Tag Archives: ferries

Lessons from Hong Kong.

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We watched our last sunset in Asia from the Avenue of Stars in Kowloon today, gazing over the water at Hong Kong Island. While we strolled toward the Star Ferry, Steve offhandedly remarked that this had been a great visit to Hong Kong – we’d hit all our old highlights, and we’d also seen some new things. We had made one extraordinarily bad decision, but everything else turned out pretty well. It was a net positive in total!

Lesson #1: Oldies are goodies. This was Steve’s fourth trip, and my third trip to Hong Kong. We have the restaurants and the places that we go to every time. This time, we reveled once more in Branto Pure Veg, a delicious, delicious Indian restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui that was recommended to us by close friends Kate and Erin. Branto is amazing Indian food that really spoiled me for actual food in India – so good and so flavorful! We ordered peas palak, chana masala, and a paper masala dosa, a giant crunchy roll stuffed with mashed spicy potato. The last time we were here, it was a year and a half ago on Christmas Day, during our visa run from Taiwan. Today, we visited another oldie but goodie location – the Central to Mid-Levels Escalators, which is the longest covered walkway in the world. We traveled some ways up, saw the Jamia Masjid, a lovely celadon-green mosque, and then went halfway back down to sit at a bar with great seats overlooking Shelley Street and the escalators. Steve enjoyed a beer while I had a mojito (okay, it was already 2 pm, you know?), and we people-watched for a while. While Asia is always full of Engrish shirts, we saw our favorite today – a woman whose shirt said “In memory of when I cared”. Man, those good old days! Continue reading Lessons from Hong Kong. →

Bangkok: Protests, Rivers, and Snacks.

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Tomorrow, Steve and I are leaving Bangkok for Kuala Lumpur. I’m almost too tired to be excited about Malaysia, but I’ll get there after we have one last bowl of spicy and sour amazing soup. I got some good comments on that last video we shared (someone who shall stay unnamed requested “the director’s cut” of Steve on the swings), so we thought we’d put up some more. Click on the embedded videos, or open them from the title links. These are a few interesting moments from our past week in Bangkok, and hopefully, you’ll feel like you were there with us too.

The National Anthem at the Shutdown Bangkok 2014 Protests

One of the things we were not anticipating walking into were the protests in Bangkok, which we’ve been hearing about for weeks and weeks. The situation is really pretty sticky and complicated, so if you’re curious, I suggest you get a quick update from one of these summaries: BBC or Wikipedia. We were heading to the Bangkok Art and Culture Center, a free museum down the street, and didn’t realize we’d be walking straight into one of the protest camps. When we came out of the museum, we had a good gawk around — tons of tents that reminded me of Occupy scenes from a few years ago, families and friends sitting cross-legged on the ground, and watching someone make a speech, and long dinner lines. It didn’t seem dangerous at all, and instead, there were quite a few foreigners who were checking out the numerous t-shirt stalls, food vendors, and even impromptu massage chairs, which all made for a very festive atmosphere. In Bangkok, the National Anthem of Thailand plays every morning and every evening, and we happened to be there at 6 pm.

Continue reading Bangkok: Protests, Rivers, and Snacks. →