A different high

I was barely home this weekend. My first weekend in HK after my Taipei trip

and for those who know me (or who have traveled with me), that's saying a

lot about my current state. You see, I have a bed time and I'm pretty strict

on it as going past it has very serious consequences. And when I'm on

holidays (how very English eh, Josin?), I tell myself that bedtimes, or any

form of proper rest for that matter, are not allowed. When you paid quite

some to fly somewhere, you are there to see places, experience cultures and

eat weird food-- not to sleep until noon after a big night out. Thus, after

very single holiday, I need at least a weekend (or 2, depending on the how

strenuous the trip was-- for all that biking in China, I needed around a

month! That was bad!) to recover. But the past weekend was anything but

quiet rest.

 

Friday night after work was dinner with some friends then off to a night of

1 drink that got me home just a little before 5 am. I was a wreck who woke

up at 2 pm on a Saturday. After some conference calls with Grace and the

guys, we agreed to meet for some dim sum (at 4 pm! We were deluded!). But of

course, dim sum time is over so we had a good lunch (at around 5 pm, we were

all together in Kwai Fong the previous night so all those present started

our days after noon) instead. Then we wanted to do something "laid back" so

we hopped on the tram to Victoria Park and walked around a bit. After which,

we went to play a game of bowling (that, by the way, is the most complicated

process I have ever gone through just to throw a heavy ball and topple

pins-- maybe Grace will tell the story in her blog, I feel exhausted just

thinking about it!). We called it a night around 11 pm after a good

Vietnamese dinner.

 

Now, on to the highest point (literally and figuratively -with a tang of

sarcasm- *peace Kian!*) of my weekend. Kian organized/planned this trailing

(it was more climbing than trailing, really) activity up 495 meters to see

the amazing view from the Lion's Rock somewhere in the New Territories. He

was assuring everyone that it's an easy trail. I read in the Lonely Planet

that there are easy parts and hard parts but Master Kian said we'll only do

the easy parts and we believed him like blind ducks. Hehe. So off we went.

We started around 1:30 pm for what we expected to be an hour to 2 hours of

easy walking. Okay, easy was far from it. We were climbing the steep

mountain holding on to barks and ropes for dear life (well, that last bit

was an exaggeration but really, it WAS NOT EASY!). We were all sweating like

pigs under the scorching heat of the sun which couldn't have been said

better when Yurgo the Greek said, "we chose the perfect time for hiking."

Haha! We stopped a couple of times for rest as some of us felt like one more

step is just asking a little too much from our already exhausted legs. There

were a couple of spots that were so temptingly comfortable (sitting on a

rock under the shade of a tree with the cool breeze on your face) but we had

to go on. As Marcos (another Greek, they have this penchant for quotable

quotes) put it, "we are not the meek ones to stop mid-way"--or something to

that tune, I was too tired to remember his exact words. Haha! After a little

more leg-abuse, we got there. We made it!

 

495 meters up is definitely a better view of Hong Kong. If going up is too

much work (it is, believe me and save your legs!), I took some photos from

up there. Beautiful eh? It should be, I woke up with the most sore legs in

the world this morning and I guess, for the rest of the week.

Done