The Star that Doesn't Shine

After we had the steaming hot pot food, we all felt very bloated. We needed a walk for all those food to settle, so we took a bus going across the underwater tunnel to the Star Ferry pier on Kowloon side for a stroll and look at the night scene of Victoria Harbour.

The clock tower is the landmark of the pier, so as the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. The clock tower is probably the most photographed landmark at the Star Ferry pier, and the cultural centre looks like an alien spaceship stranded on earth.

I was quite disappointed as the view across the straits was very misty that night. However, I still try to shoot some photos with that misty feeling. I know I was just trying to comfort myself, but not many people have shot the Victoria Harbour night scene under this kind of weather.

Did you see that? I've made the Bank of China disappeared! Nobody has ever done that, I think.

Before we left for the hotel to call it a day, I spotted a traditional sailboat passing by and I took a quick snapshot of that. There ain't many left in the Hong Kong waters.

Steaming Steam

On the second night in Hong Kong, Nee was craving for the steamboat out of hunger, so we flipped through our food bible and found this place at Wan Chai (湾仔). There's no English signboard, but the pronunciation of the name in Cantonese is Jau Gwat Hei (有骨气). The steamboat here is different from others for its dim sum items. Imagine putting in siew mai (烧米) into the steaming soup is interesting enough.

There were many choices of soup, but we were not adventurous enough to try other things than the standard spinal-chord bone soup. There were also chopped sweet corn segments in the soup. We didn't know that and ordered an extra portion of sweet corn. However, we wallop up almost all of the sweet corn segments!

Three typical Kuchingites couldn't live without meat balls in steamboat, so our first item on the bill was this plate of pork and beef balls.

Some people say that mushrooms are vegetarians' meat. We couldn't agree more as they really tasted like meat.

These were the most interesting items we put into the steamboat. They are dim sum items but cooked in the steaming pot.

There were also two types of sliced fish meat. One type was from eel and I forgot what type of fish the other was from.

I know a lot of people are going to tell me animal fat is bad for health, but I don't wanna know!

After we had finished all the food on our table, we started to peep onto tables of others to see if we have missed out the goodies. However, we were too full for anything else!

Wordless Wednesday – Ice-cream Break Time!

The Quest for the White Cloud

Last Sunday was an overcast day which was really good to laze on my bed, but I had to wake up at around 5 a.m. to join my first ever outing with the Kuching Shutterbugs. I met up with six of them at the MJC Expert Food Court at around 6:30 a.m., and we departed to the Batu Kawa Old Township for 'kolo mee' which was very good. The coffee at the same stall by the turning into the Township has really superb aroma!

After savouring all the hungry photographers with 'kolo mee' and coffee, we met up with another group member at the Red Bridge and we headed straight to the Kubah National Park. We started the quest on concrete pavement, at which there were many photography opportunities along the way, including macro shots.

At about the altitude of 900 feet, we had to turn into the jungle trail to start our 1.5 km jungle trekking towards the White-cloud Waterfall (白云瀑布). This jungle trail is filled with leeches, and I was on shorts and sandals! I was lucky to have been bitten by just one leech that I pull off quickly from my thigh. I managed to shoot a few more macro shots along the jungle trail before we reached the waterfall.

The walk took us about 2 hours as we stopped occasionally to shoot. It would have taken us longer if we were not shooed by one of the group members!

We spent about two hours to shoot the waterfall from left, right and centre, at almost any possible angle. The rocks were very slippery and a few of us fell without damaging our gear. I am shy to say that I contributed to that statistics!

The returning route was very taxing on my legs as we had to walk ascending most of the time. Climbing the steps of the last 50 metres made me felt like I was climbing 50 storeys! However, it was fun shooting with this group of people, as all of them are truly enthusiastic about photography.