At the Peak

Written by Karen.

We got lucky today and briefly saw the sun and blue sky for the first time since we’ve been in Hong Kong.  We were lucky as we had made the trek to the top of Victoria Peak earlier while the sky was still gray and misty, and the top of the mountain was shrouded in ghostly fog.  

Eating in a Chinese Tea Room

Written by Karen.

We asked a local woman we had recently met where we should go for lunch that was close to our hotel in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong.  Something local.  Nothing fancy.  She replied that we should go to a tea room down the street and right next to the HSBC bank and ATM located on the corner.  This tea room had good food, she continued, and people from the local neighborhood went there.  We nodded.  We knew exactly where the HSBC bank was as we had used that particular HSBC ATM on several occasions already.  

Impressions of Hong Kong

Written by Adam
It’s funny how life pans out for people.  I remember traveling to Asia for the very first time in my life in 1984, when I made the long transoceanic trip alone to visit Tokyo, Japan.  I recall being in that city while the 1984 Winter Olympics were being conducted in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia - in present day Bosnia-Herzegovina.  I can clearly see within my pleasant memories the Japanese people being transfixed as British Olympians Torvill and Dean skated for the Olympic gold medal in the ice dancing competition, the televised images being beamed to a large video screen located right in the heart of Tokyo.  Shortly after those Olympic Games concluded, Sarajevo became a brutal killing zone as a civil war catalyzed by an ethnically fractured Yugoslavia rained terror upon all the good people living there.

Hong Kong - A City to Celebrate

Written by Karen.

Hong Kong is a city full of contrasts and contradictions. The many skyscrapers soar towards the heavens and dwarf you as you stand 100 stories below, yet the City is still intimately walkable. Despite its incredible and modern vertical architecture, you can find the old and the traditional if you wander through the winding streets and alleys. The City bustles and hums with incredible verve and activity levels, yet overall Hong Kong is surprisingly quiet.  There are few horns honked and people quickly and quietly move through the City with a sense of urgency towards their destinations. 

King Kong Photographs Hong Kong

Written by Adam.
Maybe I was just a little bit weary, I don’t know.  More plausible is that I am just looking for an excuse for this crazy idea.  

Chicken and Rice

Written by Karen.

It seems like an inconsequential dish.  But, cold boiled chicken and warm rice seems to be a staple of Singaporean food and a must try dish to eat, especially at the hawker center.  The hawker center is like a food court, with multiple small businesses lined up in tiny stalls offering their particular version of smoothie drinks, Indian food, Chinese food, Malay food, chicken and rice, pulled tea, and other types of street food.  But, unlike the reputation of a typical food court, this food is really delicious.  At least the food that we tried.  Not fatty or greasy, just well made and very tasty.  

Dazzling Display

Written by Karen.

The Singapore Botanic Gardens is a vast and varied tropical garden in the center of Singapore. It is bordered by some of the busiest streets of downtown Singapore: Holland Road, Tyersall Avenue, Cluny Park Road, Bukit Timah Road, and Evans Road.  But despite being in the center of a large and bustling city, this diverse 7.4 hectare (18 acre) landscape is quiet and peaceful. It is a well-established refuge of verdant greenery, flowers, waterfalls, ponds, lakes and the peaceful quiet that nature can bring.  

Screen of Doom

It started as a relatively simple - and necessary - task of backing up my pictures.  It’s a pretty elementary requirement and I shake my head in 20-20 hindsight with the following admission.  I haven’t truly backed up the thousands of pictures that I have taken since we started traveling.  We have all sorts of work-arounds for things we really want to do: flash drives mostly, as well as me regularly transferring pictures from my tablet to Adam’s trusted and stalwart workhorse laptop.  

Singing the Praises of Singapore

Written by Adam
Our most recent trip to Asia began with a very brief layover in Hong Kong before we boarded another Cathay Pacific jet that took us on to Singapore.  Paying attention to the financial news, I know that there are a couple of places on the planet where business is conducted on a scale that rocks markets and reverberates globally.  Singapore is one of those places.