Anilao 2018: Stop in Hong Kong (Day 2)

Pork bun!

In the morning we met up with Bev at Tim Ho Wan, which is a dim sum chain that has a Michelin star (for some of the other locations).  We went to the one at the IFC mall.  There was a short wait, but it was not too bad.  The food was very tasty; the bbq pork buns (baked not steamed) were really really good.  After that, we visited the Apple store so that Rob could attempt to replace a laptop charger that he accidentally left in Taiwan.  Unfortunately they didn't have any with the right plug.  But it's got to be the best Apple store ever (not that I am really into Apple stores) because of the view.  Then we went for coffee and chatted about what to do with the day.

Noodles

We decided to head to Peng Chau, which is a little island village that you can reach by ferry.  The good thing about this plan was that the ferry ride was well chilled.  But once we were there, it was insanely hot outside, and we were walking around in the middle of the day.  We alternated short bouts of walking with going into places with air conditioning.  We did manage to walk around the island a bit, and found a place with cheap stir fried noodles and fruity slushy drinks.  Ahhh, slushy drinks.  Then we decided to head back to the city and rest for a bit.  In the air conditioning.

Later in the afternoon, we went to Bev and Matt's apartment.  We brought Rob's birthday cake and ate that, and hung out for a bit, and got to play with (or attempt to play with) their cat, who I managed to not take a picture of :( 

View from the ferry

Then we went to Sai Kung for dinner, which is an area with a lot of fishing villages and thus a lot of seafood restaurants.  We took a ferry and then a long cab ride to get there.  By the time we got there, I was melting from the heat, even though it was long past sundown.  We went to a restaurant called Loaf On.  Bev ordered way too much food, which was all delicious.  One of the more delicious items was abalone.  Mmmmm.

Abalone

After attempting to kill us with food, Bev insisted that we return to Central to go to a bar (or some bars, to be more accurate).  She wanted us to go to Quinary, which is apparently one of the ten best bars in the world (whatever that means).  But it was way too crowded, so we continued on to another bar, whose name unfortunately eludes me.  There are just too many trendy bars in this part of Hong Kong to be able to find it using google maps :P  We eventually continued on to yet another bar, 001, whose entrance is an unmarked black door with a door bell and video camera.  You ring the bell and they decide if they want to let you in.  They eventually let us in :P  Well the concept is a bit silly but it was a pretty nice, comfy bar.

That was all of the excitement I could take for one night, so we eventually headed back to our hotel, with not that many hours until we had to leave for Manila in the morning.  Yawn.

Anilao 2018: Stop in Hong Kong (Day 1)

Cab ride in Hong Kong

Rob was in Asia the week before our trip to Anilao, so I met him in Hong Kong and we hung out there for a couple days with our friend Bev (and her not-so-imaginary boyfriend, Matt).  It was not the ideal time to visit Hong Kong, as it was super hot.  But we had a lot of fun, in between feeling like I might collapse from heat stroke.  I'd really like to go back sometime in the winter (or at least not the peak of summer).

PDB on flight to Hong Kong

I arrived in Hong Kong on a Friday morning, and Rob and Bev also flew back to Hong Kong that morning, so we planned to meet at the airport.  The flight was uneventful, and actually better than expected.  I flew premium economy on Cathay Pacific, which was better than I expected.  I managed to sleep for a reasonable amount of time, which I didn't expect to be able to do without a lie-flat seat :)  Plus they gave me champagne before takeoff, which is really all that's necessary to make me happy.  Anyhoo, I arrived a couple hours before Rob and wandered the airport and had some dim sum.  We eventually met up and headed to the hotel, but Rob had a meeting in the afternoon.  So he deposited me at the hotel and I went to the pool and napped for a while, until Bev was free for a late lunch.

Brisket noodles!

She took me to a "brisket noodle" place called Kau Kee, which was a tiny restaurant with a ridiculously long line in front of it.  But somehow the line moved incredibly fast, so after not too long at all, we were seated (at a table shared with some other random people) and we (well mostly Bev) ordered some delicious noodle soup with delicious meat in it.  And iced coffee, which is exactly what I needed considering the heat and jet lag.  The bowl of soup was pretty small, so we ate it quickly and moved along, which explained how they could move people through there so quickly.  We walked around a little bit and eventually made our way to the escalators that run through central Hong Kong, and took that up the hill a little bit to Tai Kwun.  It's a good thing for those escalators or I would have died of heat stroke walking up the hill.  Around this time we finally heard from Rob, who was headed back to the hotel.  He said after he got there and changed, he'd come and meet us.

Really good iced coffee

We walked around a bit more and after we couldn't stand the heat, we found a cafe/wine bar whose name I can't remember.  It's unfortunate that I can't remember it, because I had what I think is the best iced coffee I've ever had.  And I drink a lot of iced coffee.  I think it was right on Hollywood Road, but I did a bit of googling around and couldn't find it.  After quite a while, Rob eventually showed up, and only after Bev got on the phone with his cab driver and explained where we were :)

Beer at Blue Supreme

After a bit more wandering around, we ended up at Blue Supreme, a gastropub-ish place where Bev's nephew (whose name I have forgotten) cooks.  The kitchen wasn't open yet so we drank beer for a while and then eventually when the kitchen opened, Bev's nephew brought us a few dishes of his choice.  Everything was very tasty.  The plan was that we would just eat a little and then have dinner later on, though that didn't end up working out, because we ate too much tasty food here :P

Next we went up to Victoria Peak to see the view.  It was insanely crowded, but we managed to get up there and get some nice views and snap a few pictures without getting pushed over the railing by the throngs of people.

View from Victoria Peak

 After that we headed back down to Central and went to a bar called Stockton, which was way too cool for me.  I suppose you could say it had good ambiance, but the cocktail menu was full of complicated cocktails that each had so many ingredients that at least one was something I don't like.  But I sucked it up and found something to order.  I don't remember what the actual cocktail was, but it came with this huge cube-shaped ice cube (maybe that's redundant) which was coated in cocoa butter (I assume) so it was matte white.  So that looked pretty neat.  I think it had Frangelico in it.  Or something nutty.

We finished up the evening at another bar that was right next to our hotel, the Cafe Gray Bar (no relationship to Grey Cat).  It's on the 49th floor of a hotel, so there is a nice view.  It had a much more reasonable cocktail list than Stockton, though it felt a lot less like I was in a James Bond movie.

Rob's third birthday cake

When we got back to our room, we found that the local sales team (that Rob was with in the afternoon) had sent a cake and bottle of champagne to our room for Rob's birthday (which was on Thursday).  Gotta love sales guys.  This was the third birthday cake that Rob had during his travels around Asia.  Unfortunately I was too tired to eat cake.  Isn't that terrible?  So we saved it for tomorrow.

I was planning to cram all of our Hong Kong stay into one post, but it seems it was too eventful for that.  So I'll save the rest for a second post.

Bermuda 2018

Rob and I visited Bermuda for a week this spring for a work event (it's a tough life).  It was an ideal work event in that there were evening events for like 3 nights, and other than that, we pretty much did our own thing.  Since we were going to be there, we decided to bring dive gear and do a few days of diving.  It was definitely worth going diving since we were there, but I don't think I'd recommend it as a diving destination by itself.  Still, it was a fun place to visit!  More details in the following posts:

Diving
Getting Around & Non-Diving Things To Do
Places to Eat

Bermuda: Places to Eat

Drinks at Henry VIII

We spent a fair amount of time wondering where to eat when we were in Bermuda, so I thought I'd do a quick brain dump on the restaurants that we ended up going to. We were staying at the Fairmont, so most of these are reasonably close to there (Southampton and nearby).

Henry VIII - we went here twice, once for dinner with friends and once as part of an event (which we were double booked for, so just had drinks). They have sushi (in addition to the regular menu) which seems odd, but Rob and Ivan got sushi and liked it. I had steamed clams which were tasty. Decent reasonably casual restaurant with good drinks.

Boundary (sports bar at the Fairmont) - we ate here twice as well, the first night when we arrived because it was the only/easiest place open at that hour. And the second time after a cocktails and hors d'oeuvres event that wasn't quite enough for dinner. Good casual place to eat, have drinks, and hang out (we played board games the second time we were there). I really liked the cornbread :)

Generosa's -- went here for lunch one day. We were a bit confused if it was a food truck or restaurant based on the internet info about it. It's a food truck that is semi-permanently located outside of a mini golf place, which has a seating area. Good place for lunch. We scootered there but Shannon and Ivan took the bus, which they said was convenient.

Paraquet -- diner type place with all day breakfast and other stuff (sandwiches, burgers).  Very short scooter ride from the hotel. The perfect post-dive kind of food in my book (kind of like Del Monte Cafe). My only complaint is that my omelette didn't have cheese in it. User error I'm sure, but still... that's just wrong!

D&C Grill. This was a very local place that I was a bit skeptical about when Rob proposed it :). We got jerk chicken and goat curry to share. OMG, the goat curry was awesome!!

View at the Ocean Club

Ocean Club. We went here one night because we figured we should go somewhere fancy at least one night. We could only get an early table (6, I think) which worked out well in terms of the view and sunset. In fact I'm glad we couldn't get a time we wanted because we would have ended up with most of dinner in the dark, with no view. Everything was good but this is (not surprisingly) a place to go for the view/ambiance.

Harbourfront Restaurant. Went here for a team event one night. We were seated outside on the patio. Had a nice view of all of the boats on mooring balls, which was fun. We got an enormous plate (plates, really) of sushi to start, which was fantastic.  Maybe more fantastic than the entrees (though someone got risotto, which was a hit). Overall it was a great spot for this kind of event and the food was yummy.

Drinks at the Dock (without me!)

The Dock at the Waterlot. This is one place that I wanted to go for a drink, because it looked nice (we saw it when we took the ferry from this dock into Hamilton). We never ended up having time on the nights it is open (which is Thursday through Sunday or something like that). But Rob ended up being diverted to Europe "on the way" home so he stayed an extra night in Bermuda, and managed to go. He said it was good and sent me a picture that made me super jealous! He claimed he was terribly bored being there without me (what a sweet-talker).

Ice cream shoppes

I usually try to eat ice cream everyday on vacation (when in places where there are ice cream shoppes, like Tulum). I didn't quite succeed there on this trip, but we did have ice cream from three different shoppes, all quite good:

• Alex & Pete's Artisan Ice Cream (at the royal dock yard). We scooted up here one day (discussed elsewhere) and stopped for ice cream cones while we wondered around.  
• Scoops. This was near the hotel and seemed like the closest thing to a local ice cream place. There's a little outdoor seating area next to it. 
• Bailey's Bay Ice Cream.  This is right next to the caves. This place had outrageously many flavors to choose from, which was awesome.

Bermuda: Getting Around & Non-Diving Things To Do

I put these two topics together because we got a scooter to get around, and I think that scootering around the island is a thing to do on its own. It was pretty fun, though sort of terrifying. We shared a scooter and Rob drove. I went through my usual stages of exciting activities. Stage 1 Terror. Stage 2 still terrified but I can see how someone might find this fun. Stage 3 sort of having fun. I think riding on the back of a scooter with Rob was some kind of marital trust exercise. But I was more confident in his ability to not kill us than my own. We drove all over the island for several days and I don't think anything too scary happened.

Owl, right up in our faces

 Other than the scooter, our friends Shannon and Ivan used the bus to get around (it runs the length of the island and costs $5 I think) and they found that quite convenient. We also took the free (to hotel guests at least) ferry to Hamilton on day. It was a fun ride but certainly not the most efficient way to get to Hamilton. Hamilton itself was not too exciting, but probably worth visiting at least once.

We did a few noteworthy activities other than diving.

Crystal caves

• Scootering around the island. Man we went everywhere, even more than we intended. We quite frequently missed turns and had to pull over to check google maps. :). One day we scootered up to the Royal Naval Dockyard. Another day we went down to Harrington Sound. Etc. 
• Aquarium/zoo/museum. We sort of happened upon this on our first day scootering the island. For one price you get admission to all three. So we checked out the aquarium (quite small) and zoo (impressive for a small island). The zoo had sections for different areas of the world and had some outdoor exhibits where you walk on a path through an area with the animals and they are out in the open with you. Pretty neat. There were some really weird animals I've never seem before, like the cat-bear. 
• Crystal caves. There are two caves located in the same area, which you can visit as part of a tour. We toured both. For one of the caves, it was just us and the tour guide. For the other, there was one other person. So we got to wander around at our own pace. I have never seen caves like this above water, so this was pretty cool. 



Rob demonstrates proper boat handling

• Boating. On two days, we rented a whaler and drove around the island. This was definitely one of the most fun things we did. We fed fish at the shipwreck sticking out of the water, landed on some abandoned beaches and hung out there, and checked out quite a bit of the coast.

Bermuda: Diving

We were staying at the Fairmont, so we did our diving with Dive Bermuda, which is located at the resort, but conveniently also gets excellent reviews on TripAdvisor.  We were originally supposed to dive the first three days that we were there (Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday), but Sunday's boat was cancelled due to weather.  We walked down to the dive shop (which is on the beach) and despite Rob's whining to the contrary, I think cancelling the boat was definitely reasonable.  It was insanely windy; it was unpleasant to just stand on the beach, so I don't think we'd want to be on a boat in that weather.  We ended up diving on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday instead.

Each day, we did two dives with the first dive on a wreck and the second dive on the reef.  The sites were roughly 5 to 15 minutes from the dive shop, and we generally returned to the shop between dives, either to drop off or pickup divers (the second dives were shallow enough for discover scuba or open water class dives).  The boat is anchored right off of the beach, and after getting into our wetsuits, we waded/swam out to board the boat.  Our gear and anything we didn't want to swim out was sent over on a kayak.  The boat was nice and spacious, and well laid out (random fact: it's the same kind and size of boat as the old Monterey Express), and all of the crew that we dealt with from the shop or boat were helpful and competent.

The water was quite chilly while we were there.  I brought a brand new 5mm wetsuit, and decided while packing that since my suit was brand new, I didn't need to pack my vest.  That was a big mistake :)  The water temps were in the low 70s, which made for a chilly second dive everyday.  On the first day, when it was overcast and chilly on the surface, it made for a borderline too uncomfortable to dive second dive.  Apparently the water temps increase quite a bit in May, so if we'd come a few weeks later, it probably would have been a lot more comfortable.  Anyway, we sucked it up and managed to do all of the dives, but if we were not visiting Bermuda for a work event with fixed dates, I would definitely go a month or two later.

Their staff to diver ratio was really impressive too.  Our guide for all of our dives was Kwe, who was great (and who we shared with between zero and two other divers throughout the trip).  Once he decided we knew what we were doing, he pretty much let us do what we wanted, even if it wasn't exactly in sync with the dive briefing of what we were supposed to do :)  He also took us through some pretty cool swimthroughs on one dive, and was helpful at giving Rob suggestions for what to photograph, and setting things up so Rob could get some nice silt-free shots of the best parts of the wrecks before the rest of the divers showed up.

Overall the diving was better than I'd expected.  The reefs were covered with invertebrates like sea fans and gorgonians that were in great shape, but there wasn't a lot of variety.  So as you looked along the reef, the life was lush, but it was the same couple of tannish-pink gorgonians and purple sea fans over and over again.  There were also very few fish.  The guides blamed this on lionfish, and several of them (including Kwe) carried spearguns to spear any lionfish that we found.  He speared a few throughout the week.  The wrecks that we visited (whose names I don't recall) were in varying states of collapse.  On the first day we visited one that was really just bits of wreck; on the second day, we visited a totally intact wreck (which I believe was sunk intentionally); and the last day, we visited a wreck that was broken in two, but had two really cool paddle wheels that were intact, one which was laying on the bottom and one which was standing up.  That last one was my favorite wreck.

The reefs that we visited were basically just different spots along the barrier reef running along the south side of the island.  A couple of the sites had swimthroughs running through the reef, and one had some really neat, long swimthroughs.  That was relatively amusing.

All in all, we had a good time and it was definitely worth bringing our dive gear since we were visiting Bermuda anyway.  And if you are there, I'd recommend Dive Bermuda (which has a second shop on the other side of the island too).  But I don't think I'd recommend Bermuda as a standalone dive destination.

Back to Birthday Wall

It's been a few years since we've been to Birthday Wall, but it's still one of my favorite sites. So I figured finally getting back there was worthy of a post. Even without pictures from Rob :(. We both had Friday off; when I pointed this out to Rob the week before (he didn't know he had the day off, and first denied it), he made a Lobos reservation. Then a couple days later he told me he got Phil. Woot! That's another thing we haven't done in ages. Unfortunately, Kevin had already shipped stuff to Florida for our New Years' trip, so he could not join us :(. Also unfortunately, Rob's camera has been leaking a bit on deeper dives lately, so it wasn't allowed to come on the dive (it's now at Backscatter). So Rob convinced me to bring the GoPro, and he brought the video light.

Conditions were pretty flat in terms of both swell and wind. It was pretty much a perfect day to be out with Phil except that it was cold!  Brrr.  I asked Rob to slow down on the way out because it was so cold.  When we got out to the area, we briefly had some problems with the depth sounder but after Phil went for a little dip in the water, we got that fixed and found the site without a problem.  We dropped the hook in about 150'. There was roughly zero current on the surface. It was a good day to lollygag on the surface while getting geared up :)  When we finally flopped into the water, we found very clear water.  We met up at 20' for bubble checks and I noticed that Rob's O2 bottle was leaking at the solenoid what I would describe as a non-trivial amount.  I told him to keep an eye on it.

We headed down the line and eventually found a little current closer to the bottom, but overall it was nice clear, still water. We dropped on the pinnacle, got situated, and then headed down the wall.  Rob was really flying down the wall. I just can't drop that fast!  But eventually I nad it down to him. In the sand off of the wall, we saw a wolf eel just sitting in the sand. Then a lingcod swam over and sat next to him, just staring him down. Rob convinced me to get some video, but I didn't want to get up in his face and disturb him. But mostly I was thinking... a wolf eel is not worth my time to video at 280'!  So we continued along until we got to the flag rockfish den (flaggle rock, as I like to call it).  Rob points out a flag rockfish, which I hang out with and video' for a couple minutes. Rob later claimed to have seen three or four flag rockfish, but that was the only one that I saw (which is annoying and makes him a bad dive buddy!).

From there, we continued a bit further along the wall until we came to a small group of Boccaccio, which we always seem to see somewhere around there, though never in one particular spot. Today there was one especially big one, which I think was pregnant.  I got a bit of video before signaling that we needed to head shallower. We headed up the wall a bit, and followed along near the top of the wall until we got back to around the pinnacle where we started. The viz up there was really blue, it was much brighter than the bottom of the wall. There was a school of juvenile rockfish on top of the wall, and a big school of rockfish just off of the wall, which we watched and video'd for a bit before heading up shallower on the pinnacles.  Up there, we poked and peered into holes, looking for little stuff. I saw several juvenile yelloweyes.

Eventually it was time to go, and we shot the bag within sight of the line.  At the 70' stop, we finally heard the boat. But then not again for the rest of deco, which made me a little squirmy. I guess that's what happens when there's no current :). At 20', Rob started gesticulating about his O2 bottle and trying to hand me his spool. Remember back to that bubble check?  Well Rob had been keeping an eye on his O2 bottle and decided it was time to switch. I would have just gone onto my deco bottle, but I guess I'm lazy. Rob rotated his bottle forward and then plugged in the spare hose on his O2 bottle to the MAV (I guess that's why he has the spare hose...). I was prett impressed. I was less impressed when I found out how little O2 he started with, which explained why a not-catastrophically-bad leak left him with not enough O2.  He got a big eye roll when he confessed that to me.

After quite a bit of looking at nothing (I remember one lone sea nettle and the occasional gooseberry), deco was finally over.  Phil was waiting right next to us when we surfaced.  It had been a while since I had to get out of my gear on the surface. Rob offered to help me out of my gear (after he was out of his). I forgot that while he was holding onto my rig, he expected me to jack on the inflator.  So I almost lost my rig (and possibly Rob) to the bottom of the ocean, but Rob managed to hold it up while I found the inflator.

Phil has a ladder on his boat now. It's been there for a while, but always sort of experimental when I've used it before. Maybe it still is, but he was really pushing it this time. Especially for Rob, who has a tendency to get bent in the shoulder. There was a moment when climbing it that I was sure if I took another step, I'd fall in the water. There was a bit of whimpering but after some assurances from Phil, I managed to do it. Pretty civilized, though I kind of like trying to pull myself over the side, as a feat of strength (which I always fail). Rob was not so thrilled with the ladder due to what I was generously call a "sports injury" (running around like Jack Bauer shooting at coworkers is a sport, right?), but we all lived and no one got bent. We made a pretty hasty return back to Lobos, and despite his best efforts, Rob did not run into any rocks on the ramp with the boat.

We debated our lunch options and went with La Tortuga instead of Thai. This was a mistake for two reasons, well maybe one.  Thai has food immediately, and that food is hot (two kinds of soup!). Won't make that mistake again ;)