So we found the escalators...

Wowzers! There actually are escalators that go up the hills!

The Central-Mid-Levels escalators go from near the waterfront all the way up past SoHo (a trendy restaurant and bar area that popped up due to the easy access from the escalators going by). In the pic, you can see me about to get on near the bottom of the hill where moving walkways will bring me up the first part, but when it gets steeper, escalators prevail.

The whole series of escalators are reversible: they go down during morning rush hour and then up for the rest of the day until midnight when they stop. What a neat way to move people around the city!

Dumplings with Ivana

Due to some small amount of fortune, we managed to meet up with Ivana
in Singapore on our way back to Hong Kong. It was nice to see a
familiar face after four weeks on the road. We proceeded to take her
on a mini-culinary tour of the Orchard road food courts. With three
people we could share/eat more. The first stop was Ambush, my
favourite Italian-Asia fusion restaurant/booth, in the basement of
Takashimaya (try the wild salmon with thai basil tomato sauce). We
moved on to banana leaf rice wraps, asia carrot cake (made of neither
carrot nor cake), and a pizza cone. Yes, a pizza cone, it tastes just
like it sounds. Since Takashimaya was closing, we went across the
street to the new Paragon mall for some fantastic dumplings. These are
hand made on site by an army of white clad chefs (you can see one here
in the background).

Where is the escalator?

When we visited Hong Kong during our 8 hour layover on the way over,
we realize now we were actually taken into Kowloon to look at the view
of the hilly Hong Kong Island. Now we are staying on that hilly
island, and to find our hotel, we used the method of steepest ascent
(we actually overshot our hotel and had to descend a bit down a side
road...thank goodness for the gps on our iPhones so we could check our
navigation).

The stairs just go on and on. Residents must be fit.

Dragonboating in Singapore

During the club crews, the manager from the dragon boat club of the
Canadian Association of Singapore invited all Canadian team members to
come dragon boat with them in Singapore. Although we made our
Singapore plans last minute and had only one night available in
Singapore, we were super lucky and that turned out to be their
alternate practice day for people who had to miss one of the other 2
weekly practices.

The team there is a fun, multi-national team. In fact, we were the
only Canadians out, of the 11 of us paddling. The other 9 represented
8 different countries, and we were told that the full team had members
from 21 countries, and just over 10% of the team is Canadian.

The team practices until dusk, then hauls their BuK boat back out of
the water and pulls out the ice chest full of beer and water. We got a
group photo at this point, but I haven't got it off my camera yet.
Instead, here is Aaron at the boat shed pre-paddle. Notice the maple
leaf on the non-CSA-approved life vest.