On top of the world?

So I nearly rented an apartment on the weekend.


So nearly.


The apartment itself was a bit meh. Not that big, not that new. Definitely acceptable, but it was also HK$20,000 a month ($2,700). Now, that's a fairly standard sort of price for a decent apartment in Hong Kong, but this one was just a little too small, a little too just not the best. It also would've required me to buy a lot of furniture, which on my budget, would probably not have gone very well. The one thing it did have however - that nearly made me throw all caution to the wind - was a rooftop. Designated entirely for this apartment, it was a bigass courtyard on the roof of this 27 story apartment block. You could see almost the whole island from there and barbeque things while doing it.


I know in my head, not taking this money sink was the right thing to do as I would've spent a fortune blinging it up, & whenever it rained, the apartment itself would've gotten small quick. But damned if my heart isn't still kicking me for being so sensible. People just don't have this kind of space in Hong Kong. The below pic makes it look a bit shithouse, but all you have to do is mentally throw in a BBQ & some plants & viola! You're in the land of get-away-from-it-all.

Left is the Peak. Right is the city & bay. Priceless. Unless you have a price :(

Sunday morning, however, was a bit more of a success. Went for another run up to the Peak & this time I didn't almost crap a kidney doing it. It's truly astonishing what three days without running & one day off the booze can do for the human body.


So we bashed that out. Neeeeearly made it to the top without stopping, gasping for breath & trying to get my legs to stop shaking like Christopher Walkin in Weapon of Choice. Poor Ken sounded like he was going to cough up an entire Chilean tobacco growing community. Actually, that kind of made me feel a bit better to be honest....Anyway, so we finally made it to the Peak after walking the last 10% like little girl's blouses, then picked up the pace again to run the whole circuit. That was also killer, but we did it as I think we both had something to prove to ourselves. Then it was breakfast time. In China.

Y'all know I like Chinese food. And breakfast.


Oh yeah.

Big feasts!

Mmmmm, breakfast wonton noodle soup. I wonder if there's a weet bix in there somewhere?

So that was a completely kick arse meal at a famous place called Mak's Noodles, which has decided to cash in & open a second restaurant on top of a frigging mountain. Works for me!


And after that, we walked all the way back down again. Which was nearly as hard as the trip up given that my legs has decided to mutiny & had jettisoned all energy from themselves in protest of the run I'd put them through an hour earlier. Stupid legs, I thought. F*ck you, I'll show you who's boss! So I decided to walk home.


After about 45 seconds or so it stopped seeming like such a good idea, but it actually turned out to be fairly pleasant. Hong Kong has a long stretch & scratches it's nuts for at least 4 hours on Sunday mornings & is actually relatively quiet for the most part. So I just sort of wandered through a park & took a couple of snaps on my way home. Where incidentally I ate more noodles. Enjoy:

That one guy wrecked this photo. What a dick.

Hong Kong, yo.

Same dude. Backdrop is supposed to be some kind of inspired City vs Park, but it really doesn't work.

There's also a really crazy phenomenon in Hong Kong on Sundays that doesn't really register until you get here. An outcome of Hong Kong being populated with a massive number of bankers & high-flying executive knobs is that this city is chockers with domestic helpers, most of whom are from the Philippines. And most of them get the day off on Sunday. So effectively Hong Kong becomes little Manila. It's completely crazy, I'll take some shots next week. No use explaining without visual aids.


Anyway, I saw a bunch of these ladies all heading to church, Philippinos being the devout Catholics they are. And upon clapping eyes on their destination, I just had to take some pictures of the church. Tell me this building doesn't look horribly out of place. Firstly, it's blue. And not just blue, but like a kind of "Hi don' theenk so honey. Joo wanna wear that, joo so gonna need like a lemon scarf an' flats or joo just gonna look like one o them hookers from the ceety" *click fingers*. Also, it's that kind of Gaudi-was-a-genius-but-it's-the-70's-now-so-we-pretend-not-to-care sort of architecture that was so popular in Spain for about 15 minutes. Well, I thought it was remarkable. you be the judge:

Euw

Eek.

WTF?

Special mention however goes to the Lippo Centre. I was over photos & over the morning. I wanted home, a shower & good, long sit down. But I had to stop & take just one more of this total mess. Funny how standing directly under a building, you get a whole different idea of just how much crystal meth or meow meow some architects must smoke when they're designing buildings in super cities. What goes on in their heads?!? 'How do I make this building stand out from the rest in a city that is only such buildings? I know, I'll make it look like the kind of disaster that would be born if Optimus Prime shagged a coffee grinder. Yeah!'

Good. Gravy.