Lots - o - pictures

James here - taking the reigns for a brief moment to put up new pictures.



A taste of dinner - spring rolls and chow chop choi (at least that's what it sounds like)

 The MTR (subway)

 We found a STARBUCKS!

 Stumbled on dragon dancing in Lan Kwai Fong

 Just a street...

 Looking good!

 Bamboo Scaffolding - No thanks for me!

 Our new hotel room (waiting on our place to be unoccupied - Sept. 5th!)

 This hotel has better views!

 GREAT lunch spot.  7 bucks or so for both of us - Tiffany is rocking some curry chicken

 And there I am with my thick-cut pork chop in some kind of red sauce with pineapples.  Mmmm.

 Central Station on the MTR

 Tiffany checking out some Jade at the Jade Market

 Tsim Sha Tsui

 View of Hong Kong Island from the Star Ferry

 Just to get a sense of how mountainous the island is - here are some steps at HKU.

 CONQUERED!

 The view was rewarding . . . almost enough for the steps . . .

 Tiffany on the 800 meter-long escalator.

 Me too!

 More steps - these are in Central and very pretty

 The Peak Tram station

 Check out these views from the Peak

Just another day in HONG KONG!

What's in a name?

When starting to plan for our journey to Hong Kong, of most importance to us was picking out a blog name.  We sat down and brainstormed for a while, coming up with what we thought were clever options and sent these options to friends and family for them to vote for their favorite.  The overwhelming favorite was Year of the Yat, which is how this blog came into being.  However, we did have a few notable runners up (ie: Hold that Rickshaw, Sweet and Sour Melchers, Dim Sum Melchers, etc.).  As only people who are from or have connections with New Orleans can truly appreciate our blog name, we thought it best to explain:


According to urbandictionary.com, a "Yat" is:  

A native New Orleanian. Uses the Word Darlin' alot, loves Pinchin the Heads and Sucking the Tails (That's Crawfish Yall), NEVER runs out of Tony's, always ax's bout Ya mom and dem', makes groceries, drinks Community Coffee, knows how to dodge pot holes, Loves Snowballs, has thousands of Beads in the attic from Mardi Gras Pasts, knows how to eat a Beignet while wearing Black, Cannot sit still when hearing Mardi Gras Mambo!!!!

or:

New Orleans native. From the local greeting, "Where ya at."

And as we wanted our blog name to symbolize the mixing of two distinct cultures (the Melchers and Asia), we agreed with our New Orleans friends that this was truly the best name for our blog.  

Hope you enjoy and for now, here are some pictures from our first day in Hong Kong.  More to come...

Views from our hotel:

Look closely - we had to walk all the way up this hill to get from our hotel to the University.  At some point (a low point for me really), a 92 year old woman passed me...

Who needs a Stair Master when you have Hong Kong?!

Bon Voyage or "Yāt louh seuhn fùng"

James' sister, Courtney, brother-in-law, Brian, and mom and dad had a "Going away" dinner for us tonight, in honor of the fact that this will be our last weekend in Louisiana in at least 4 months.  Brian grilled steaks and chicken on the grill (yum) and they had an amazing chocolate Doberge cake made for us from Ambrosia Bakery (http://www.ambrosiabakery.com).  And in typical Melchers' thoughtful fashion, the cake had a special message written on it to help celebrate the occasion:

Fancy, huh?  Apparently, those symbols spell out "Bon Voyage" or "Yāt louh seuhn fùng" in Cantonese.  I had to take their word for it as I am not quite yet fluent in this language.  Later I looked it up in true nerd fashion, and sure as the world... the cake was 100% accurate.  Now, how cool is it that those symbols are a language that other people can read and understand?!  And how intimidated do I feel considering the fact that James and I are about to be completely submersed in this culture and language, and these symbols simply, to me, look like a stick figure person, standing in front of a bonfire, with three trees, a stick of dynamite and a brick (aka "Cold person in the forest who lost his house by blowing it up with dynamite")?  Close, right?