Category

2006 Hong Kong-Macau

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia, Quixotic Notions

  It pays to check your email

  04.23.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Our last few hours in Bangkok were spent on a computer terminal frantically hunting for accom in Hong Kong. We ended up not prebooking anything, deciding to wing it and head back to the hotel we’d stayed at before. Big mistake.
  So our first 3 hours were spent back at the Mansion, with Nazma guarding the [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia

  Article #2b: Learning Cantonese

  02.14.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  “Kou-FOO”?
  “Kou-Foo”.
  “KOU-Foo”?
  “Kou-Foo”.
  We were standing outside the restaurant where (we believed) we were supposed to meet my Nai-Nai’s–or Mother-in-Law’s–brother and two sisters. As Lloyd could not read the Chinese name, we’d used a process of elimination to end up at the fancy “House of Canton” located in Festival Walk, an eight-floor shopping behemoth. While [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia

  Article #2a: Hong Kong

  02.14.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Having visited Hong Kong a few times, it never seemed as remote or exotic a destination as it may for many others. But as the plane touched down at Hong Kong International Airport, for once I wasn’t at all sure what to expect.
  For one, in the past I’d always travelled with my family, so it [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia, Quixotic Notions

  Entrada a Macau

  01.12.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Hit Macau for about an hour before we had to get to the airport for the flight to Bangkok. It was interesting seeing what Hong Kong might have been like if the Portuguese had taken over more real estate in the South China Sea 400-odd years ago. Very reminiscent of a European city with its [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia, Quixotic Notions

  Kung fu and bird flu

  01.11.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Some last impressions to sum up Hong Kong:
  Nazma met the extended family on both my mother and father’s sides for the first time. The meetings weren’t the nerve-wracking trials-by-fire that we might have expected: they were incredibly gracious and even openly fawning at points. A little Cantonese goes a long way, it seems. We also [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia, Quixotic Notions

  Eat till you cry (but bring your own tissues)

  01.10.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  You’ll never go hungry in Hong Kong, but we nearly did, just from paralysis-by-indecision: too many options and we were frozen. On every street corner there’s little vendors with their habachis doing up street-meat skewers. Think Richmond Night Market x 1000. But don’t ask for sweet-and-sour chicken; Nazma went on a short-lived hunger strike because [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia, Quixotic Notions

  Walk of fame

  01.06.06 | Permalink | 1 Comment

  Went out last night for some night-market action. Hong Kong by night is a neon mess but the faded, decaying gargantuan signs have a real charm and romance about them. I almost suspect half the stores don’t even exist anymore but the signs stay on for sheer inertia. This guy seems to have a problem [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia, Quixotic Notions

  Hot showers and cold fronts

  01.06.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  Switched to the business hotel this morning and had our first hot shower in a couple of days. We’re now right across the road from some kind of school, as far as we can tell: bizarre Big-Brother-type pronouncements come out every few minutes over the superloud PA telling the students to finish their worksheets before [...]

• 2006 Hong Kong-Macau, 2006 SE Asia, Quixotic Notions

  Toilets on manual override

  01.05.06 | Permalink | Comment?

  No matter how much I travel, it’s still a shock when you’re halfway through your flight and you suddenly realise you’ve left your comfortable world behind. This time it was flying low on approach over the Tokyo suburbs that did it: cars were moving along lit ribbon roads through (surprisingly) wooded areas and it could [...]

project: eggplant

if you don’t like it, eat around it

about

Junkies for that feeling you get just before you board a plane, train, or automobile for somewhere other than here, we're seeing as much of the world as we can, staying one step ahead of the trifecta spectre (trispectre?) of security, progeny and mortgages.

We also love a good meal.

Project: Eggplant will track as much of that as we feel like putting fingers to keyboards. At times we'll get lazy and just take some purdy pictures. And sometimes it may sound like we're just moaning. In the end, if we don't write it with a smile on our faces, it doesn't get posted.

current whereabouts

search

 

recent

• That’s island life
• Swept away
• Unflushable
• Divine mission
• Swish swish

Tag Cloud

Hong Kong