Meagan's World: The Big 2-7

Last year I didn't do anything for Matt's birthday. We were both so overwhelmed with the prospect of moving to Hong Kong (he left a few days after his birthday) and also because my father died less than a month before. I remember mom asking me what I was getting him for his birthday and I was like, "What?!? I am pissed enough that he is leaving me and I have a kajillion things on my plate right now...His birthday is the least of my priorities!" Now a year has gone by and I feel a lot better than I did at this time last year! So, I decided I wanted to makeup for his non-birthday last year and also thank him for all of his patience and support for the past year. He has been very understanding (most of the time) and so much energy and attention has been focused on MY life and MY problems in the past year that I wanted to do something fun for him...a party for his 27th birthday!

Matt's birthday is not until May 2, but that is a three day weekend here and I had a feeling a lot of people would be on holiday then so I planned his dinner for this past Saturday the 23rd. The dinner was at The Stoep Restaurant on Lower Cheung Sha Beach on Lantau Island. Lower Cheung Sha beach is one of the most beautiful beaches in Hong Kong. (Or at least I think so...) The sand is white and it is clean and usually not too crowded. The Stoep is a South African Restaurant that serves the most delicious homemade bread, barbecued meats and delicious grilled vegetables. I had lunch there with my friends and Mel told me that they did big parties with meat on the spit. I knew Matt would love it there because you really feel like you are out of Hong Kong and in some vacation destination. I talked to the owner and she said she could get a whole lamb on rotisserie for us...perfect! Matt loves lamb and it isn't a common meat in Hong Kong. (Hong Kongers are crazy for pork...lamb isn't as popular.) I think he loves it cause of all his years of 4-H in Eureka. I won't go into too much detail about the food here...I will save it for my food blog when I get the pictures of the lamb.

I think both Matt and I really felt loved...we had 23 friends there all celebrating Matt's birthday! It was great! The plan was to start with Sangria by the beach and then eat dinner while the sun set. It was a good plan, but I failed to realize that the restaurant was on the wrong side of Lantau Island for a pretty sunset. Oh well, it was a nice idea, right? I had several other "planning problems" but I won't go into detail...I chalk it up to inexperience. I have never really planned a dinner that big and worked with a restaurant to create a set menu...maybe after planning a few more big dinners like this I will be better at it.

We all had a good time and I told everyone to head over meet us over at Isola after dinner. I figured we would lose some people on the way back because it takes about an hour to get from the restaurant back to Central, but we didn't! We have fun friends I guess cause everyone was waiting for us when we got to the bar. (One of my planning problems was that I failed to realize that Lantau has a limited number of cabs, so Matt and I and some other people had a late night adventure on the city bus.) Isola is very hip bar that overlooks the harbor. It has a DJ and everything is white. It was cool. The only down point for me was that I fell off the couch and hurt my knee. I was attempting to take a short cut by climbing over the couch and I totally slid off and landed on my knee. It was highly embarrassing but I lived through it!

After Isola we headed over to Gecko which was packed the brim but we saw more friends there so it was great. There were people playing bongo drums. The music was good and we met some guys that went to the art center in Pasadena! Haha! I love people from California...we are so much more laid back and our style is much cooler that East Coast people. We also met the back up band for Cheryl Hayes, all of whom were also from California.

We got home late and crashed...I think Matt had a good time. I hope he did! Now I have to think of a present for him! I think we will be in the Guangdong Province in China for his birthday, so he may just get a high five and a "Happy Birthday".

I will post more pictures when I get them. My camera is still in the repair shop so I had to borrow Payal's. I got some good shots though, including ones of the bongo players and a really, really tall man in the club whose head almost touched the ceiling.