Hong Kong in Style!

High on Shouson Hill, I am looking over the green hills, across the beach and the exclusive Ocean Park neighbourhood of Hong Kong, watching a ship drift slowly into the horizon. Soon I will go for a swim before heading into central Hong Kong for my umpteenth Dim Sum lunch. Life is tough on the road.

All this is thanks to Anna's friend Lien Khanh, who lives in the American diplomatic estate, where we are staying.

Hong Kong is a vibrant city with busy active streets surrounded by relaxing green hills and filled with tall condo and office buildings. The food is Cantonese, cheap and fantastic! Anna is enjoying shopping and we are both enjoying exploring the sites and planning for our mainland China adventure.

Highlight: cheap, fantastic food and meeting Anna's uncle's family.

Japan - Food and Karaoke, What Else?

After a brief stop-over in T.O., we flew off to Tokyo, Japan to visit with my buddy Will for 8 days. We had a great time eating our way through the large list of Japanese cuisines: Okinomiaki, Sukiyaki, Izikaya, Shabu-Shabu, Sushi, Tempura etc etc.

Our best times were spent in the Karaoke booth in the seedier parts of Shinjuku with champagne and plenty of sours. Luckily there is no sound-track available!

On our last night in town, Will took us to a floor show in Shibuya. The show was a high energy combination of dancing, singing on a transforming stage to an audience of about 50. Amazing production for such a small audience. The star of the show (and several other dancers) were tranvestites in various stages of transformation to females thanks to adept Thai surgeons... Typical in Japan, each table was expected to host the performers for overpriced drinks after the show. Great fun to trade jokes in broken English with a garish Japanese transvestite!

Definitely a unique culture!

Arctic Circle and Lapland

The final leg of our African leg was to drive across Swedish Lapland and hike north of the arctic circle.

We started by picking up some gear in Stockholm (thank you to Andy for delivering in person from London) and enjoying a few days of museums (there are literally hundreds in Sweden) and exploring Swedish culture. The culinary side can be explored very quickly (meat, potatoes, flat bread, hotdogs and pickled fish) but we did manage to get in a few good meals of reindeer and herring.

Striking out from Stockholm we drove 15 hours north to the artic circle and the town of Jokkmokk. We spent five days in the area canoeing, hiking and enjoying the non-stop rain and cloudy skies. Yes, we didn't pick the best time of year to come to Sweden, but still managed to enjoy ourselves with good 3-ply Gortex.

The nature looked very much like northern Ontario but with reindeer, good Swedish organization (orderly cities, public transport etc) and Sami (Lapp) people. The Sami are an ethnic group of reindeer herders who live across Norway, Sweden, Finland and Siberia. Interesting history with much the same historical prejudice and Native NAs or Inuit people...

Off to Japan to conquer Mt Fuji!