I'm Turning Japanese

Today in Hong Kong I spent the afternoon in Japan. A very popular thing to do here is to take photos in a kiosk and then add stars, hearts, happy faces, flowers, etc. so the photos come out with these decorations. The machines are all in Japanese so we had no idea what we were doing (although we did this last year for my birthday too) so the first batch were terrible. You have to decide which background you want (I chose some scary thing with ghostly hands everywhere- I thought it was happy hands!), then do some funny poses (hand gestures and the like), pose for really fast sequence of pictures, then choose 4 of the 6 poses, then you have 3 minutes to decorate. It is really very taxing.

Then you gave to decide who gets which picture, cut them up, and then get them laminated! Voilà a special little plastic card of you and your students looking stupid!!

While waiting my students to get theirs cut and laminated, I am watching a Japanese music video where cute girls keep tripping and spilling food in slow motion on heavyset guys laying on the beach.  Weird!  First it's an ice-cream cone, then an icee, then ramen, spaghetti, soup, and pork chop rice!! I don’t get it.

Only in Hong Kong

Today in Hong Kong I noticed something that I think I would only see in Asia's International Financial City:

Of course one thing that you can only find in Hong Kong (mostly) is the bamboo scaffolding which seems to be everywhere here, but only used sparingly in other Chinese cities:

More Photos of Old Malacca

Malacca is a curious juxtaposition of Chinese, Dutch, and Malay. Malacca has a quaint old town with Chinese, Portuguese, and Dutch shop houses, and there is a Hindu temple, a mosque, and the oldest Chinese temple in SE Asia (maybe) all on the same street. Today I learned about the difficulties of preserving some of these old places. I visited a conservation project that is trying to renovate a Dutch shophouse using original materials, which includes lime. Evidently lime is porous and allows excess moisture to escape, while cement and paint seal it in and ruin the walls from the inside. The house next door has used cement so salt deposits leach out onto the conservation house's walls.










Down the street is the home of an obviously wealthy (über rich) Chinese family of the 1930's. Huge and gilt, the place is a museum of museum-quality furniture, house wares, embroidery, and house décor carvings. Down to the underside of the stairs and the railings in the stairs, everything is detailed and touched with gold. Gaudy, but beautiful.

Old Malacca

Today in Malacca I had their famous chicken rice balls. These are balls of rice full of chicken flavor (must be cooked in chicken stock). Served with cut up juicy chicken, you've got yourself a yummy meal for 2 bucks!

Other delicacies here include the Nyonya food (Nyonya is like the Singaporean Peranakan: people of mixed parentage: "foreigners"- usually Chinese or Indian men marrying Malay women several generations ago ((see Singapore People)) ). Spicy Otak-otak fish mush (yummy), chicken soup with a dark tangy sweet broth, nyonya laksa (curry like noodles), and I don't know what else! More things definitely but hard to describe.

Malaysia is full of street food and Malacca has its own. But most places seem to close early. We walked by a riverside cafe that seemed like the perfect place to sit and have a drink and watch the sky turn colors. But they were closing up at 6 pm! Maybe of was because it was Tuesday- the day many places close shop due to tourists going home on Mondays.


Malacca was declared a UNESCO heritage site last year and evhdently the tourists descend on the weekends. We did see a Chinese tour group all taking pictures with a group of Muslim girls in their veils.