Well the week in Asia was interesting but It took me a week to recover from the trip! I guess doing both Hong Kong and Vietnam was a bit too much to bite off for one trip. Hong Kong was very interesting, I got a good look at the ex-pats that live in Hong Kong (this is a site http://expatfail.com/ that has stickers all over in Hong Kong) and learned how the HSBC building can be taken down piece by piece and moved. It is interesting that this is a city in china but still has a bit of a western feel. I enjoyed hearing the history from the British side, note it does not quite match the history you may have heard and of course the British were wronged according to the story teller.
The buildings were all so large and many were living space versus office buildings. It is of course a very populated city. I did take a day away from work stuff to travel to Macau Island, and yes another flag for the ceiling of my office. Macau was a bit quieter but not much. This island was a Portuguese island where Hong Kong was British. Just like Hong Kong Macau is part of China but as a special operating area, different set of rules. While in Macau I visited a temple, from this temple you could look across the water and see the Chinese mainland. The tour guide told us that before China opened up people would swim to their freedom. I find this quite interesting.
After Hong Kong I took a quick trip to South East Asia, Vietnam is an absolutely amazing country to visit. The Taxi from the airport was a little less than 8 dollars, from the airport to the Saigon River, by The Hotel Majestic. It was late at night but the city was awake, and I went to the 8th floor of the hotel, got a drink and looked out over the river and the city. If you go to the Hotel majestic in Saigon you need to try this club. Club M, I think it is called. The next morning I took a tour of some temples, and an old region where there were VC Tunnels. It was great to see the places I have read about, I am the type that likes to read and then go out of the two places on this trip I found Hong Kong to be so So and Vietnam to be awesome. The Second day I went all over Saigon, the major sites and markets. This was a great day of local foods and stuff, however i am pretty sure this is where i caught my bug that put me down for my first three days back in the states.
I came home with about 1.5 Million Viet Dong (85$) and i look forward to going back to Vietnam soon to spend it. OK time to go back to a google chrome extension video.
Cheers,
Rob
