Rainbow sightings

Rainbow-like spectrum created
by sun rays shooting a cobweb

Rainbow in the sky over Hong Kong Island
on -- believe it or not -- a rain-less day!

For the many people who still haven't realized that some three-quarters of Hong Kong is countryside (rather than urban concrete jungle) -- and that forty percent of the Big Lychee's land lies within country parks, it can seem ironic as well as improbable that living in Hong Kong has got me increasingly appreciating nature's offerings (including wild critters such as dragonflies, spiders and skinks). But it really is the case that not since I was at Beloit College in Wisconsin and taking courses in geology and environmental biology to fulfill my science requirements have I been wont to observe and enjoy being out in nature as much as I have since moving to Asia's World City.

Still, it's not been only during this periods of my life that I've been captivated by the sight of rainbows (and associated visual phenomena). And it's true enough that the two rainbow spotting experiences I've considered the most memorable have admittedly not taken place in Hong Kong (or, for that matter, at Beloit). Instead, one of these was at Victoria Falls over on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border (where a rainbow was formed by the spray of the largest and most impressive waterfall I've seen in my life to date) while the other involved my catching sight of beautiful double rainbows while on a bus during my visit to Germany last year.

In the past year, however, I've had two rainbow sightings here in Hong Kong that I reckon are on the special side -- not least because they both occurred on rain-less days. The first of these took place last summer in a wooded area that a friend and I passed through on a hike up to Amah Rock. The second took place on the hot and humid -- but emphatically non-rainy -- day last month that I hiked up Devil's Peak and then down to Lei Yue Mun. More specifically, on my way out of Lei Yue Mun, I happened to glance over across Victoria Harbour and suddenly saw a rainbow in the by-then-not-so-blue late afternoon sky above the Quarry Bay section of Hong Kong Island!

Almost needless to say, I did have my camera with me on both those occasions and thus managed to take shots of the natural phenomena. And while I grant that my treasured snaps pale in comparison to many other rainbow photos on the internet, I still am happy that I managed to take them since it makes it so that I am able to share the sight of those rainbows in this blog entry with other people. :)

Destination: Ma Shi Chau (Photo-essay)

Why would one want to visit an island with the unattractive sounding name of Ma Shi Chau (Cantonese for "Horse Excrement Island")?! For those in the know, the answer would be "To see its rock formations of course!" For as it so happens, this island in Tolo Harbour which is connected, at low tide, to Yim Tin Tsai via a tombolo is part of a designated Special Area on account of its rich geological features (and also a part of the Hong Kong National Geopark which came into being in November 2009).

In particular, Ma Shi Chau is considered to have the oldest sedimentary rocks in Hong Kong -- dating back to the Permian Period (about 280 to 225 million years ago)! So while it doesn't have rock formations that look like turtles, Buddha's palms and such as on Po Toi, the island certainly has its attractions especially for those with a geological bent... and hikers who can appreciate the beauty of rocks along with other aspects of nature! :b

Like the sign shows, to get to Ma Chi Shau, one
has to pass through Sam Mun Tsai New Village

View from inside the relocated fishing village (the original
settlement was one of a number whose inhabitants were
displaced by the construction of the Plover Cove Reservoir)

Boats (and one perching egret) out on
the nearby Shuen Wan Typhoon Shelter

View of Tolo Harbour, the Plover Cove Reservoir's
Main Dam and beyond from Yim Tin Tsai

View from Yim Tin Tsai of Ma Shi Chau and
the tombolo that connects the two islands

Follow this path downhill...

...and you'll find yourself at sea level
and within spitting distance of the tombolo!

Across the water (and the tombolo) is Ma Shi Chau --
the island that's far more beautiful than its name! :)

To be continued (but of course!)...

This weekend's hiking (and) weather

Blue skies over Chek Keng Hau yesterday

Blue skies over Ngong Ping (and some mist
over Lantau Peak) this afternoon

Just before I set out to Tung Chung to meet my regular hiking companion earlier today, I decided to check the Hong Kong Observatory's website one more time -- and was somewhat horrified to see a thunderstorm warning in effect. For those who are wondering: the two reasons why I was only "somewhat" rather than "very" horrified was that I also saw that the weather forecast still included some sun in the afternoon and it just happening to be the case that I had also gone out hiking yesterday with a friend visiting from the US (so could be deemed to have already filled my hiking ration for the week!).

Yesterday's hike out on the Sai Kung Peninsula had taken place under beautiful bright blue skies for the most part. And although the temperature and humidity was on the high side, I enjoyed the trek from Wong Shek to Chek Keng -- which yielded sights that included tiny crabs, whole cow families, an abandoned village and a still inhabited one -- along with scenic vistas -- and the bonus kaito ride that took us from Chek Keng back to Wong Shek (and trust that Alejna did too!).

Despite the portends not looking good initially today (including my train to Tung Chung getting showered on when passing through Nam Cheong and encountering a substantial downpour in Tsing Yi), my regular hiking companion and I decided to go ahead and take the bus up to the Ngong Ping -- from where we planned to start our hike. The Hong Kong weather being what it is (i.e., often quickly changeable), we banked on the sky clearing by the end of our bus ride -- and imagine our glee upon finding blue skies when we got up to the highland that is Ngong Ping plateau!

More than incidentally, this was the second time in a month that we decided to press ahead with a hiking excursion despite it having been raining early on in the journey to it -- and it turning out to be the case that not one drop of rain fell on us during our hike that day. That first time around, the bus we were taking to our planned hike's starting point literally had a rain cloud pass over it so as the bus continued north, we suddenly found ourselves on dry rather than wet land as the rain cloud continued moving eastwards! So, if anything, our weather fortunes appeared to change even more dramatically than it did today!!

And although the weather forecast also warned of 70 kilometer gusts of wind being likely today, we definitely did not encounter any gusts close to that speed. Actually, our hike definitely would have been made quite a bit more enjoyable if there had been more and faster breezes to be experienced. Still, I'm not complaining about today's weather. After all, it proved to be good enough for a good hike filled with some really excellent views -- thanks in no small part to the rain that fell earlier in the day helping to clear the air and the sky turning out to pretty blue for the most part this afternoon! :)

Drink (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

There's no two ways about it: I do like my drink. Contrary to what some people might think, however, I don't only care for alcoholic beverages! And it really is the case that I tend to choose what to drink based on the occasion but also, for meals, what food is being eaten.

For example, on my German holiday last year, during which I ate much traditional German fare (like was the case when visiting Heidelberg), there was no question to my mind that beer -- particularly local draft beer -- was the ideal drink to have at lunch as well as dinner! (Equally, lots of Japanese food -- including sushi, yakitori, kushiyaki, "Genghis Khan" and, most definitely, izakaya offerings -- go great with alcoholic drinks like beer but also sake or umeshu.) On the other hand, bar for seafood, I feel that Chinese dishes are best paired with non-alcoholic beverages, including -- of course -- Chinese tea.

In Hong Kong, tong lai cha (translated as cold milk tea) is the cold drink of choice for much of its populace. For my part, I find that this rich-tasting sweet non-alcoholic drink made from a blend of black Indian and Chinese teas mixed together with condensed milk (or evaporated milk and sugar) can sometimes be a bit too rich or sickly sweet for my taste when not made well. So when in doubt (which is often), I tend to order the less sweet -- and seemingly more difficult to not make well -- tong leng cha (cold lemon tea that's far more "lemony" than that favored by the "sweet tea" favored in the American South!) instead.

However, I have no qualms about ordering tong lai cha at any of the branches of Tsui Wah, a chain of 24 hour cha chaan tengs that really is of a surprisingly reliably good quality. And for its packaging alone, I do find some fun in ordering and getting a bottle of Tsui Wah's smooth and nicely chilled milk tea champagne (which, for the record, does not contain any alcohol in it -- and yes, is meant to be drank with a straw)! :b

Not just a famous Hong Kong movie location!

View of part of the over 800 meter long
Central-Mid-Levels Escalator

A couple of evenings ago, I had dinner with an American friend who is visiting Hong Kong for the first time. Among the things she told me she had targeted to check out during her maiden trip to the Big Lychee was the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator. This was something that I thought pretty normal -- not least since one of the things I had sought to do when visiting Hong Kong as a tourist was to go and ride along this outdoor escalator system that came into being back in 1993.

Hong Kong film fan(atic) that I am, my reason for wanting to do so was because I had first come to know the existence of the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator by way of catching sight of it in Chungking Express. And since I had first come to know of Alejna's blog by way of her posts on kick ass female movie characters (a number of whom had been essayed by Brigitte Lin Ching-Hsia), I presumed that it was also the case for her.

So imagine my surprise to find that wasn't the case -- not least because she actually hasn't seen that 1994 Wong Kar Wai cinematic gem yet! In view of that discovery, I find myself looking at that Hong Kong landmark in a different light -- and coming to realize that, as with the iconic Star Ferry, the world's longest outdoor escalator system has become a tourist attraction in its own right rather than because of its movie connection.

Still, I have to admit that I can't help but think of Chungking Express whenever I ride on the Central-Mid-Levels Escalator. And this even after I've been on it hundreds, if not thousands, of times now -- including on the way to work and back home after I first moved to Hong Kong (on account of the first place I lived in the Big Lychee having been located in Soho)! ;b

Wu Tip Shan on a hot and muggy day (Photo-essay)

As I mentioned last week, after my regular hiking companion and I completed the Fung Hang Family Walk one hot and muggy afternoon, we decided that we were game for more hiking that same day. So after green mini bus 56K dislodged us at its Fanling MTR station terminus, we made our way to Wu Tip Shan (whose name translates into English as Butterfly Hill), next to Fung Ying Sin Koon.

If truth be told, we found the hike up Wu Tip Shan to be harder going than expected -- not least because the hill doesn't look so high from the station and Taoist temple complex. In retrospect, however, I think the high heat and humidity that day had more of an effect on us than we thought it would. Also, we had done a bit of hiking earlier in the day... or so we told ourselves to make ourselves feel better and feel some sense of achievement upon finally making it up that hill (and then far quicker down)! ;b

Intertwined bamboo and tree spotted early
during this second hike of the afternoon

Also seen on the way up Wu Tip Shan:
a solitary ceramic figurine of
a female deity (the Goddess of Mercy?)

The trigonometrical structure that
marks the top spot of a Hong Kong hill

Muggy day view from the top of Wu Tip Shan

Misty view of Wo Hop Shek Cemetery
(that also takes in Gallant Garden)

These steps (and others like it) were
far easier to go down than up!

Be these Winged Cassia or not, these yellow flowers
sure are bright and eye-catching looking!


An open air shrine on Wu Tip Shan that appears
well looked after, visited and used

Photographic highlights of a hike up (and down) Mount Davis earlier today

This shy dragonfly was not easy to photograph

These pair of dragonflies, on the other hand,
were far less shy and way easier to photograph!

...and lest it not be clear in the other photo what they
were doing, this shot should be revealing enough! ;D

Earlier today, my regular hiking companion and I hiked up (and then down) Mount Davis, Hong Kong Island's westernmost hill, on what turned out to be -- upon checking my records -- my 100th hike in Hong Kong.

A friend had told me that this area was inhabited by many large spiders. While I did see a fair few this afternoon, they just could not compare in either size or number to the spiders spotted on the eastern section of Lamma Island a few weeks back or while hiking along Lantau Trail Stage 10. And although another friend had warned me to watch out for snakes while on Mount Davis at this time of the year, I happily did not catch sight of any of those slithery creatures this afternoon.

Instead, more notable sights on this hike included a few birds of prey flying not too far above us, one blue tailed skink (like that which I had spotted on Mount Parker close to a year ago) and a number of beautiful butterflies of various sizes and colors along with some scenic vistas that took in land, sea and gorgeously blue sky. For all this though, I have to admit the visual highlight of today's hike came in the form of a pair of dragonflies we spotted going at it in earnest -- including in flight as well as while balancing on long leaves!

Like I think I've stated before, one reason why my hiking companion and I get giddily happy upon spotting copulating insects is because they tend to be more focused on each other rather than concerned with getting away from human photographers like us! And should anyone need proof, just take a look at the photos at the top of this blog entry and notice how much nearer I could get to the dragonfly couple than to the single dragonfly -- and how much clearer the photos of the former are vis a vis the latter as well!! :)