Finally our stuff! Just in time for me to leave for Israel

The slow boat to China finally arrived the day after we got back from Thailand (Nov. 26). After about 7 weeks, we were finally going to take a look at all the stuff that we felt we could not live without, but couldn't exactly remember what it was. Although the tailgating chairs with pockets on the arms for a beer can came in handy, it was awesome to see our couch and dining room table again. It was also nice to sleep in a proper bed again. Believe it or not, John and I had been sleeping on an air mattress since we moved to Hong Kong --- and not one of those nice ones. We were sleeping on one that was about 4 inches off the floor.

I was home for about a week before I embarked on a round the world 3- week trip from Hong Kong to Tel Aviv to New York and back to Hong Kong. I will not miss the British Airways food choices -- definitely the worst I've ever had to stomach.

Israel was amazing and I had wonderful hosts the entire time. My dad was there for business and my mom and I had a guide for 5 days, taking us all around the country - from the Lebanese boader town of Metulla to the Dead Sea and everything inbetween

Here are some pictures from my trip:

This is one of our guides - Leon, he lives in Jerusalem but is originally from South Africa. He was wanting my mom and I to step up the pace. We were distracted with all the shops.

This is the Western Wall -- also known as the Wailing Wall

A girl in the Israeli Army --

Overall, I had an amazing time in Israel and was so happy to have had the chance to get there.

After this trip, it was off to NYC for the holidays...

Thanksgiving in Phuket,Thailand

Faced with the prospect of having Katie and I spend our first Thanksgiving in Hong Kong away from family and friends in an empty apartment ,we decided go to Phuket, Thailand for a bit of sun, some diving, and some exploring. After a hectic 6 months, I was in desparate need of a vacation.

The trip got off to a rough start when we spent about 2 hours hunting around Phuket's tourist trap, Patong Beach, looking for the dive shop where we booked our overnight dive trip. It was humid and the locals were hassling us to look at whatever they were trying to sell (t-shirts, sunglasses, swimsuits, the usual). Not exactly the paradise we had been hoping for.















However, once we found the dive shop, everything got much better. After a relaxing evening at our hotel, we left very early the next morning (before sunrise)to begin our trip up to the Similan Islands, considered by many to have the best diving in Thailand.

To get there, we took an hour in half bus-ride followed by an hour speed boat trip to the live-aboard boat. Some of the most interesting highlights of that trip included seeing rubber tree farms (they extract rubber from the trees in much the same way they do maple syrup from maple trees) and watching families of up to 4 or 5 people riding down the highway on one motorbike.

The 2 days on the dive boat were great. There were about 20 other divers, some from England, Japan, Sweden and a number of other countries. Our dive guide was a Spanish guy named Fran.

The picture below is of the island where we had our first 2 dives, Ko Bon.

The diving was amazing; we saw loads of beautiful coral, sea turtles, eels and tons of fish. The visibility was awesome and we couldn't have asked for better weather on the boat. Below is a picture of one of the 9 Similan Islands.

One of my favorite moments on the trip was when I was completely surrounded by a huge school of glowing neon blue and yellow fish. It was visually stunning and one of those amazing moments that happen from time to time as a diver. Its why I love diving and can't enough of the sport.

Katie and I just before going under on one of our dives.

Between dives, the boat had a great roof deck with beach chairs where we could go to get some sun and relax. At night, the temperatures were beautiful and a we spent a few hours looking up at the stars and talking to other travelers from different corners of the globe (Singapore, Dublin, California).

Just before sunset, a sea turtle took interest in our boat and circled a few times. Later that night, on my first ever night dive, I was able get reacquainted to our friend as he joined us for about 15 minutes.

Overall, the 2 days diving were great. The diving was amazing, the weather was perfect and we also got to meet some great people. At this point, we were definitely ready for some beach time and spent most of the rest of our trip relaxing. I did unfortunately have a small bout of food poisoning on the last day, but it did nothing to ruin the great time we had on our first trip to Thailand and the South East Asia region.

Some other pictures from our trip:

Sunset from the diveboat:

The beach where our hotel was located:

A picture of the King of Thailand outside of our hotel. There are pictures of him everywhere.

London & Dublin

Once we were back from Tokyo, I had about 5 days rest before I was off to London and Dublin. My friend Brenda has been living in London since Oct '05 and I've been meaning to get out there, my sister was also studying in London for the semester so it worked out perfectly that I could see her as well as Brenda. My mom and aunt Nancy also decided to make the trip, so it was a big reunion in the UK.

This is a picture of Brenda and me at the London Eye. The story goes like this --- Brenda, Kim, Bill and I were driving from Detroit to Chicago after Kim's bridal shower (so this was in 2003 sometime) and because it was a 5 hour drive, we began to play 20 questions to pass the time. Now, Kim and I would play 20 questions when we were bored at work at Ernst & Young (we didn't bill any clients during this time) and we got so good that we would only have to ask 4-5 questions before we could figure out what the other was thinking. So, we're in the car and it's Brenda's turn to think of something and between the other three of us in the car, we go through all 20 questions and then some other hints before we all give up and Brenda's like "It's the London Eye!!!" None of us had any idea what she was talking about even after she told us -- so here is a picture of Brenda and I at the London Eye.

Then Christine and I went to Dublin for the weekend and had a great time. Here are some pictures of Dublin

We also went on a musical pub crawl - here is a video clip of some of the music. The music is good enough, but what I really wanted to capture was the rockin' mullet one of the guys had

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7EJHy-f7IE

Once back in London, we saw some great sights and ate some great meals

Next we were off to Thanksgiving in Thailand...

Moving to HK and trip to Tokyo

So, it's only taken me about 3 1/2 months or so to get this blog thing up and running! Here we hope to provide you all with some updates as well as our perspective on how we see things here in Hong Kong and throughout Asia.

The first few days went something like this......

Day 1, we got to our empty apartment with a stench so strong of polyurethane that John and I could smell it down the hall before we even got to the door. Once inside, we began to unpack all 6 bags we managed to bring with us (I will not try to explain what we looked like going through the airport with bags EVERYWHERE). As we get to the last bag, John's like "Holy S**T this is not my bag!!" In a state of delirium the night before, I had pulled off all the bag tags, so not only did we have someone else's bag but we had no idea who's bag we had and who had our bag. We went back to the hotel we stayed at and tried to 1) see if our room had been cleaned 2) explain that we were looking for bag tags in the trash can 3) beg them to let us go up to the room and see for ourselves. Finally, after about 15 minutes of discussions the hotel staff let us back into our room and we found the bag tags, went back to the airport and returned the bag. I am now on some offenders list at Cathay Pacific because they took copies of my passport and made me sign some document stating that I took someone else's luggage.

Days 2-5 were somewhat uneventful, but when something like this....days were spent going to Ikea (same hell all around the world, but is the only place you can get "western" type stuff here"), trying to stay awake past 6:00 pm and sleep past 4:00 am, and figuring out ways to pirate the internet from someone with the username "mailmanyu"

After about a week here, we went on our first trip to Tokyo - it was awesome! Our friends from NYC, Kevin & Katie, move to Tokyo the same time we moved to HK so we met up with Kevin for his first weekend in Tokyo. It was also Halloween weekend, so there were kids running around in costumes. Here are some pictures

We also caught a Japanese Beatles cover band. Now, at like 2:00 am when we saw these guys, we were all convinced that they were really good --we were singing along, loving every second. Listening to the video afterward, I guess they could have used a little more practice. Here is our picture with them

Here are a few more pictures from our trip....






This is a family that was sitting next to us at dinner one night and per the grandson (pictured) his grandmother is an Origami champion (grandma is the one in Kimono). They were really nice and the grandson tried to talk to us all night - even offering us his food ("raw meat, very good") and sake. The grandma was creating Origami figures with anything she could get her hands on.





Here are some photos from around town -- we ran into a wedding, some Harajuku girls and that big intersection

That's it for this trip....