes from the Chinese border to Hong Kong harbour (on the Kowloon side).

Hong Kong is a fantastic city - it has a real buzz to it.  On the Kowloon side it feels very Chinese and on the Hong Kong island side it feels very cosmopolitan.  On the first night we ate at a Thai hole-in-the-wall type restaurant in Kowloon Walled City.  For years this area was ruled by gangs, but now it is full of Thai people, restaurants and shops.  The food was so authentic and pretty cheap.  Breakfast the next day was at the Australian Dairy Company.  There was nothing Australian about it.  Another hole-in-the-wall type place, that had a queue of about 40m snaking up the street.  Service is brisk, the food is simple.  But it is truly delicious.  Their specialty is eggs.  Scrambled eggs.  I had scrambled eggs with bread.  The others had macaroni soup + scrambled eggs with bread!

Having been to Hong Kong before we didn't feel a strong urge to go and see lots of touristy things.  Instead we wandered around some of the local department stores and walked along the Avenue of Stars, before heading out for more food.  This time we went to Soho.  It is such a change from what we're used to in Manila - it was thronging with people, spilling out of bars and restaurants.  Such a good atmosphere.  We ate at a Greek restaurant and then went to meet Mr H's friend for some drinks in a few bars.

On our last day we headed down to Aberdeen where one of my cousins, Pablo, lives.  I was expecting it to be a bit more open than Central Hong Kong, but I was wrong - lots of densely packed, high rise apartment blocks.  We jumped on a boat to Lamma island to go and get an early seafood dinner.  A short ride across, and it is totally different to Hong Kong.  Very quiet - just a line of seafood restaurants along the shore.  We chose our fish, had it cooked up and enjoyed our meal with the sun going down over the bay.  A great end to a great trip.

Seemingly simple tasks

Before I continue, I'll point out that I realise these are distinctly First World problems.  But having spent the last 14 years, or so, in a First World country, I have been conditioned to think in a First World kind of way.

We set out to do 3 main tasks on Sunday morning:

1) Buy tickets to watch The Killers live in Manila
2) Find a copy of Swim Philippines
3) Do the weekly shop

The first 2 tasks took us close to 2 hours.  2 hours?!  Both should have been possible within about half an hour based on the location of the venues where we needed to complete the tasks.

To get The Killers tickets, I knew we needed to head to SM Makati.  The walk, from our apartment, to SM Makati takes us through 2 malls: Greenbelt & Glorietta.  Within Glorietta there are a number of sports shops.  Mr H had it on good authority that at least one of these sports shops (Planet Sports) would stock the free Swim Philippines magazine.  So we headed there first.

Mr H's enquiry was met with a blank stare.  We know that the magazine is stocked in this store, as we've picked one up there before.  Next stop was a running store, Athlete's Foot.  This time, it was suggested we head to the Speedo store.

Speedo, for those of you who are not familiar with the brand, makes swim wear and related kit.  It's all about swimming.  Mr H's enquiry again was met with a blank stare.  Sense of humour failure was starting to set in.

We ventured to another store, Toby Sports.  At this point Mr H had decided to use my phone to bring up the Swim Philippines Facebook page to avoid any confusion due to potential misunderstandings in Brummy English vs. Filipino English.  We were directed to another store, Toby's Arena.

I should point out that Glorietta is a big, sprawling shopping mall set over at least 3 floors.

As soon as we walked into Toby's Arena we had 2 shop assistants half a metre behind us, following us to the checkout.  But they also just looked blankly at us when we asked.  The person behind the checkout went to enquire in the back room whether there were any magazines (we *think* they knew what we were talking about), only to find that they don't have any.  And they didn't know when they would get any copies.

We ended our search there.  Unfulfilled.

Our next task would surely be easier.  I'd read that you could buy The Killers tickets from SM ticket outlets, and I knew there was a ticket outlet in SM Makati.  We found the ticket outlet, and it was all going well.  We were shown a venue layout, shown the different prices, shown that tickets were available... we made our decision and I brought out my Smart Money Mastercard to pay.

"Oh, sorry ma'am, but you can't pay with a Megalink Mastercard, you can only pay with a credit card."

*Sigh*

So we went in search of an ATM.  The first one we found kept refusing our transactions (with multiple cards).  It must have run out of money.  The second one spat out some cash.  In fact it spat out a lot of cash.  5000 Pesos in 100 Peso notes!!  We were finally able to purchase our tickets.

2 tasks done.  At least 2 hours down.

And we still had the nightmare of the weekly shop.  Which is rarely weekly, because we both hate doing it so much.  It wasn't such a nightmare, about about an hour later we were home eating salami sandwiches on great French bread.  Epic over.