Cities

Big cities are a great chance to live it up during a backpacking adventure.

Standing a Quarter Mile Above the Ground in Malaysia’s Petronas Towers

Photography, storytelling and observations from below and inside Malaysia’s Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur from my backpacking adventure across SouthEast Asia.
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San Francisco Giants World Series Celebration Photo Essay

For the first time since moving to California from New York City in 1958, the San Francisco Giants are the World Series champions of Major League Baseball. After trouncing the Texas Rangers in 5 games, the team returned to the City by the Bay on Wednesday, November 3, 2010, for …
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Thoughts on Hong Kong, Skylines and Kowloon

I hate to say it as a native New Yorker, but Hong Kong’s skyline might just be a little cooler than ours. If only NYC had nightly neon shows.
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Chungking Mansions: Bedbugs, Racial Tensions and Closet Sized Rooms

About an hour after the bedbug check, I felt something crawling on my neck, slapped it and looked at my blood-stained hand. Sure enough…bedbugs! I guess they must have been in hiding and came out when they smelled my blood, because they were all over the bed and pillows.
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Friends From Home, Skylines and Giant Buddha Statues in Hong Kong

After eight months with no visitors, Karen (Carrie’s childhood friend), Ben (who Carrie used to nanny for) and Michelle (Karen’s friend) all coordinated the start to their backpacking trips to meet up for a few days in Hong Kong. It was great to have the company, though all of us …
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The Bird and Goldfish Markets

Heading to the Yuen Po Street Bird Market in Hong Kong, I really just expected to see a bunch of birds and supplies for sale. Sure, the market had that, but it also was a hang out place for older Asian men to come and socialize with their birds. In …
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A Night on the Town Starts at 7-Eleven

Finding drinking in 7-Eleven highly amusing, we grabbed a few beers of our own and joined the fun. Within an hour of socializing, our group had added a pair Australians and a Hong Kong resident from Nigeria named James Later, we quickly looked around and realized that it was, in fact, a brothel. The quote of the night came from one of the Aussie guys who said, “um, we definitely need to leave here. Immediately.”
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Portuguese Streets, Beautiful Buildings and a Lady Gaga Concert in Macau

Located an hour boat ride from Hong Kong, Macau is a completely separate country that feels like a mix between Portugal and Asia. We were originally unsure if we would even go, but after seeing a sign for a Lady Gaga concert at the Venetian hotel and casino we decided …
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Wrapping Up Our Trip in Hong Kong and Macau – This and That

Observations, reflections, and random experiences from 10 days traveling in Hong Kong and Macau.
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Couchsurfing, Clubbing and Shopping in Bangkok

After our visit to the floating market, we headed back to Bangkok and to the apartment of Tom, a local who we found through Couchsurfing. As he works from home, we quickly dropped our bags off at his sweet apartment and headed out for a day of price checking and …
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Interacting With The Locals in Vietnam is Downright Unpleasant

Nightclubs From the beginning, I had a tough time with most interactions we had with locals in Vietnam. Granted, most of the people we met were some form of shopkeeper and as soon as money was introduced to the equation the nice relationship became mean, rude and angry. However, due …
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Just Passing Through Hanoi and a Shady Couchsurfer

Our time in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, was mostly spent on the move. After a sleepless night in the front seat of our Open Ticket bus with Amelia, we had just enough time to catch the new Harry Potter movie before getting on yet another overnight bus to Sapa. …
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Avoiding Taxi Scams and Roaming the Streets of Ho Chi Min

Our bus arrived in Ho Chi Min (formerly Saigon) in the middle of a monsoon and quickly got into a cab to take us to our hotel. After a few blocks, we noticed that the meter was already very high. We told him to stop and asked what was going …
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Chinatown, The Entrapment Towers and the Harlem Globetrotters in Kuala Lumpur

After leaving the airport and finding a hostel in the Chinatown area of Kuala Lumpur, we spent our first day wandering the city and seeing our first movie in the theaters since leaving the USA: Star Trek, which was awesome! Later that night we spent literally hours taking the subway …
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