Ian's 35th birthday with 35 little surprises

Hong Kong - 15th - 17th April 2011

The first instruction from Astrid received on a single jigsaw piece said to meet at 8.30pm at Peel Street, which turned out to be the address for a lovely French restaurant, Chez Patrick, where we enjoyed a beautiful meal; beetroot ice cream, rabbit and veal were all on the menu.

The surprises continued on Saturay morning as we headed for a taxi to who knows where? Well, Astrid knew and we arrived at a hotel on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong with a wonderful views over the harbour. In the afternoon we headed to one of Hong Kong's main temples that we had not yet visited; the One Thousand Buddhas Monastry in Sha Tin. The clue is in the title, there are thousands of statues of buddha as you walk up the hill to the temple and inside the temple building themselves.

We enjoyed a champagne sunset from our hotel room before heading out into Tsim Sha Tsui for the evening, which also included a first-time food experience - Turtle Jelly (Guilinggao)- varieties commercially available in Hong Kong do not usually include the crushed and powdered turtle shell of the endangered Golden Coin Turtle that traditionally used to be a key ingrediant, some jellies have essence of other more commonly available farmed turtles or none at all, we really hope that the version we tried didn't, and based on the taste experience, we won't be endangering any turtles again anytime soon.









On Sunday morning further surpises were in store, an early start and a boat-trip into the South China Sea to visit and hopefully spot Hong Kong's endangered Pink Dolphin population. Thankfully the weather was good and the Dolphins were out to play. Once back home Ian received a final bag full of surprise presents, lots of things to furnish our new apartment.