well-aged pictures from our Grand Adventure!

So, in the two years that we’ve been back, I’ve finally managed to sort through the 10,384 pictures we took on our big trip. 

Hong Kong wrap

 

These are a few more good pictures from our week in Hong Kong.

Below left: Downtown has lots of raised pedestrian walkways to keep pedestrians off the street.  We kept hoping for a downpour to experience them in the rain, but it never came.

Below right: The Hong Kong Occupy protest is camped out underneath the HSBC building.  This picture was taken on Sunday so the Occupy people are surrounded by the wave of Pilipino domestic workers (there are about 130,000 in the city) who picnic all over downtown on their day off. 

The pictures below are of the building we stayed in, called the Mirador Mansion in Tsim Sha Tsui.  It was unlike any other building I’ve experienced in that it was like a city of its own.   I think it was 15-16 stories tall with a courtyard in the middle from the 3rd floor upwards.  From what I understand, our room was large by HK standards, but it was also windowless (like our rooms in KL and Singapore) and there were a few nights where it was absolutely flooded with cigarette smoke, although the whole building is supposed to be smoke free.

Chinese/Lunar New Year is a great travel holiday.  We kicked it off in Singapore and wrapped it up two weeks later in Hong Kong.  Chinese opera is indeed an acquired taste (high register) but the costumes were great.  Like in Singapore, there were lanterns for all of the Chinese zodiac.  I’m a pig and Jack’s a rat (please don’t read that sentence out of context).  Lastly, CNY also marks the beginning of spring and there were some fabulous spring time dances.  The men on the bottom left did a fun and expressive ballet-like deer dance and the women danced like shimmering drops of snow melt.

Hong Kong: China kinda sorta

 

Treating ourselves to Starbucks in the lobby of a downtown financial building (Bank of China) on a cold, gray day felt ever so homey and familiar.  With gray skies and a big port, Hong Kong felt a quite a bit like Seattle, except that it is twice as populous (7.1 million for Hong Kong versus 3.7 million for the greater Seattle area).

This is a non-sequitur, but I was surprised to see that the Hong Kong (paper/plastic) money is issued directly by banks (HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank and Bank of China).  Coins are issued by the government.

As far as the “China kinda sorta” part goes, technically we have now been to China, but not really.

Hong Kong hikes

 

Hong Kong offers a ton of great hiking.  The terrain is very steep and covered with thick forests wherever it isn’t covered in huge metropolis, and there is a lot of land reserved for parks.  We had two days of hiking, one on Hong Kong island itself, above the city, and another on Lamma, one of the outlying islands.  There is a lot of space in the New Territories and Lantau Island, as well, and from what we saw the paths are very well maintained and marked.

We hiked up from Quarry Bay into the hills just behind downtown Hong Kong, above a reservoir and past several great views of the city and the surrounding topography.  Hong Kong seems always to be a little grey and foggy, but I think the air may be smoggy a lot of the time, as well.  We never did make it up to “the peak,” the touristy mountaintop right behind the central business district, but I am not sure that there was a truly clear day while we were there, anyway, and I think the views we got on this hike were just as good.

On another day, we took a ferry to Lamma Island, south of Hong Kong, and hiked around the northern half of the island.  The only car-road on Lamma goes from the power plant across the island and is called simply “power plant road.”  We walked on it for an hour or so, and it was clear that it was rarely if ever used for car traffic.  The rest of the residents of the island walk on footpaths, or use bicycles.  It was a different world than the city, and yet they were only a 25 minute ferry ride from Central in Hong Kong. 

British aftertaste

We spent a month and a half in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong - three places which were controlled by the British until relatively recently.  In addition to driving on the wrong side of the road, there are still plenty of British cultural influences. 
In Malaysia one night, we mentioned to our hosts that we wanted to take a walk.  It wasn’t a pleasant place to walk because of the road, so they quickly suggested that we should go to their club instead, which was called Kelab Rahman Putra .  It was straight out of “A Son of the Circus” (an excellent John Irving book set partly at a club in India), right down to the bougainvillea.  When we drove in, everything switched to English - not Malay and English, just English, although almost everyone there was Asian.

Then on our last night in Hong Kong, we went to Happy Valley racetrack with Ray. I hear that gambling has a longstanding place in Chinese culture, but the track felt very British all the same. It was full of expats, and it was funny to recognize German numbers (the horses were numbered 1 to about 14) in one ear and Mandarin (or maybe Cantonese) numbers in the other ear. It goes without saying that the horses are really fast and that was exciting to watch, although we didn’t bet.


I think the combination of British left-side driving and a lot of tourists and expats severely confused the pedestrian style of Singapore and Hong Kong.  I was ready to switch to left-side walking and escalator riding, but, particularly in Hong Kong, there was no pattern.  In the MTR they sometimes put arrows on the floor, but they were didn’t stick to one side or the other.  These cities are crowded and it is every pedestrian for herself!

extremes (updated)

 

Looking back on our trip from Hong Kong, these are some of the things that stand out.  Updates to the post extremes, from November, are in blue.

The Good

• best live music – choir in Hallgrimskirkja (church) in Reykjavik, Iceland
  

• best dance music – in Istanbul (small sample size, N=1)
  
• place we’re most eager to return to – Istanbul
  
• nicest train – (C) Vienna to Budapest (J) Singapore MRT, due to the lack of doors between each train car.  Whoah!  Everything is bendy!
  
• best wwoof farm – the olive-picking farm in Umbria, Italy  Sorry, Italy: we have to go with the lemon/avocado Moroccan farm.  Read about it in the posts wonderful wwoofing in morocco and  wwoof write-up.
  
• best skyline – (J) Istanbul Hong Kong (C) Florence
  
• prettiest church – Saint Chappelle in Paris with the large stained glass windows in the small church

• most impressive Roman building/ruin – (C) the Pantheon in Rome (J) the baths of Caracalla in Rome  Dougga in Tunesia, even if a lot of it was rebuilt. 
  
• best treasure collection – the Hapsburg’s collection in Vienna (much better than the Medici collection in Florence)
  
• best drink – 75 cent 35 cent fresh squeezed orange juice in Istanbul Marrakesh…. or maybe the $9 dollar Leffe Browns in Jerusalem after three weeks in Morocco.
  
• best new drink – Floc de Gasgogne in Normandy
  
• best dessert – (C) chocolate dipped candied lemon rind in Perugia homemade fresh lemon tart at the Moroccan wwoof farm (J) lemon gelato in Florence
  
• nicest strangers – (C) people in Normandy who picked us up while hitchhiking (J) man who gave us books on Hinduism when we wandered into a temple (in Singapore’s little India) to watch singing and dancing.  He didn’t really speak English, but he wanted us to have those books!
  
• best dining experience – the Weinbau (wine bar) Stadlmann in Vienna where a glass of (recent house) wine costs 1,3 €, the food is delicious, cheap and cafeteria style, the atmosphere is cozy and it is completely fine to play a board game while eating and drinking.  (J) Singapore hawker centers!
  
• best park – Versailles or le Jardin de Luxembourg in France (C) Park overrun by cats near the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (J) Singapore botanic(al) gardens.
  
• best meal – handmade gnocchi with organic white truffle sauce in Umbria, Italy (J) Chicken tagine, Moroccan salad, fresh fruit and ‘Berber whiskey’ at the Sahara dunes.  (C) Each successive meal at the Moroccan wwoof farm, including eggplant/tomato bruschetta, tomato/avocado/onion/lemon salad, lamb, stews and lots of ginger, lemon, and garlic.
  
• best swim –  (C) the Blue Lagoon in Iceland Dead Sea in Israel (J) Szechenyi Bath in Budapest with its ‘angry’ river.
  
  
• best art museum – (J) Uffizi in Florence, (C) the Borghese gallery due to the masterful sculptures by Bernini, or the Kunsthistoriches in Vienna, with its thematic exhibit, good bathrooms, and frequent benches.

Apollo and Daphne (1625) and The Rape of Proserpina (1622) by Bernini at the Borghese Gallery in Rome.  My favorite was is on the left and Jack’s is on the right.  Either way, these are by far the best sculptures we’ve seen.

• most fortunate travel coincidence – visiting the Duomo in Siena during the 6 weeks a year where the amazing floors are on display

• best call to prayer – When we were in Jerusalem, we thought it was home to the best muezzins (maybe to compete with the church bells), but that was before we heard the beautiful call to prayer in Amman.  The topography helped, bouncing the sound back and forth between the hills and making Amman the clear winner
  
• Best tourist information – Iceland, though getting around Singapore is so easy one doesn’t even have any questions to ask.
  
• Most entertaining animal behavior – (C) ferocious three-way goose fight at the Malaysian wwoof farm and (J) two horses and a dog chasing each other around the field in Normandy.

• Best hike – Umm al Biyara in Petra, Jordan. 
  
• Best (mostly) walled city: (C) Rome, (J) Jerusalem
  
• Most “lunar” experience – a toss-up between the Sahara and Iceland.
  

• Best travel innovation (by us) – (C) putting her hours of eyebrow tweezing to good use to extract a fish bone from Jack’s throat. (J) taking advantage of the water heater in our damp, cold Jerusalem room to make our water bottles into HOT water bottles.  It was a Christmas miracle!

The Less Than Good

• most power lines dangling over and on the sidewalks – Bucharest
  
• most footsore moment – in Glaises (Faverges) after hiking twice as long as planned with all of our stuff (J) I was pretty footsore in Petra, on the third day of hiking, after climbing up the Umm al Biyara… but it was a good sore.  My MOST footsore moment, however, came after a day of emulating the locals and walking around Singapore in flip-flops
  
• biggest letdown by google maps – the Gîte de l’École de Glaises which was about 3 miles up a mountain from where the maps said it was (see the most footsore moment, above)  Amman, Jordan - not only was google maps missing most of the streets, but searching was completely useless. 
  
• biggest rip off – 8€ Leffe beers in Paris.  This was our own fault. 
  
• most expensive feeling city – (C) Florence (J) Jerusalem in the moment I realized the exchange rate was 3.8 shekels per dollar, not 7.6…  oops.
  
• most smoky city place– Florence our windowless hotel room in Hong Kong, unfortunately
  
• most aggressive sales people – the rose pushers by the Spanish steps in Rome Ha ha ha ha, we were so young and innocent back then.
  
• worst planning error – not noting which side of the Danube our train arrived on in Budapest and therefore walking the exact wrong way (in the dark without a map)
  
• longest line – for the Bayeux tapestry in France where tour groups got to cut the line and the French people around us flew into a rage  (J) The line to get into St. Peters in Rome was way longer, but more expected.
  
• hardest place to communicate – Bucharest The Egged bus company information counter in Jerusalem… and not because they didn’t speak English. 
  
• what we miss the most – (C) Emo the cat, my clothes, and having an income (J) not living out of a small bag
  
• worst swim – in Corsica with the jellyfish (J) trying to paddle our windsurfing boards back in with no wind, against the current, in Singapore.
  
  
• most disappointing Lonely Planet pick – the Pirana Club in Bucharest, which was supposed to be in a happening student area and turned out to be in a cluster of two restaurants in the middle of nowhere
  
• worst museum – the ones in Mont Saint Michel, outside of the abbey itself
  
• worst credit card readers – all automatic ticket machines in France, Italy and Austria and the whole country of Romania
  
• most disappointing travel coincidence – the unexpected and unexplained closure of the Coliseum, the Forum and Palatine Hill
  
• worst sidewalks – (J) Istanbul with the downward staircases carved out (think Aggrocrag) (C) Bucharest with the construction,dogs, dog poop and wires  We have a new winner:  The Amman sidewalk with a sheer drop of about 30 ft to one side:
  
  
• worst candy – Iceland with the salty licorice or maybe the surprisingly bad Tunisian chocolate
  
• worst couch surfing experience – in Rekjavik with Sabrina (who lied or at least strongly mislead us)
  
  
• worst payphones – Romania where the phones appear to have enough memory for only 10-12 digits, meaning it is not possible to enter a calling card pin (J) Hong Kong, where our calling card is supposed to work, but where in reality the pay phones will not call any number (even toll-free) without putting change in
  
• worst bathrooms – France with the unexpectedly constant smell of pee, even when things look clean
  
• hottest day – picking tomatoes and peppers in Piedmont, Italy  Walking the approximately 1.5 miles from KL Sentral to our hostel in KL, wearing jeans, warm socks and our backpacks.  Welcome to Southeast Asia, Cari!
  
• coldest evening/night/morning – in Umbria with no heat but the fireplace
  
• worst sprint with our packs on – to the ferry in Nice (45 minutes of speed walking followed by about 20 minutes of running)
  

Obviously good wins out.  Definitely

from Morocco to Singapore

 

Hong Kong is our last international destination for this Grand Adventure, so let the trip analysis and synthesis begin!

A quick check of Wikipedia confirms what our experiences suggest;  Of the countries we visited on this trip, Singapore was the wealthiest and Morocco was the poorest.

A lot of what this disparity of wealth means is obvious, in terms of health, job opportunities and education, but I don’t know the specifics, nor do I have pictures to share.

The tourist experience is extremely different in Singapore and Morocco.  On the surface, this means pristine landscaping, safe streets and good public transportation in Singapore and trash in Morocco.  Seeing plastic bags drifting around the Sahara is sad.

Aside from wealth, the difference in the relationship between the state and the individual is considerable.  Granted, Singapore is probably an worldwide outlier that is a world away from any other place except for Disneyland, the happiest place on earth.

Singapore emphasizes benefits to the society as a whole and they have the money to make sweeping changes.  This means urban planning with high-rise housing surrounded by lush green space, many restrictions on car ownership, excellent public transportation, the relocation of fishermen out of the downtown harbor, legal prostitution and of course cleanliness and a ban on chewing gum.  It also means that hawking (or “touting” as they often say) is illegal. 

It is famous for its harsh penalties, like death for drug trafficking and $500 for eating on the MTR (train).  Beyond this, I found it fascinating how they have transformed cleanliness and abiding by the rules into a public virtue.  For example, on the train tracks there are signs saying something like “Respect life. Stay off the tracks!” and many bathrooms had cartoons reminding you that “Clean public toilets are possible.”

Morocco was a place of “rugged individualism” where hawking probably makes a meaningful difference in how much money and comfort an individual will have.   Unfortunately, in some places it has reached a disturbing level where it threatens the whole tourism sector of the economy, which accounts for almost 20% of GDP, I think.  We have complained a lot about Morocco, and I just want to make it clear that, aside from Marrakesh, we did enjoy a lot of the country. 

Although these two countries are quite different, it was interesting to note that both Singapore and Morocco had a lot of large highly visible infrastructure projects.  Singapore, as a rich urban planning machine, appears to build new subway lines in the blink of an eye.  In Morocco, King Mohammed VI is monarch with actual power and he seems to use it well for social projects.  Near our wwoof farm a new highway is being constructed.  The route will pass through a shanty town and the people there will soon be moved into some government flats in a completely new town constructed nearby.  The king also has an artificial insemination program for cows, designed to make the local breed larger and more productive.

<- part of the new road.

Neither country is a place to mess with, as you can see from this helpful Singaporean no trespassing sign.

Hong Kong start

 

We’ve been in Hong Kong for two days and I’m quite impressed with it so far.  The cooler weather is a welcome change from Singapore and Malaysia.

Here are a handful of pictures that show what we’ve been up to.

We’re staying in Kowloon, which is part of the mainland, just across the water from Hong Kong island.  This means we see plenty of the HK skyline, which is probably the best in the world, though it is quite gray from a mixture of pollution and weather. 

Kowloon park was pretty and we enjoyed watching the water birds, including swans and flamingos.  Also, I’m surprised by how obsessed people here seem to be with skin care products.  I noticed this while we were combing through pharmacies to find toilet paper and then it was underlined by the impossibly large ads like the one below.

Today we had the unexpected pleasure of lunch with a friend from work in Boston and her son, who were here visiting family.

We also met up with Jack’s CMU roommate, Ray.  This is a terrible picture of a nice night out.

Last, but not least, Jack is getting a suit made.  It is impossible to walk down Nathan Road, where we are staying, without dozens of men trying to get you in to their tailor shops.  Hopefully we made the right choice.  This is from the first fitting today, so stay tuned!