LazyChef

Fourth day in Vietnam now and if I was asked to summarize it in few words it would be: mopeds, coffee and cheap food. I could make a whole post about the coffee and food aspect of Vietnam, but I believe that Halong Bay is a more interesting topic for you to read about. 

According to our original plan we were going to spend two nights in Halong Bay and to explore it thoroughly. However it turned out to be impossible to get a decent transportation to there, so we decided to book a day trip through our hotel instead. The cost was about 40 USD and we got transportation and a boat trip with lunch, stop in a cool cave and kayaking in the Halong Bay archipelago. 

Hanoi is quite flat and because of the thousands of mopeds driving pass you every day, the air is also quite bad. So when you get to the destination you really appreciate the views and the fresh air. Since it wasn’t really the right season for cruising around with a boat (still very pleasant though) we felt that 5 hours there was enough. Another option could have been to spend one night on the boat which I would imagine being nice too if you aren’t as impatient travelers as we are.

I wish that Halong Bay was a bit closer to Hanoi (150 km one way took us 4 hours) and we ended up sitting in the bus for most of the day. I guarantee that the bus experience is not relaxing. What I learned during that trip is that red lights are just a suggestion to stop, roundabouts don’t have one driving direction and there isn’t really such a thing as the middle line that separates the two sides of the road. To summarize: the more you break the traffic rules, the better.

That’s where I spent my whole Saturday emailing, writing, researching, editing, working and studying. If I didn’t sit there I was cleaning, doing laundry, cooking or packing. I still have some things to do but I am glad to tell you that I won’t be sitting there tomorrow! Tonight we will fly to Vietnam for a week!

If you have ever read recommendations what to do in Hong Kong, I am sure that Dragon’s Back rings a bell. It is a few hours hike close to the city with amazing views! 

I would not recommend you to hike it on Sundays though. Especially if your only motivation is to get some privacy in the middle of nature. As most of the people in Hong Kong go out on Sundays, it is guaranteed that no matter where you go it will be crowded. Now when I think about it, I would recommend you to do your work and studying indoors on Sundays and explore outdoors on any other day of the week.

You can take a bus to Shek O Peak and start the hike from there. You will get the best views right away after walking up some stairs! The hike will end at Big Wave Bay where you can take a swim before heading back home. 

Dragon’s Back hike has been announced to be the best urban hike by TIME magazine, I am not surprised why. The views are breathtaking! I recommend everyone to do the hike, between Mondays to Saturdays. 

We are already half way through November! I have been so busy with school that I completely lost my sense of time last month! The only thing I do remember from October is that we went to Ocean Park for Halloween. On that day we were free from responsibilities which I really needed! It felt so good after all the studying, that I nominated it “the best day on Earth” and I really didn’t want to leave and go home from there. :D Eventually though we had to come home and it was exactly as horrible as I imagined it to be.

I am not ready to think about the exams yet, however now that the worst of school is behind us, I have had time to think about my adventure and came to the realization that my exchange is soon over! Using the most of my time indoors studying, I panicked a little which lead to me booking a trip to Vietnam and plan all the rest of my free time full of little adventures around Hong Kong.

I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that school won’t throw anymore surprise assessments at me, so that I can collect my prize for having the patience to study and finally enjoy Hong Kong! 

This post is dedicated to the strange things that I have seen here in Hong Kong. Unfortunately the Scandinavian in me does not dare to take pictures of every single situation that I find weird and amusing. Therefore the pictures in this post are taken only of the winning scene in the "Odd Hong Kong” competition.

To keep the excitement up, lets start with small funny things like the popcorn situation here. It’s more common to get sweet and sugary popcorn here rather than salty ones we are used to. This “sugar situation” in general is slightly odd, for example: in my university canteens you can only find “white sugar” and “brown sugar” in little bags to spice up your food. It is impossible to find salt and pepper!

The university/school life here is very different from what I have been used to. Teachers expect a lot from you, weekly exams and projects are not unusual. In fact, some Primary School pupils that I see on the streets roll a small luggage with wheels to carry all of their books to school. Also in the exams the pressure is sometimes so high for students that they start to bleed from their noses. This happened to a guy next to me in one exam where we had 150 questions to be answered in 1,5 hours. That was the fastest 90 minutes of my life!

Careers are clearly important to people here and everyone tries to climb professionally. One situation where I got to proof of this was when complete stranger came up to me in the subway and asked if i could do some kind of project or essay with him. I still don’t know exactly what he wanted me to do but he seemed confident that I would work with him since it would look good on my CV. In addition students seem to live on campus and use the library as a public napping area. 

As you might realize by now, the culture difference is quite big and also affects on how I perceive people’s behavior here. Another example: I don’t think many Scandinavians would walk up to a “different looking person” and asks to take pictures with them. This has happened many times here to me, my boyfriend, and to all of our friends. I think the best one so far was when my 195 cm tall boyfriend made short Filipino girls crazy. They made it very clear that he was the tallest person they had ever seen, took plenty of pictures and were having lot of fun with him.

Finally it is time to reveal the winner and it has something to do with Filipinos again. Every Sunday the streets are full of Filipinos having picnics everywhere. They take over the parks, roads and everything in between. First Sunday we saw this, we thought that they were homeless people or that they were having a protest. You might not get the same weird feeling when you read this, but I promise that it is super strange every Sunday. Imagine walking on a street and people would just sit next to your feet having a picnic. Or that you walk on a bridge that goes over a road and people eat their lunch on the stairs and on the bridge. Not to mention parks! They are literally everywhere. Some of them have proper pots where they cook food for their family and friends. I guess I would do that too if I had to live in a small Hong Kong apartment and had only one day off in a week! 

Last Saturday Hong Kong celebrated the Chinese National Day with a 23 minutes long firework display, firing over 23 000 fireworks. First the sky was full of colors, then a massive ash cloud that covered the highest skyscrapers on the Hong Kong Island.

After the impressive show we took the MTR (that was Crowded!) to the Hong Kong Island. We went to the International Finance Center that is the second tallest building here. IFC has a nice sky deck with a beautiful view where we spent the rest of the evening with friends. Total rating for the evening 10/10!

The biggest holiday after the Chinese New Year might be the Mid-Autumn Festival here in Hong Kong. As the name suggests, it is celebrated in Autumn and all across Asia. The meaning of the festival is to celebrate the new moon, be thankful for the harvest, pray for good fortune and join together with your friends and family. The festival has many names and lot of mystical stories surrounding it. 

One of these names is the “Mooncake festival” and it comes from the tradition of eating and sharing mooncakes with each other. The original mooncake has lotus seed paste inside a thin crust. We had our first mooncake experience at our friend’s place where we drank Chinese tea with the cakes. I didn’t need to eat more than half of a cake to get slightly nauseous from the sweetness. Our friends had received multiple mooncake boxes from their family and they desperately tried to get rid of them. We ended up going home with few extra ones that we still haven’t manage to eat. 

A major event in Hong Kong is to go and see the Fire Dragon Dance during the celebration. We started “dragon hunting” in Victoria Park until we found a 100 meter dancing dragon that was made out of incense sticks poked into stockings filled with pomelo fruits. It was quite hard to see the dragon, and even harder to take pictures of it, but I definitely recommend checking it out if you have the opportunity! It’s not often you can say that “I saw the dragon behind that corner!” and run after it like a kid.

During our orientation week at school we had a chance to go to a one day trip and see the Big Buddha on Lantau Island. According to the travel guide books it’s a very famous landmark and many officers from Mainland China go to this place believing that when they go back home they will get promoted. We saw some people praying and burning incense sticks when we were there as well as some temples and a little village during our one day trip.

When I had my fist lecture and told my curious class mates about my trip to this Buddha they basically just laughed at me. It was very funny to them that I went there together with other exchange students with our cameras to climb up 1000 stairs to see the Buddha. (In real life it was only 200 stairs) Apparently it wasn’t that cool thing to do among young people here. 

I just logged in to my blog for the first time in a year.

First of all, the shock when I got the email and password right on my first try. 

I have to say that I did think twice if I should update the blog or not. My last post was something about a watermelon and this post is going to be something very different…

This is what has been up since the last post: I moved in together with my boyfriend, we took (too) expensive yoga classes and became entrepreneurs, then I studied 200% for a while, watched all the Game of Thrones seasons in a shamefully short time and I managed to work for money as well. Now it’s time for me to go back to my studies. 

So here comes the whole point of this post: I have moved to Hong Kong! For the next few months I am going to study at City University of Hong Kong. I have been here for a week now and I will go back to Sweden in January. What makes me even more excited is that I have found this crazy person in my life who followed me here! We have also planned to travel around after my semester before going back home.

The watermelon blog is now transforming to a blog that has more stuff about travelling, studying and such. I won’t promise anything too specific because I feel quite spontaneous. But what is sure is that everything is deep fried here so no pictures of smoothies!

You know those days when you have been running around the whole day, drank too much coffee and did a crazy workout. In the end of the day you have been sweating like a pig, and when the dinner time comes, your body is so dehydrated that all you can think about is smoothies. Everywhere you look at, you see watermelons. Instead of faces: melons. 

Everyone knows what I’m talking about. Right?

Conclusion:

I ate almost a whole watermelon for dinner. 

Recipe for a super hydrating watermelon smoothie goes like this:

1/2 watermelon

1 lemon

BLEND!

I would have added some mint into the smoothie if I would have had the patience to do that. This time I just ran to my blender and drank the smoothie gracefully with rage.

When the smoothie was gone, I sat in the middle of my kitchen and ate the rest of the watermelon like this:

I was expecting an army for a dinner again and made this huge amount of raw cake in the lasagne pan (for you people who are “wtf” right now: go here). The army never came though... 

This time I made layers and everything. Pear and mango are starring in the cake this time. I was even brave enough to use sesame seeds in the base and it worked surprisingly well!  

Layered raw cake 

Base: 

3 dl oats 

3 dl nuts & seeds 

10 dates 

0,5 dl coconut oil (melted)

If you don’t have a proper blender: blend oats, seeds and nuts separately. Smash the dates and mix all the ingredients together using your hands. If you have a proper blender: just blend all the ingredients. Press the mixture into the bottom of a lasagne pan. Place in the freezer while making the filling.

Layer 1: 

2 avocados 

2 pears 

2,5 dl coconut milk 

0,5 - 1 dl lemon 

vanilla powder 

Blend everything together and pour over the base. (Add some honey to the mixture if you feel like you want to make it a bit sweeter) Let it sit in the freezer for 30-60min.

Layer 2: 

2 bananas 

2 mango 

2,5 dl coconut milk 

1 lemon 

vanilla powder

Blend everything together and pour over the first layer. Let the whole beauty sit in the freezer for at least couple of hours. 

Good morning folks! It is finally Saturday! 

I have a great breakfast tip for you here. It's a particularly useful tip if you are in need of energy and it's sunny outside. 

 Here it comes: 

Banana ice cream for coffee lovers

2-3 frozen bananas 

0,5-1 dl coffee with milk 

1 tbsp coconut oil (melted) 

0,5 tsp vanilla powder 

(Let the bananas melt a bit before blending) 

Blend all the ingredients together and THADAA. 

The hottest thing of the day: 

"Green fast food" 

✔ leafy greens

 ✔tahini

  ✔ green lentils and quinoa

    ➡ mix

      ✔ capers, lemon juice, olive oil, salt & pepper 

More raw bites! Same rules stand as in previous post. Make it a cake if you like and split the recipe if you don’t want to feed a whole army.

Base is the same as on last time. 

Find the recipe for that from here: wihii.

Filling instead goes like this:

4 dl raspberries

4 bananas

4 tbs coconut oil

vanilla powder

Blend everything together and pour over the base. Let it sit in the freezer for at least couple of hours.

As you can see from the picture, I was super creative and made a full amount of base and halved the fillings. So I got half of the lasagne thing in honey melon flavour and the other half in raspberry flavour!

That wasn’t actually the creative part. The creative part comes when you realize the trouble of pouring fillings on top of the base. Of course you could mix the two and make layers. But then this lazy person would have only one post. Or the pictures would be some terrible copy paste stuff from Paint.

Anyways. I used a piece of folio and made “a wall” from that, which I then used to separate the two sides of my lasagne pan. Then I poured the first filling on top of the thing and put it in the freezer. After that had set, I took the wall away and poured the other filling on top of the base.