IM ON A BOAT...

This week at work went by super quickly! Wednesday we had a great dinner with our CEO liason from Columbia who was in town, and then Thursday there was a fun reception at a lounge with a bunch of Columbia alum from Hong Kong. We also found a really lively street in Kowloon with lots of busy restaurants and bars and went to an interesting African live music venue (?) with some people from work. Who knew they had a thing for Bob Marley even in Hong Kong…

Friday night I accompanied my friend Hilary to the opening of a new lounge in downtown Central, and then met up with some friends at an ICE bar (it was cold but actually made out of plastic? Very confusing!) Saturday we decided to go searching for an outback steakhouse…which took approximately 2.5 hours to find…and then after a (great) cheeseburger decided to call it an early night

Sunday (Happy father’s day!) may have been one of the best days of my entire 21 years of life. No joke. One of the girls from school who lives in Hong Kong took us all out on her father’s yacht for the day and we sailed through the harbor and out to the outer islands outside of Hong Kong. The views were mainly of huge rocky cliffs and beautiful beaches and looked like something straight out of the tv show LOST. I expected clouds of black smoke and the “others” to appear at any minute! We stopped for lunch at her father’s club house and had a delicious meal of dim sum, noodles, duck, and other Chinese delicacies and then sailed on to a really nice beach where a smaller rubber boat took us to shore for a couple hours. The water was really clear, although warm and probably not that clean since there were typhoons a couple days ago, and we did some nice walks over the cliffs and to a freshwater creek nearby. The sun was quite strong, but as soon as it became evening and the breezes picked up it was truly paradise. The ride back at high speed over the bumpy waters was more terrifying than any roller coaster, but I managed to not throw up or fall overboard! We then were treated to another great meal of “Shanghai-nese” food...it was quite spicy and I by mistake ate a huge pepper and then burned my mouth gulping down tea afterwards. Very classy. For summer solstice last night they dimmed all the lights of the buildings on the harbor and set up telescopes for stargazing, but it was too cloudy and smogy to really see much of anything. Cool idea though! The skyline looks quite different without all of the multi-colored lights.

Pictures to follow!