Friends Come to Visit Hong Kong and Beijing

Pat, Eleni, Zoe and Stella on a Sampan in Aberdeen, Hong Kong.

In May 2019, Stella's friends from church came to Hong Kong to visit.  Eleni, Pat and Zoe did all of things to do in Hong Kong.  They went to Beijing and saw the Forbidden City, Great Wall and Summer Palace as well.  Finally, they shopped until they dropped in Hong Kong and in Shenzhen.  Since all of those great places have already been amply described in our previous blog posts, this blog post will focus on another amazing part of their visit... the food!!!

Hong Kong is a foodie paradise.  It has 63 Michelin starred restaurants, including seven restaurants with three Michelin stars.  By comparison, Chicago has only 22 Michelin starred restaurants and only one, Alinea, with three Michelin stars. 

Because Hong Kong is the financial center of Asia and a former British colony, it has over one million expats who have brought incredible food from every corner of the earth.  During their brief stay, Eleni, Pat and Zoe had Dim Sum, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, English, Greek, Spanish, French and American food.  They had Peking Duck in Peking (now Beijing) and fresh food at home from the Hong Kong wet market.  They had Dim Sum at a Michelin starred restaurant in the basement of a train station and brunch with free flowing Dom Perignon at the Ritz Carlton on the 118th floor of the ICC building, which is ten stories higher than the top floor of the Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago.

Opa! 

Cocktails before having Indian food on Eleni's birthday.

Free flowing Dom Perignon at the
Ritz Carlton in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Lunch in Repulse Bay,
Hong Kong (HK Fusion).

Summer Palace in Beijing
with our favorite tour
guide, Belle. Our
our friends Sandy and
Jan popped in from
Chicago for the day. 

Enjoying our Peking Duck in Beijing.

Hong Kong Park.

Enjoying breakfast at a local
English pub in the Athanas' neighborhood. 

Mr. Lu's house in Beijing.

Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

Great Wall of China.

Enjoying a nightcap after a busy day in Hong Kong. 

Maldives

Sunset on our last evening in the Maldives.

Peter was headed to Thailand for a school trip and Joe was in London for work.  Stella and Joe decided to meet in the middle and have a nice vacation while Peter was in Thailand.  Halfway between Hong Kong and London is Kazakhstan.  That didn’t sound very relaxing, so we looked south, way south, and found the Maldives, a group of islands 620 miles south of India in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

The Maldives were inhabited for at least 2,000 years before Europeans arrived on the scene.  For 1,400 years, the Maldives were Buddhist.  Then, around the 12^th century, the Maldives converted to Islam.  The Portuguese arrived and took over in 1558.  Their attempts to convert the Maldives to Christianity were met with a violent revolt.  Then the Dutch ruled from about 1650 to 1796, when the British took over.  This brief history lesson explains why there are direct flights from London and Singapore to Male, Maldives.  

The flight from London to Male is 11 hours and the flight from Hong Kong to Male via Singapore is about 9 hours.  The first thing you notice about the Maldives when you land in Male is that it is an Islamic country.  All of the women (other than the many tourists in shorts and t-shirts) are dressed very conservatively wearing hijabs.  The second thing you notice is the incredible light blue ocean, which comes right up to the Male airport.

Our resort was not on Male island.  Once we arrived in Male, we had to fly in a small propeller plane about 1.5 hours to Addu, the southernmost island in the Maldives.  At the Addu airport, we were met by a golf cart, which took us to a dock.  We then got on a boat and rode the waves to the Shangri-La resort on very nearby Villingili island.  

This is the Shangri-La dock.

When you arrive on Villingili island, the conservative dress disappears.  The friendly staff, which live on the island with their families, greet you at the dock with a cold drink and drive you to your villa in a golf cart.   

Joe reading on our tree-top
ocean villa deck.

Shangri-La owns the whole 3.5km long jungle island on which the resort is situated.  Our villa was on stilts overlooking the Indian Ocean on the southwest side of the island and consisted of two buildings connected by a giant deck with a private pool in the middle.  The villa was surrounded by jungle on all sides and, despite having an open view to the ocean, was completely secluded and private.  It was absolutely amazing.  

Joe riding his bike through
the jungle path.

The resort gave us bicycles to get around.  Bike paths had been cut through the jungle in the middle of the island so that the guests could get from place to place.  

The spa was just a short walk from our villa.  There was a town in the middle of the island about 2 km from our villa with shops and three restaurants.  There was a dive shop there where you could pick up free snorkeling gear and drop it off at the end of your stay.  And, of course, a bar on the beach with nice bartenders and a croquet court.

Before a morning round of golf.

 On the northeast side of the island was a beautiful nine hole golf course.  The course was short (par 30), but the greens were tiny and every hole had jungle on the left and ocean on the right.  Thus, it was extremely challenging.

Stella was a dominant force in croquet, winning six games to four.  In golf, however, Joe was victorious, shooting par one day and getting an eagle another day. 

Stella's lunch.

The restaurants were all outstanding.  The food was a yummy fusion of Indian, Asian and Middle-Eastern.

The quality of the villa, the friendliness of the people at the resort, the enjoyment of biking everywhere through the shady jungle, the relaxation of great massages, the deliciousness of the food, the competition of golf and croquet, and the refreshment of jumping in our private pool whenever we got too hot was absolutely perfect.

We returned to Hong Kong happy and relaxed.

The first hole on the golf course.

The Shangdi-La's water villas.

Stella at the pool.

View from our breakfast table.

Our favorite restaurant.

Our amazing tree-top ocean villa. 

Our villa's pool.

Stella at dinner.

Sunset at dinner.

The beauitful white sand beach
and light blue ocean.

Our villa's outdoor lounge at sunrise.

The Shangri-La's sail boat.

Joe enjoying a cold
local beer, CHEERS!

Happy and relaxed.

Malaysia

Joe, Stella and Peter in the center of Kuala Lumpur.

For Chinese New Year we decided to take a trip to Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi, Malaysia.  Kuala Lumpur is about a four hour flight from Hong Kong.  Spiro was stuck at Indiana University in sub-zero weather and was unable to join us.  

The Kuala Lumpur airport.

The Kuala Lumpur airport is a long way from the city.  We jumped in a taxi and it took about an hour to get to our hotel.  On the way, we passed row after row of huge palm trees for miles, something we had never seen before.

Kuala Lumpur is a very modern city.  It has beautiful highways and many modern skyscrapers, with many more under construction.  Peter was surprised and impressed by how developed and modern Kuala Lumpur seemed.  

One of the Petronas Twin Towers.

We quickly checked in to our hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, and then rushed to meet our tour guide.  The Mandarin Oriental was absolutely beautiful, fully decorated for Chinese New Year.  It is right up the street from the Petronas Twin Towers, which are taller than the Sears Tower and much more aesthetically pleasing.

Our tour guide, Povan, was a heavy-set Indian fellow, who has lived in KL all his life.  We met him at the Railway Station.  The Railway Station was constructed in 1910 by a British architect using a Moorish style.  According to Povan, the Railway Administration Building across the street was the original railway station built by the same architect in the 1890s, “but then they realized that they didn’t want the tracks coming from over there, they wanted them coming from over here,” so they built another railway station across the street in 1910.  

After that, we walked under a tree and Povan told us a little about Kuala Lumpur.  According to Povan, “Kuala Lumpur” means “where two muddy rivers meet.”  Kuala Lumpur was originally built as a tin mining town.  Then, according to Povan, the British brought just nine rubber tree seeds from the Amazon and Malaysia became one of the biggest producers of rubber in the world.  After World War Two, when synthetic rubber came into use, Malaysia’s big export shifted from rubber to palm oil.  At this point, during a long talk about how palm oil is in everything we use from shampoo to toothpaste (eighth wonder of the world, according to Pavan), we understood why there were so many palm trees lining the highway.  

The original railway station.

The new railway station.

Malaysia’s most profitable export, however, is offshore oil.  That is why the tallest buildings in town are named after Petronas, the national oil company.

Details in the Mosque.

Povan then walked us over to the National Mosque.  According to Povan, Malaysia has three major ethnic groups, the Malays, who are about 67% of the population, Chinese, who are about 24%, and Indians, who are about 9%.  The Malays are Muslim, so Malaysia’s national religion is Islam.  Because Stella and I were wearing shorts and she had no head scarf, we got to wear very nice purple robes for our tour of the Mosque.  The National Mosque was designed by a British architect in 1965 and is very modern.  It may be the only Mosque in the world without a dome.

Stella and Joe wearing very nice
purple robes in the Mosque.

 Peter very happy not to be wearing
a polyester purple robe.

Peter, Povan and Joe 
at the National Mosque. 

Queen Victoria Fountain
by the first Anglican Church. 

From the Mosque we walked to the center of the city, where the British built a group of buildings, including the first administration building, the first post office, the first bank, the first country club, the first Anglican Church and, of course, the first cricket field, all in about a two-block area.  Behind those buildings is the spot where the two rivers actually meet.  There is a big market there and lots of restaurants.

Fresh fruit stand in the market.

The center of Kuala Lumpur.

This is the spot where the two rivers actually meet.

From there we walked into Chinatown.  Until relatively recently, the majority of the population of Kuala Lumpur was Chinese, because the Chinese were brought there to work the tin mines and rubber plantations.  Being from Hong Kong, Chinatown looked very familiar.  Also familiar was a small Chinese temple Pavan pointed out.  

The outside entrance of the Hindu temple.

After that, we went to a very elaborate Hindu temple.  Povan, who is Hindu, had a lot to say about his religion.  He said that in ancient times, Hindus made everything they couldn’t explain a god.  Don’t understand how the Sun can be warm?  It’s a god.  Don’t understand how the wind can be invisible yet blow?  It’s a god.  Thus, according to Povan, the Hindus have 33 million gods, which we presume includes the new 2019 Rules of Golf.  Can anyone understand them?  We think not.  The other interesting thing Povan said was that on the roof of every Hindu temple there are brass containers.  They channel the energy from the sun and the moon down to the copper-lined base of the temples, they act as lighting rods to protect the temples from lightening and they are filled with seeds, which are replaced in a big ceremony every 12 years.  Thus, if the end of the world comes, you can pull the seeds right off the roof of a Hindu temple and start over.  

Inside the Hindu temple.

Details of the outside entrance of the Hindu temple.

The brass containers on top of the Hindu temple.

Details of a wall mural in the Hindu temple.

Details of a wall mural in the Hindu temple.

Geo-forest.

Our final stop was a little geo-forest that is preserved right in the middle of the city.  Povan pointed out a nearby church and said that when the Japanese invaded in World War II they turned it into a noodle factory.  “Anything to humiliate the British.”  Povan then explained how the movie the Bridge Over the River Kwai was all wrong.  “The English all ran off to fight the Germans long before the Japanese got here.  The only people left to fight were the Indians.  We and the Chinese were the ones who the Japanese forced to build that railroad over there.  There weren’t any English guys at all.  You can’t trust Hollywood.  They never get it right.”  

Peter in the geo-forest.

After that story, Povan, who was probably getting hungry after a long day of hosting us, began to talk about how great Malaysian food is because it is a spicy fusion of Indian, Malay and Chinese.  “We have the very best food over here.”  He was very disappointed when, at the end of our tour, Stella asked for directions to the only Irish Pub in Kuala Lumpur.  We had a couple pints and some relatively bland food.  After that, we headed back to our room.  Joe fell asleep immediately, but Stella and Peter played gin rummy late into the evening.  

Early the next morning, we took a taxi back to the airport and headed to Langkawi.  Langkawi is a lovely Island full of monkeys (we must have seen 50 on our way from the airport to our resort) and mountainous rainforests, surrounded by beautiful beaches.

We stayed at the Andaman, which is a wonderful and relaxing resort in the middle of the rainforest on Northwest side of the Island, with a meandering pool and a secluded beach.  We laid by the pool all day and had cocktails and dinner on the beach in the evening.

In the mornings, Stella and Joe played golf at the Els Club Teluk Datai, which some rank one of the 100 top courses in the world.  The first day was even, but after Stella lost a contact lens on the second day, Joe was victorious.  

Peter and Stella at the Andaman.

Peter and Joe enjoying a beach dinner at the Andaman.

Stella and Peter at a beach dinner.

The pool at the Andaman Resort.

Peter on his way to the pool.

Joe coming back from golfing.

Stella and Peter relaxing after a long day at the beach.

We all returned to Hong Kong happy and relaxed.