Sunrise on my run

Apologies for the lack of posts – we have just moved to a more permanent abode here in Hong Kong. An apartment with more space, which is located in a more family-friendly neighbourhood (for the last 6 months we have been living on top of a block of nightclubs and bars, meaning noisy late nights and unexpected surprises found on the street in the early morning). What a relief! I don’t know about you but I absolutely hate moving – this has been my third move in the last 15 months and I’m kinda over it. So, I’m hopeful this will be the last move for a couple of years :-)

I haven’t posted about running in a while – mainly because I’ve been running indoors due to the Summer heat and an initial fear of the air quality outside. But thanks to slightly cooler temps (it’s Autumn now here in HK) and nudging from the Mister, I was able to start running outdoors. And oh, how I’ve loved it!! Like a prisoner set free – okay, maybe not so dramatic but you know what I mean!

The Tsim Sha Tsui promenade is very close to our previous apartment, so I was able to do a few runs up and down the promenade before we moved. It overlooks Victoria Harbour and is sometimes quite crowded with tourists, which makes for an entertaining run! But the views are GORGEOUS as you gaze across the harbour towards the stunning skyline of Hong Kong Island, and because of that you forget that sometimes the sea smells like sewerage …. But I digress.

Here are some snaps I’ve taken with my phone on some of the runs:

Junk boat on the harbour

Running past tourists posing next to a Bruce Lee statue

Spotting swimmers in the harbour

A view of the promenade on a hot, humid, Sunday afternoon

Sunset over the harbour

The promenade at night

I absolutely love running next to water. When I was living back in Melbourne, my favourite place to run was around the Maribyrnong River trail near Ascot Vale. It was also such a treat being able to run by the Yarra River along Southbank when we visited Melbourne a few months ago. There’s something just so calming and peaceful about it. I especially love spending some recovery time after the run just watching the movement in the water, which can be quite hypnotising!

Our new home is a fair distance away from the harbour now. I’m spending some time looking up safe routes that I can take back to the promenade from our new address. It may involve a train ride – but I’m hesitant about stinking up a train carriage after my run on the way back home! Also, it seems that monsoon season has just arrived in Hong Kong, so it’s been limiting my ability to get outdoors. But I really, really don’t want to run indoors again – I’ll just have to find a way!

I’ll leave you with our new view of Hong Kong from the 50th floor:

We’ve recently returned from a few days away in Malaysia. Last month we visited the Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu, which is located on the island of Borneo. This time we wanted to stay somewhat closer to Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur (KL) but try one of the resorts on the Sepang Gold Coast (which is a 1.5 hour drive from KL).

We stumbled across a resort known as the Golden Palm Tree Resort on the internet – it’s an eco-friendly resort made up of villas sitting on stilts over the sea. And the novelty is that all the villas together form the shape of a palm tree. It’s very picturesque, with lovely views over the strait of Malacca.

There are different kinds of villas depending on your budget and group size. We stayed in a Canary villa and it was magnificent – spacious and the perfect size for a family of four. There are two rooms:one with a king size bed and the other with two twin beds; two bathrooms; two porches overlooking the sea (one with an outdoor dining suite); and one shared lounge room.

There’s a small fridge, a flat-screen TV with a few cable channels, study desk, and toiletries – the only thing missing was an ironing board and iron, but I suppose that isn’t really important when you’re on holiday! You get around the resort by golf buggy, and there is a large infinity pool by the clubhouse overlooking the sea, which the girls really loved.

We had dinner at one of their restaurants – Perahu, an alfresco restaurant sitting right on the beach. They serve both traditional Malaysian fare and some western food. The food and service were both very good.

I don’t like to complain but I will be honest about a few things that dampened the experience, especially if you are expecting a five-star experience from this five-star (and award-winning) resort:

1. With the exception of Perahu, Customer Service needs significant improvement. It was clear that the hotel is currently understaffed. Although most of the staff we came in contact with were friendly, they did not seem very happy to be working there. Just a few examples:

• We had the buffet breakfast on one morning and it was chaotic. You had to secure your own seats amidst the crowd of people, clean up the mess on your table left by the previous diners, and scrounge around the place for some clean cutlery and plates. Also, the hygiene around the buffet was questionable, with flies and ants running rampant.
• After that experience, the following morning we ordered in-room breakfast – it arrived cold, missing condiments you would expect were common for breakfast (butter, jam, etc) and was delivered 30 minutes late (I pre-ordered it the night before, requesting a specific time as we had a schedule for that day).
• Funnily enough, after we advised the front desk that we needed to check-out at 6:45am on our last day in order to catch our flight home, we received an invitation from Management the night before inviting us to use the exclusive Breakfast lounge for special guests that opened at 7:30am – which of course, was not much use to us as we were leaving much earlier than that!

2. And a fairly minor point – which arguably is not within the control of the resort – but there were flies everywhere, which made outdoor dining during the day a real PITA. Also, when the room attendants clean your villa, they leave the front door wide open, so when you return your villa is nice and clean, but there are heaps of flies who have also come to stay!

Suffice to say the current level of service really spoils the experience, which is a real pity because the accommodation and the views/location are really wonderful. If customer service is something that would make or break your holiday, then I wouldn’t recommend staying at this resort until the customer service improves.

We managed to head into KL for a few hours on one afternoon (the resort provides a free shuttle in to KL twice a day) – but were there mostly to eat some authentic Malaysian food :-) We also got to see the famed Petronas Twin Towers.

I won’t write much on KL since the time we spent there was so short, but hopefully we get a chance to return and if we do, we’ll be staying in the city.

Last weekend we were invited by friends to enjoy brunch at a new Italian Restaurant in Hong Kong – Linguini Fini. The restaurant was launching its Brunch menu on that Sunday so we were quite excited to take part in the experience.

The atmosphere of the place is quite vibrant, fresh, and laid-back, with excellent staff/customer service, and most definitely family-friendly. Linguini Fini also take pride in the fact that they use organic and natural farm-fresh produce that is sourced locally. All meat, poultry and eggs used for their meals are hormone free and all dishes are prepared without MSG.

We’ve been living in Hong Kong now for just over 6 months (how time flies!) and the one thing I really love for brunch – Eggs Benedict – is something I’ve never had in Hong Kong. Needless to say, I’ve been CRAVING it. So you can imagine my joy when I spotted Eggs Benedict on the menu! Mine!

The LF Benedict (English muffins, mortadella, poached eggs, and ‘nduja hollandaise) is absolutely delicious and I really like the twist on the hollandaise sauce – a spicy, sausage flavour. Another standout was the Monte Cristoforo sandwich, which is made up semolina French toast, LF pancetta, provolone, and a good drizzling of maple syrup.

The girls devoured Happy Jack’s pastry basket – especially the brownies. They are the fudgie kind that instantly melts in your mouth. We had to remind them to leave some for the rest of us!

And what is brunch without dessert?! We tried a number of desserts. And all were incredibly yummy! I really like their take on Tiramisu – mascarpone crema, coffee cake crumble, frozen chocolate, and tiramisu gelato:

I also had some of their caramel & cinnamon ice-cream. I’ve never had these two flavours combined before but it’s a real winner! The girls absolutely demolished the Hot Chocolate Affogato (graham cracker biscotti, marshmallow gelato, covered in a rich, hot chocolate sauce ….. nom, nom, nom).

We’re definitely looking forward to coming back to Linguni Fini to try some of their other menus!

Linguni Fini
1/F, THE L PLACE,
139 QUEEN’S ROAD,
CENTRAL, HONG KONG

[Thanks to the Mister for letting me use some of his photos!]

In November last year, I put a call out into the wonderful world of craft for 9 handmade dolls, to be donated to the Project 18 Orphanage in Indonesia, which was founded by Cate Bolt. You can see the final batch that was then sent to Cate who brought them to the Orphanage for Christmas in this post.

Cate recently tweeted some photos of the girls at the Orphanage with the dolls! So wonderful to see the big smiles on their faces – the dolls are much loved and treasured. Thank you again to all of you who made and donated a doll for the appeal.

If you missed out on making and donating for the appeal, there are MANY ways you can help the Orphanage – please check out their Support page for more information.