In Hong Kong, I'm studying in Hong Kong Baptist University (gotta write another post about this cool university!). During our study here, all the affairs related to international students (the exchange students) will be managed after by an office called international office. They were the one who arrange our arrival pick up, orientation programme and also outing activities for us to explore Hong Kong. And our first outing activity was..... hiking!

Hello guys! Welcome to the second part of my Mid-Autumn Festival post (if you missed the first post, click here!). This post contains tons of beautiful picture taken by me, so be ready to indulge your vision! 

The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on 15 September 2016. However, there are list of activities and events that started since the beginning of September, one of those is the lantern display carnival which showcasing an incredible variety of colorful, bright shiny lanterns.

There are different places showing different theme of lanterns in Hong Kong. In Tsim Sha Tsui, they got the Fly Me to The Moon as the theme. In Tai Po Waterfront Park, it's all about After the Mid-Autumn Night’s Dream. I didn't go to those two places, but I enjoyed the lantern carnival in Victoria Park.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, guys! 中秋节快乐!

Mid-Autumn Festival is one of those festive events that being celebrated extensively by people in Hong Kong. I'm so lucky I'm able to experience this festive event in Hong Kong and in this post I'm gonna share with you the euphoria that I experienced here :)

As the post is quite long... with some words and pictures, I'll post it in two parts so you won't be bored reading all of these :D

In Indonesia, we also celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival, but in a very small scope. We only have some shops and hotels sell mooncakes in tins and by piece, but not the big celebration. While in Hong Kong, you'll notice the decorations of Mid-Autumn festival in most places which is dominated by rabbit and the moon.

Another difference between Indonesia and Hong Kong's Mid-Autumn Festival is the massive advertisements of mooncake, hallmark tradition of Mid-Autumn Festival, that you can easily find everywhere in Hong Kong: in the Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR), on the bus and inside the malls.

Hong Kong has soooo many different brands of bakery that produce and sell mooncakes. Every bakery tries hard to push the advertisement and locate it in the strategic places. Mooncake is really small (less than 10 cm in diameter) but the advertisement could possess the whole wall. Thus in that big mooncake advertisement, you actually will only see a really small mooncake! Moreover, they rarely show the whole mooncake. Usually the picture will only show quarter of mooncake, to be able to show you the glorious yolk (which represent the moon!) inside the cake. It's really interesting for me to see all the advertisement.

There are several types of mooncake with different skins, fillings and of course, different prices. There's the traditional one which made with lotus seed paste, date paste, mung bean and completed with salted duck egg yolk as the fillings. Along with the rising awareness of health, people think that this traditional mooncake is too sweet and oily (and cholesterol!). Thus, now there's now type of mooncake which is called as snow skin mooncake. In my opinion, the snow skin mooncake is similar to mochi ice cream in Japan. They don't bake it and it need to be kept in the freezer or it will melt. Made with glutinous rice and no egg-yolk filling, snow skin mooncake is perceived as a healthier choice compared to the traditional one. However, you'll always find long queue in both traditional and snow skin mooncake store.

So far, I've eaten the Wing Wah's and Mei Xin's traditional mooncake. I have one pack of Kee Wah's in my cupboard but I'm gonna save it a lil bit longer :p

The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on 15 September 2016, but you can already feel the atmosphere since the end of August with all the decorations and mooncakes thingy. People started to sell many goods which related to light: lantern with lamp, light-stick, bandana with blinking crown, gooey-minion-yoyo that can light up when it hits something and so on. It's all about lights!

Hong Kong people will bring along those things when they celebrate the full moon on 15 September night, while enjoying the colorful lantern display in some public places and having their evening picnic with the love ones.

I'm gonna share with you guys about the lantern display and more fascinating pictures in my next post. Stay tuned!

My flight to Hong Kong from Surabaya, Indonesia, should've been on 29 August 2016. However as I need to finish and submit my internship report, and as the progress of clothes packing was nil, my mom and I decided to change the date in the last minute. We postponed it to 30 August.

I woke up on 30 August morning and got prepare quite fast to catch my 8:30 AM flight. I re-checked my wine-colored luggage and red handbag to ensure all important things were there. Passport, checked. Ticket, checked. Wallet, checked. Mobile phone, checked. All set, and I left my house with my parents as my bf came to fetch me.

Once I arrived at the airport, I directly headed to the counter to check in my luggage. As one of the airplane that has direct flight to Hong Kong, the queue of Cathay Pacific's counter that morning was quite long. After approx. 15 mins, it was my turn to be served. The counter-staff kindly addressed me and apologized for the long queue. She printed my boarding pass and returned it with my passport to me. Before I left, she apologized for the second time. What a cute staff.

I went out from the check-in counters area to meet my parents. It turned out that my friends cameeee to send me (T^T) What a lovely bunch of friends. Sacrificing their precious alarm-snooze in the morning and coming all the way to the airport. Thanks a lot, amigos!

After a while, it was the time for me to get to the boarding room. I waved my goodbye to friends and family and made my way to the immigration. The immigration was empty, but the boarding room was fully equipped. When the staff asked us to board to the plane, I prefer to stay still and wait until the last batch to get to the plane. The queue was very long (due to the cabin check I guess) and I prefer to sit comfortably and call my grandma.

When it was not that crowded anymore, I stand and start to queue. Done with the cabin check, I submit my passport and economy-class boarding pass to the staff. They did the procedure (scan, check etc) but then they tore my boarding pass. What the..?! I was shock to see that, but even shocker when they gave me another new boarding pass and said:
What? Biz class? Wow. I was wondering why. Once I got to my seat I called my mom and she was shocked as well. HA! I felt like Anastasia Steel in the Fifty Shades of Grey! Perhaps Mr. Grey did the upgrade to me? ;)

It was my very first experience to fly in biz-class. IMHO, it was not bad at all! The seat was waaaay better than the economy one and it got the spacious room for your leg. Now I know why some people prefer to pay more to treat themselves in the business-class flight. The highlight of my flight was the food. It was A LOT of food. Ranging from the refreshment, appetizer and main course. What a pleasure.

The menu

Indulging myself. Btw the movie I watched was Chongqing Hot Pot, not bad.

I tried to sleep in the last 1 hour of the flight but it was not a successful attempt. The nervous feeling started to consume me as the plane approaching Hong Kong Airport. Oh why...

And those questions keep on hanging in my head as the wheel of the plane landed smoothly on the land of Hong Kong. Welcome to Hong Kong, Helene.

Hello guys, greetings to you all :)

Welcome to my very first blog post in this blog (I'm literally excited to type this!)

I'm Helene from Indonesia.

You may be wondering what does my domain name about: le noir hair girl.

Well, let me break it down for you.

Le noir means black in French. Hair means.. hair in English and yeah, I believe you know what does girl mean.

It's been 21 years for me to walk around with my black hair and I'm sure it still counting to many more years. Thus, I chose to use this as my identity and as my domain name! (while actually it's not that jet-black hair, I got some shade of brown as well, but yeah, it's ok ;))

Currently, I 'moved' to Hong Kong to join student exchange program for 1 semester. I will be staying in this world's fourth most densely populated for 4 months.

In this blog I will post and share with you guys about my journey here; the university life, food-tasting experiences, shopping activities and also the places that I managed to explore here. Please also expect to read my writings about perhaps my insecurities or anxieties ;)

I'll be posting as soon as possible and will try to update this blog in a regular basis.

Kindly support me with this blog and happy reading!

Love,

Helene