Asian fever

Hong Kong island. Seen from Victoria Harbour promenade from Kowloon side 

I am such a "hay-fire"-- quick to catch the flame and quick to smother the flame too.

Every time I travel international, I always come back with a new obsession. After I went to Europe, all I want is french bangs and french style. I even watched the horrible movie "In Bruges" from start to end just to relish the memories.

Then after India trip, French obsession was replaced by India craze. I started going to Bollywood classes, listened non-stop Indian music and watched pop-culture indian movies, such as "Student of the year".

It lasted for a while till I went to Myanmar ~ 6 months later. I came back with new Burmese songs and books and didn't get to any of my indian music again so far.

That also lasted for few months till I went to Thailand. On my way back to US, I studied Thai language like crazy. I signed up for online language videos and that's my obsession to learn Thai during any free time for a good few weeks, and now i haven't opened any Thai book for months and forgot everything I learned. eek. Such a hay-fire.


Now, I just came back from Hong Kong  with asian fever. Korean and Japanese obsession to be exact. I watched 3 asian movies straight on the flight back home. I was searching for Japanese fashion magazines online like mad till I found a good solution.  (This magazine site has downloadable scans, super slow though).   Japanese magazine subscriptions from Amazon are like $140/yr!




Anyway, here is some photos from Hong Kong.  I took about 500 pics over 10 days trip, so it's less than 50 pics per day on average. I think I did pretty well in not taking many pics, good or bad I don't know. Some days in HK were just shopping with a heavy camera in my bag the entire day. (I still didn't have guts to go out without the camera during the trips). And some days or places are just not interesting enough to take pictures.

St Paul ruins in Macau. It's completely just a facade left.  

Macau/Portugese v.s Hong Kong egg tarts. See the difference?

I don't know if I was that big of an egg tart fan before, but I was totally obsessed with egg tarts during this trip. That's my mission each day to eat as many egg tarts, egg puffs and drink at least two milk teas and as many HK desserts as I can stuff in. 

Hong Kong view from the peak.
Don't take the tram. 1 hour wait in line for peak tram each way is NOT worth it. Just take the bus up there.

I love Hong Kong. It's my 2nd favorite city so far. It's not cheap, it's organized and clean though it's crowded and pushy. People speak English pretty well, and so foreigner friendly. Look at this Maxim's palace dim sum restaurant for instance. (The best dim sum I have ever eaten, btw.) They have English translation and pictures for each item in each cart for people like me. How cool is that! We didn't even have it this much internationalized in bay area dim sum restaurants.

Hong Kong history museum

One of my favorite things to do in each city is visiting the history museum. I always feel like I learn a lot about the place that way. I know everything is on wikipedia now, but I would never go read it if not searching for something in particular. Another one of my fav is Chicago history museum. Hong Kong museums are cheap!  They are ~US$1.25.  Cheap compared to the food cost there, and compared to ~$15 California museums.