The Way It Was

Written by Karen.
Our blog has been quiet for awhile.  Our last real-time post was on the banks of the flooded Lake Tziscao in Chiapas, Mexico on April 14, 2015.  We were planning to cross over into Guatemala the next day, but our plans suddenly changed.   My sister Julie had her most recent MRI reading on April 15th and it didn’t look good.  Her current brain cancer treatment was no longer working and it was time for a different treatment.  Things for Julie were about to get much more complicated and so it was also time for Adam and I to return to the States and help Julie.   

Flashback: Getting In Tune With Kowloon - January 2014

Written by Adam.

Directly across the harbor from Hong Kong proper, Kowloon is but a short ferry ride away.  But, the contrast between Hong Kong and Kowloon could not be greater.  Kowloon hosts such cultural sites as the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Museum of History, the Hong Kong Science Museum, and even the Hong Kong Space Museum.  Other aspects of the waterfront promenade include the Chinese version of an Avenue of the Stars, honoring the rich moviemaking tradition that featured Hong Kong as a home base for the Chinese movie industry that produced entertainment for a broad domestic and global audience.

In Case You Missed It...

Happening now at Lake Tziscao, Chiapas, Mexico.

Oaxaca - Part Deux

Written by Karen.
Change of plans.  Instead of heading further southeast along the Mexican coast and crossing the border into Guatemala as originally planned, we instead turned left back towards Oaxaca. 

Beach Bumming Along the Oaxacan Coast

Written by Karen.

From Oaxaca our small caravan of two headed southwest across the Sierra Madre mountain range to Puerto Escondido on the Oaxacan coast in search of some sun and beach time. According to our paper maps the trip over Highway 175 was less than 200 miles.  According to Google, the trip would take us just over 6 hours driving time.  We have learned from experience to double Google’s driving estimates while in Mexico.  After this trip, we would learn to consider tripling Google’s driving estimates when it entails mountain driving.  We would be going from 5,102 feet in altitude to sea level; a drop of over 5,000 feet.  If you thought that we would be easily coasting downwards on this stretch of road, you would be mistaken. This seemingly quick jaunt of 180 miles to the beach took us two days to finish. 

Ruins in the Sun - Mitla, Oaxaca

Written by Karen.

Approximately 26 miles outside of the city of Oaxaca, in a small town named San Pablo Villa de Mitla, lies the significant pre-Hispanic archeological site of Mitla.  It is considered to be one of the most important religious sites of the Zapotec culture.  It is further believed that Mitla was still occupied and active as the main religious center for the Zapotecs when the Spanish arrived in the early 1520’s. 

Frozen Waterfalls

Written by Karen.
Hierve el Agua - located just outside of Oaxaca - is one of only two places in the world that have natural rock waterfalls made of minerals and calcium carbonate deposits that look like flowing water.

We had heard that the road to reach Hierve el Agua was challenging - with steep drop-offs, no guard rails, narrow, winding, dirt roads, needed four-wheel drive, etc. - and we actually decided against putting Chinook through the trauma of driving up to visit Hierve el Agua. It’s off the beaten path and we’re being a bit conservative with Chinook so that we can go the distance into South America. 

Welcome Back!

Written by Karen.

Hola!  Welcome back!  Hopefully, this post finds all of you well and happy in life.  It’s been awhile, and it’s good to be back writing on ‘This Journey We Call Life’ again.  

Okay, time to get the blog back up and running!

Rolling Out

Written by Karen.

Over the past six months or so, Adam and I have spent countless hours talking about how we would start up our travels again once a window of opportunity opened up. What would we do differently?  What mattered to us about traveling?  What were our short-term/long-term life goals now?  What worked and what didn’t work?  Did we still want to travel, or was it time to do something else?   

Back on the Road Again.

Written by Karen.
I won’t lie to you.  The past six months have been tough.  Life has thrown one of its curveballs and we weren’t able to duck.  It was a direct hit.  We’ve been pretty lucky, I guess.  I haven’t had too many fast balls make direct contact right between the eyes.  But this one did, and the shock waves still reverberate.  

Disappearing Act

Written by Karen.
As you may have noticed, we've been absent for awhile.  In mid-March, we were notified of a sudden illness in the family and we wound up flying back to the United States from Hong Kong. We've been in Atlanta, Georgia now for quite awhile, enjoying the Southern hospitality as we help support a member of my family. 

We will continue our trip at some point, but we're just not exactly sure when that will happen.  So, for now...we'll see you down the road when the traffic clears...

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.