doddelidoing workeddywork

I gues my plans of returning to HongTheKong are put on the back burner, as I'm all about working on a great project, I created together with my friends, which actually is turning out to be a far bigger success than expected! It's called toolani, which is derived from 'tulani', which is indian for 'endless' and it's actually a service which allows you to do cheap calls all over the world, like you know it from skype or jajah. I'd be so glad if you'd pass by our project on www.toolani.de and soon (after the completion of the Beta Phase) on www.toolani.com  and I'd be even more pleased to read your feedback!

Best Of Gallery

As months are passing by, i'won't give up blogging here;
So I just finished a little collection of the best photographs on my brandnew
photo-page, so if you're just here to watch my pics, i suggest you have a look at http://views.valcoholic.at/views/HongtheKong.html instead of clicking thru all posts (althouth this blog contains about 10times more photos; the collection got only the best ones)

I'll also add some other galleries in the future (like you now already can watch my pictures of waldviertel - the austrian countryside )

val

Tonight Showing: Hong The Kong - the MOVIE!

Good News everyone!

I'm finally finding the time to release this masterpiece of western cinematic art;
I'm sure it'll get one of those oscar nominations for the best documentary (and the oscar itself of course)
and my lovely hongthekong-community got the honour to watch this flick before the rest of the world

the director says:"it was difficult to focus on the main character's emotions, but thanks to our great staff i never questioned the movie to get as great as i wanted it to be"

the press says:"a milestone in the human history of cinema, this shoud be the one document, mankind will send into space in case we should try to contact lifeforms from other planets, one day."

so get your limited copy now for free by klicking this ZIP-icon!

From HongtheKong to GoGoChicaGo

As I gonna fly over to the USA to visit my grandmother in may, I set up a brand new weblog, GoGoChicaGo to documentate this trip;
it won't be as highly frequented as HongtheKong, but hopefully I'll find enough time to post.
I'm just glad to get out of Austria again; after HK I think I've aquired a taste for travelling.
Ay, I totally forgot I still got some material to post here; so hold on, it won't take me too long to finally post it here!

Shek it O-ut

On Sunday i found the time to get myself a bus to Shek O Countrypark, a place that attracts people with the opportunity to go paragliding, surfing or hiking as well as just relaxing at one of the several seafood restaurants or the bars at the beach.

First i checked out the beach, where i sat about an hour just photographing the water with the highest possible shutterspeed, which looks (in my opinion...) pretty cool
(the higher the shutterspeed, the clearer the picture when you shoot fast moving motifs like water in this case)


I roamed a bit along the beach and then went by bus to the beginning of the shek o trial, that's a 8,5 km long path through the whole country park that takes about 4 hours;
as i hadn't that much time, i just went somehow about an hour following a path, then i got a precious advice from a hiking woman to go back over a path called dragon's back, because it leads over several tops of hills where you got an amazing view over the whole country park and some outlying islands.
Paragliders used the warm winds to sit in the air, seemed pretty cool and relaxing to me, wish i could have hung over there too but got at least some pretty shots for you.

Finally the trial lead me back to the bus station, so i went down to shek o villaage to get some dinner; found a thai seafood restaurant where i ate rice with mixed seafood, vegetables and coconut pieces, came served in in a big coconut and tasted pretty good.

The following three days, I spent most of the time in visiting the places of HK in random, for example i went to Hung Hom with the ferry, just because i didn'nt knew the ferry yet
hung hom was actually only a common residential area altough they got a huge mall looking like a cruise ship (and of course it seems some kind of weird, when you suddenly see a cruiser amid those blocks of flats...).
so i went to several shops, mandy has showed me before and visited places like causeway bay or mong kok again, just to say good bye to hong kong and to take some last pictures (martin, i finally made enough fotos from the bag-goldfishes) and of course tried to spend as much time as possible with my friends, i eventually won't see them again for years.

Wednesday night i finally left Hong Kong and as you can read i my previous post i wrote on that day; i wasn't too glad about my return.
now that i'm back in vienna, i'm at least happy to see my family and friends again, but everything seems so small, empty, silent, slow and whatever else (at least it's not too bad that vienna is far more silent then HK)
i think i'll need some time till i accustom to this new old home, but i'm afraid, that won't happen till spring, because the weather conditions here are just freezing cold (i don't say anything against snow, but if it becomes a snow storm, then it starts getting nasty)

ah, by the way, now that i'm able to load all my pictures i've taken, onto my computer, i nnounce happily that i took about 1500 pictures in total, whereof about 790 are at least good (not blurry, not overexposured and so on) plus really well done 135 favorites (you can find most of them in the posts of hongthekong)

so, finally, this is the last narrative post on hong the kong, of course, i'll continue posting, but now that i can't travel through HK anymore, i'll write about hk in overall (and of course you can send me your questions at val.htk@gmail.com ), so check back to read about the Octopus Card, nightlife, eating and hopefully far more...

val your pal says farewell is hell

i've never tought, it'd be that hard to say good bye to hong kong; i really feel sad, altought i'm serious now to return here soon.
I have to thank mandy for the time she spent in showing me this place and the life beyond,
joe for being such a good flatmate (and actually for giving me the opportunity to be his flatmate by letting me stay in his apartment), everybody i met here for the great time in general and of course everybody who visited the blog so regularly, making me know, vienna hasn't forgotten me yet.

of course this blog isn't over yet, i got a bunch of pictures and will do some posts in the upcoming days (weeks?!), so check back for updates.

i got 12 hours left so i think i should go now instead of wasting time in writing, i'll try to check back as soon as possible to tell you about the past three days.

so fareval hong the kong!

PS: just if anybody in vienna wants to know: i'm back tomorrow afternoon, but maybe i'll spend the next few weeks crying in my room....mmmmh...nyah, maybe not

only 5 days to go

Update: as mentioned before i finally added all picture contents to this blogentry; thanks for your patience, live long and prosper.

sadly my time in hong the kong is running out and i'll return to vienna on wednesday night;
but fortunately i can say by now, that i have visited all important places by now, so in this blogpost, i'll tell you about the 3 last ones.

Aberdeen

Tuesday afternoon i decided to finally go to aberdeen, a part of hong kong that is famous for it's harbour and at last, i can tell there is not too much to see but this harbour...
the town itself is just a common living environment but going by boat between the streets built of hundrets of boats and fishing ships is really quite cool;
and with the shuttleferry for the jumbo floating restaurant, you got even a boat tour for free!
the jumbo floating restaurant itself is a quite weird construction,
it's an pretty old restaurant floating in the harbour decorated with plenty of cliche;elements like huge dragons with glowing eyes and this stuff, totally overdone after all, but fun to watch.





as i wanted to save money i got myself for about 1,2 euro sweet sour pork with rice, sounds cheap but also tasted cheap, the pork was actually only something like fried bones...eeewww i just couldn't eat that, so happily i got invited by mandy and her friends to join them going to a quite good restaurant that was truely worth every dollar.

Sai Kung
the next day i followed the recommendations of several people and went to sai kung,
alas i wasted too much time before, so i had just about one hour to stay here, but it was quite nice.

sai kung is a region at the sea including many of very small islands which looks really wonderful.
you can go to the pier and buy fish frome the fishers who sell it right form the boat, so i don't think you could get it any fresher elsewhere.
in general a really nice place; i wish i had more time but on that evening i had to leave my apartment to move to joes aoartment where i'm now staying.






Lamma Island

as i woke up after a long night visiting some amazing clubs (in Hong Kong they got those clubs on the 30th floor where you can enjoy the full view over the city, pretty cool, particularly if the music and the clubsetting is cool too, which was actually the case...)i noticed the weather was too perfect again to waste the day with
sleeping so i got up and made my way to lamma island.

Lamma island is the third largest island of Hong the kong and i don't know what to say, it was just beautiful there!
i like it as good as peng chau (see previous posts) because they don't got any traffic there and you got a really nice island atmosphere,
the only con is the big powerstation which can be seen from every point of the island and produces a weird impression, together with the rest of the very natural island atmosphere.

Lamma also offers some of the best beaches of Hong Kong (altouth i wouldn't go swimming at the most of them because mostly the water is just too dirty)
and of course very cute fishing villages full of all-day-relaxing-island people,
so i got a really delicious lunch (fish and prawns with rice, vegetables and a garlic-ginger sauce) and some fisherboat pictures, which i can't get enough from..
finally i followed the trial to Sok Kwu Wan village, which is placed at a very flat and really cool looking beach.
there i met a german speaking couple who told me tha i could take the ferry to aberdeen instead of waiting 90 minutes for the next going to HK central;
so i had, at last, a ride on a small ferry on the open deck, which was kinda cold but of course very nice.

















in the night i joined my friends at a korean dinner in a very good restaurant,
i,ve never eaten korean food before but now i just can say that i'm looking forward to do that again;
they have little grilling places integrated into the table and serve just a huge amount of all kinds of flesh, togeher with plenty of free beverages,
delicious!
afterwards we went to have some desert at a place where you get some kind of milk pudding, nobody could tell me how they do that but its a typical chinese dish and tasted surprisingly well!

by the way, i'm now writing from joe's notebook, so i'll place my thanks for letting me do that (and of course for everything else) here.

next blogpost could be the last from hong kong so keep on klicking the refresh button!

blogger errors

Users are unable to comment posts, i can't upload pictures....srange things goin on on hong the kong, sorry for that, but i got no clue what's going on here...
hopefully everything's fine soon,
but of course you can reach me by email val.htk@gmail.com