Lamma Island Welcome Party

We have some new expat colleagues at Hasbro in Hong Kong so this past Saturday I organized a Welcome Wagon party for them to meet people in Hong Kong.

It's really neat that the restaurants Rainbow on Lamma actually has a boat to come pick people up. So we got a free ferry from Central to Lamma. It takes about 40 minutes on their ferry and we go to the Sok Kwu Wan village on Lamma.

Casey wanted a group shot doing star jumps before lunch.

Let the seafood journey begin!

Here you see razor clams.

And amazing scallops with glass noodles and garlic. The scallops were the size of half dollars!

 I take my seafood eating very seriously. Here I am trying to get into a squilla.

Group shot after a great meal! Left to right... Donna and Andy, me, Ana and Peter, Paul and Julia, Geoff and Tamara, Ty, and Casey.

 We then began our walk/hike from one side of the island to the other. We start at the fishing village and will end up at Yung Shue Wa.

The view looking back at the fishing village.

 
We finish the hike in Yung Shue Wan village which is a more populated village with small local stores but no big chain stores. There are surprisingly a lot of expats living in the village. It is about 20 minutes back to central from this pier on a faster boat.

Thankfully the weather held out and we didn't get any rain. The cloud cover actually made it okay to hike but the humidity is really getting bad here.

Women in Toys Event

I am part of the founding committee for the Hong Kong Chapter of Women in Toys which is a professional organization to connect women within the toy and entertainment industry.


I organized and ran our April event which was a social networking event. Overall we had about 17 people attend which was good for us as we get the chapter up and running.

Me with Jacqueline and Emily who are co-chairs of the HK Chapter.

Rugby Sevens 2016

I was fortunate to be able to go to Rugby Sevens again this year. More sophisticated than last year. Dedicated seats and actual catered food. I took Meghann with me for her first rugby experience. We went on Saturday (it's a 3 day tournament).

Great seats. 

Rugby

Music 

Dancers

Bagpipes and marching band 

And two great wins from Team USA. 

Such a fun day!!

Osaka and Nara, Japan

After Kyoto, we went to Osaka which was about 1 hour from Kyoto by train. We stayed in the Namba area near Dotonbori which is a famous tourist area. Dotonbori is kind of like Causeway Bay area in Hong Kong. So many people, stores, restaurants, etc.

There is a climbing wall on the side of this building.

 Check out the wheels on this bike.

A river runs in the middle of Osaka.Here is day and night photo.

Random hotel front.

I found a new love for gyoza which are fried dumplings. And washed down with beer.

We found sad looking Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head figures.

Cool church sticking out.

We did a day trip to Nara to see the deer park since we had our fill of temples and shrines. But of course there were still temples to see in Nara.

 

Wishes!

 

 

 

Nara deer park. So there are just wild deer wandering around the park. People feed them, pet them, and take many pictures.

Our  favorite food in Osaka was Okonomiyaki which is a savory pancake containing a variety of ingredients. Most restaurants have you cooked your own. However, we didn't want to screw it up so we convinced the restaurant to cook for us. They were delicious!!!

Leaving Osaka to go to the airport and back to Hong Kong we got to ride on a Star Wars train.

 

Sad to see the week end. We had such a good trip and I love Japan!