Hong Kong: “prissy alexis” kicked in (although, she may always be “kicked in”) when we arrived at our shockingly gross project of a hostel. of course, we moved hostels, but this was probably just a smart maneuver on ryan’s part - every where we went after that looked like a palace!
Hong Kong island was like a little taste of “home” - hilly, foggy, condensed, yet with an awesome downtown and a great “big city” feel. of all the places we went, this is the one i like the best, and where i’d eventually like to live. it was so international and urban.
Beijing: ahhh … china. i think it was a perfect storm (literally and figuratively) that made us hate you. hate may be too strong. ok, strongly dislike. it was freezing, kind of ghetto, no one spoke english, it was communist and - oh yah - we got stuck on a train for three days.
i’m not ruling out going back at a later date and giving it another shot because i know that a lot of the reasons why i was less-than-impressed wasn’t really beijing’s fault.
one thing that WAS my favorite - the snacks. at home, i’ll venture into chinatown for their great drinks and pastries, so i was more than happy to chow down on sesame balls, boba, rice cakes, mochi and bean paste while in their native country.
thailand: i drank my weight in thai iced tea, then sweated it all back out. i got a wicked sunburn that is slowly (and somewhat disgustingly) turning into a wickedly awesome tan. (and probably also skin cancer).
we bypassed all the side-of-the-road foostalls - some of which looked awful (basins of dirty, soapy water where dogs drank and pigeons landed, used to “wash” dishes) and some of which looked great (fresh fruit and drinks in coconuts!) - in favor of staying healthy and not contracting some crazy disease.
malaysia: taxis and shopping were cheap but i didn’t feel like there was a lot to see. it would be a fun place to live, but as a tourist there wasn’t anything phenomenal that stood out in my mind.
singapore: oh, singapore, you shouldn’t have been at the end of our trip! we’d run out of time, the will to tour, and money. Again, not a place that stood out as having awesome sights to see, but the lifestyle there was probably the best out of all the SE Asian cities we went to. everything was clean, well-organized, people were friendly, and everyone spoke english. it’s like the america of asia.
unfortunately, the prices are closer to those in tokyo and that made even having a drink with dinner difficult - especially after coming from super-cheap thailand and malaysia!
overall - i’ve loved my asian experience! from “living” in tokyo with my parents for six weeks to traveling around this last month, but i’ll be glad to get back home. i can’t say that the “extended travdling” bug has bitten - honestly, i don’t know how these backpackers do it, for months on end, moving all the time, with no real itinerary. And when we get back, i’ll probably be looking for a “real job” again - one that pays more steadily and yes, one that forces me to commit to staying somewhere for an extended period of time.
looking at it from my perspective now, i’d say that the next time we travel somewhere extensively, it’ll probably be when we move abroad - like, maybe to hong kong!
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Aaron Wakling