Vacation wrap-up

Food (Hong Kong)

“Tea café” food from expensive Tsui Wah.
From top left clockwise: Swiss-style chicken wings, cold honey lemon with mandarin orange juice, sizzling pork chop with fried instant noodles.


Dinner at Tai Hing Roast Restaurant–a treat for my host.
From left: roast eight treasure rice (missing char siew–ran out!), iced milk tea in ice bath, roast suckling pig.


“Tea café” food from Café de Coral. It was tea time and portions were small and very cheap.
From top left clockwise: lemon Coke, small BBQ pork rice, cold yuen yueng, pork cutlet with ham and toast.


Dim sum at Lin Heung Tea House. It was 7.30 in the morning!
From top left clockwise: lor mai gai (glutinous rice with pork, Chinese sausage and salted egg yolk wrapped in lotus leaf), lotus seed paste bun, BBQ pork bun, rice rolls with prawns, siew mai (pork dumplings), har gow (prawn dumplings), braised chicken feet, Chinese sausage bun, jasmine tea.


Simple (and economical) fare at Lamma Island.
From top: cuttlefish balls soup, satay beef instant noodles soup, pork chop with omelette and ham.


Miscellaneous goodies along the way. It seems like I did not eat a lot in Hong Kong after all…
From top left clockwise: snake soup from Seh Wong Yee, wife biscuit from Hang Heung Bakery, vegetarian meal at Po Lin Monastery (fried bee hoon, soya beancurd, mango split-pea cake and snow fungus cake), wanton noodles with added fish balls from a small eatery in Shau Kei Wan, snow white sago dessert from Honeymoon Desserts.

Food (Kuala Lumpur)

KL food was pretty standard but these caught my attention.
From top left clockwise: chicken sate baoz, onion chicken baoz, tri-star squid roll from Mr. Baoz, delicious char siew (BBQ pork) from Soh Kei.

Food (Singapore)

Food from our first-ever dine-out Chinese New Year reunion dinner.
From top left clockwise: lobster cold plate combination (a live cockroach was found in the lobster head! Traumatising!), abalone with sea cucumber, shark’s fin soup, steamed red snapper, fried salted egg yolk prawns, pig’s trotters with buns, fried noodles, hashima dessert (frog eggs).


The home-cooked Chinese New Year feast of a lunch. Props to mummy as usual!
From top left clockwise: scallops in squid flowers, steamed Hainanese chicken, dried shitake with sea cucumber, dried oysters with fa cai (a kind of hair-looking seaweed), yu sheng (raw fish salad tossed noisily for good luck, fortune and prosperity), snow fungus dessert with dried dates and lotus seeds, mixed vegetables with quail eggs, fried minced pork in beancurd skin with fried minced pork balls with longan centres (decorated with grapes and strawberries), fried salted egg yolk prawns.

Highlights (Kuala Lumpur)

We were fortunate enough to stay in a brand new condominium when Ision and I were in KL, all thanks to Eric (whose RPM class I attended for the first time–my first-ever spinning experience!). Ain’t my baby elegant on the couch?


Lots of food was converted to unburnt calories during the KL trip, something that always happens. This was just another night of gluttony with friends who all shared a common identity–they are all followers of Eric’s blog.


Whoever in charge of branding this bank should face the firing squad. Come on!!!


I simply couldn’t resist this!

Highlights (Singapore)

Ision receiving blessings from a reverend in the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown on the first day of Chinese New Year. It was a pity as I should have taken a video instead.


My first family reunion dinner with Ision. All the tales of how one should behave in front of traditional in-laws were all thrown out of the window for I have one of the coolest mums in the world! This was also my first reunion dinner not prepared by my mum. Coincidentally, there was another Asian/Caucasian gay couple seated next to our table having their reunion dinner as well. Singapore is indeed opening up!


Catching up with Siew Mei, a friend I met back in my student exchange days in Sydney in 2001. Too bad she is now living in Singapore which means that I have one less Sydney kaki to have dinner and coffee with.


Friends from my singing-at-Ark days. We were there to watch my dear friend Meilian sing (can you see that greenish ghostly figure in the distance?). I miss hanging out with all of you already!


Me posing with the samba girls at the Chingay Parade. I was very proud of myself for managing to put together a costume from scratch on the spot (I had a small pair of pink wings behind me which is not visible in the picture). I guess it should also be noted that Roy and I were the first-ever “contingent” to represent the gay community at Chingay. Did we make history? You bet!


Me posing with the group from Cosplay. I want to say thank you to my friend Roy for initiating the idea of marching though it was a pity that only the two of us out of the entire nation turned up. We kept askin people to join us but I guess no one had our enthusiasm (and guts).


Me posing with the storm troopers. Here is an article on Fridae featuring our Chingay Parade march on the last night of my vacation. The video at the end of that article has also been reproduced here:





My partner in gay crime Singapore-style and my very dear friend Roy.


Mum and I at the airport just before my departure. I think she will miss me the most. The thing about reunions is that each reunion inevitably comes with a separation–so to avoid separations should we have reunions in the first place?

And there you have it finally, my month away from Sydney in vivid colour summarized in six posts. It is good to go on trips once in a while but I must say Ision and I were both totally tripped-out after that and were so looking forward to some sorely-needed quiet time at home. Kim out.

Hong Kong (the photo shoot)

Hey y'all!!! The long-awaited photos from my shoot in Hong Kong are finally here. This series was taken in a small village on Lamma Island. The rustic and abandoned feel of the location was exactly what I was looking for. These pictures were taken by a film camera (yes, people still use these) and then scanned so some of them might seem grainy or blurry. But still I am extremely happy with them and I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do. Thanks for the shoot Gab!






















PS: Which is your favourite picture?

Hong Kong (the videos)

People say that a picture speaks a thousand words and so naturally a video speaks a thousand pictures. So to save me the time it takes to type one million words, I will show you some of the videos I have taken whilst I was in Hong Kong.


Lunch on a weekday at Tsui Wah in Central. My order came just as I was taking the video. Can you tell that from watching?




On board the tram up to The Peak. Holding of the handrail was a must as the incline steepened.




It was too foggy a day for the Ngong Ping 360 cable car ride to be worth the money but I did it anyway. Now I know what it feels like to float into the unknown.




Running up the long flight of stairs to get closer to Buddha. The heavy panting towards the end was not due to a lack of stamina but the extra effort I had to take in order to squirm rapidly past the crowd.




Shopping at Ladies’ Market. This is a huge attraction of Hong Kong right? I wonder…




One more disappointment during the trip–the dim sum experience at Lin Heung Teahouse. Haven’t I already learnt the lesson of not going into things with expectations?




Sorry to bore you with yet another letdown–The Symphony of Lights.




On board the Ding Ding tram–the lazy man’s way to see Hong Kong without having to walk.




The serene racecourse at Happy Valley with spectacular views. I actually had an urge to run around the track naked.




A video of the vacation’s gravest mistake– poor walking shoes. I am amazed I did not throw them away during the trip.




Hong Kong traffic during off-peak hours. Can you tell that it is off-peak?




Human traffic at Central station–I missed the earlier travelator stretch where people walked shoulder-to-shoulder. That is Hong Kong for you.




One more interesting happened in Hong Kong (the amateur photo shoot) and I will share those photos as soon as they become available. I hope you are half as eager to see them as me–I simply cannot wait any longer!

Hong Kong (the more interesting stuff)

OK, whether these pictures are “interesting” or not is debatable but I just wanted to single them out because I think they deserve separate attention.

I chanced upon this shop in Causeway Bay selling popcorn of all sorts of strange flavours ranging from sweet (eg. watermelon) to savoury (eg. cajun) ones. However I am not a fan of popcorn so I gave buying some a pass.


After paying HKD23 to enter the Giant Buddha (which gave me a small but free vegetarian meal), one would see the legendary singer Anita Mui’s tablet. Though not an attraction per se, it was a little hard to miss. No photography was allowed but I guess I am a rebel.


There was police presence everywhere on the streets. I was told that was because of an acid-splashing incident and subsequent copycat cases. I think with such levels of human traffic flow everywhere and at any time of the day, there should always be police presence with or without acid-splashers!


This was supposed to be the exact location where the acid-splash took place. I guess crowded spots are the best for such acts.


H1N1 and its impact. About 10% of the commuters on public transport were wearing masks (not sure if they did that more to avoid catching something or to prevent others from catching what they had) and I did see mask-wearing people in Singapore as well (not as commonplace). It is rare to see mask-wearers in Sydney though.


I guess with such hilly landscapes in Hong Kong, slopes have to be carefully documented with associated risks properly studied eg. rock falls, erosion, etc. Still it was strange to see a sign like that right smack in the city centre.


There were plenty of missing-dog notices on Lamma Island. Oddly I only saw dogs at the built-up ends of the island but not during the trek across it.


Although having a seafood meal either at Lamma Island or Sai Kung was in my itinerary, the way these touting shop owners went about their business just turned me off. Lamma Hilton–should I laugh or cry?


If you were not paying attention, you would miss this interesting little tidbit. In most apartment elevators, the floor numbers with the inauspicious “4” in them would be skipped. I guess those with numbering OCDs would find it hellish to live in such apartments.


This was where I took my forty winks in Hong Kong. The sofa bed felt uncomfortable at first but I was so beat at the end of every night that I could fall asleep on a slab of spiky stone! The apartments are small and LEGO-like (developers pack as many buildings and storeys as possible in a given area) but I find them cosily so–I do not mind staying in small apartments per se although I would definitely mind staying in this bustling mad house we call Hong Kong.


The kind soul who put me up and saved me much money. We were having supper at Temple Street’s Mido Café.


My photographer friend who brought me around. We were on the Star Ferry going to Wan Chai.

Ah… Hong Kong, Hong Kong. The entire trip was not unpleasant but after living in Sydney and getting used to its pace of life, that of Hong Kong was simply out-of-this-world–I was so glad when the trip finally came to an end. It was good while it lasted but I do not foresee visiting you anytime soon (maybe never), my Pearl of the Orient.