During the summer of 2003, we took the opportunity to travel to Hong Kong on a super deal we learned about from Chris's dad. In order to save money, we flew out of San Francisco, which meant a 14 hour drive each way at the beginning and end of our journey. Here we are waiting for a pre-dinner cocktail cruise along the waterfront. Above, you see the famous Jumbo Floating Restaurant, a fixture on the Hong Kong waterfront town of Aberdeen for the past twenty five years. It serves both a good selection of more familiar dishes as well as those enjoyed more by the locals. A better time to visit would be at lunch, when a selection of dim sum* is available. To the right is a sampan, a type of boat where entire families work and live, some for their entire lives. (This lifestyle is falling out of practice, as the kids grow up and move away, but there are still a few around. Here are Chris and I at the top of Victoria Peak, the highest public point in Hong Kong. To get there, you can drive (unadvisable), walk (if you've got a thing for pain) or take the world's longest funicular railway, a fifteen-minute tram ride straight up the side of the mountain. We were sad to leave, but all good things must come to an end. Besides, we had to leave ourselves something to see the next time we visited, right?

As you may have read from Mike's Hong Kong experiences on Westpac, there are any number of things to do in Hong Kong, first and foremost is eating, of course. Represented in her various restaurants and eateries are all five of the classic Chinese styles of cooking: Szechwan, Cantonese, Mandarin, Chiu Chow, and Pekinese. The food, in our humble opinions, is out of this world. We took a short trip to Lantau, one of the neighboring islands in the SAR (Special Administrative Region, the official mainland Chinese name for the Hong Kong/Kowloon area), to see the bronze Buddha at the top of Lantau Peak. There are 265 steps to the base of the Buddha, and about another hundred if you walk to the upper deck inside the statue itself. . . . . . Not only is there the largest seated outdoor bronze statue of Buddha in the world, but also a thriving monastery which supports itself through admissions tickets, donations, and a wonderful vegetarian lunch which may be purchased for a modest additional fee. Well worth the price, and well worth the trip.

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