The dragon boats

I'm having breakfast this morning at a place called Tsui Wah. Is a chain restaurant popular all over Hong Kong. It's kind of like a chain diner. Think Denny's serving a pan Asian/Western mix with a focus on Cantonese. The food is alright, the service is abysmal, and the Hong Kong is turned up to 100%. So it's the air conditioning.

Later today I plan to watch the dragon boat races, which are a big part of the dragon boat festival. In China, dragon boat is the holiday that marks the beginning of Summer. So it falls on exactly the same weekend as memorial day in the US and serves the same function.

Unfortunately, this is the line to get to the dragon boat races I don't know how long the line takes, but I imagine large crowds there and difficulty getting back to the train station on time. So unfortunately, no dragon boat this year.

A day in Hong Kong...

I was able to do a bit of wandering around today while I was waiting to be able to check into my hotel. I didn't really get to see anything new but I'm also aware that I haven't posted many pics from previous trips to Hong Kong, so I wanted to put some up. As usual in HK, my phone was running low on battery, so I didn't get as many as I would like. I'm still ironing out the posts for this blog, which I would like to make more photo oriented than the first blog I started when I came to China. I may even buy a real camera so the pictures are a higher quality. Right now, I make most of my posts from my phone so the photos are slapdash and I haven't been explaining much, but I hope to iron that out before I take a major trip like last year's trip to Vietnam and Thailand. (I so wish I could have posted on the go during that trip.)

Also, I should probably try and make this blog more interactive by asking the following question: what do you want to know about the places I go? Do you have things you want to see or questions you want answered? I regularly travel to and around the Pearl River Delta and I assume they seem pretty exotic to my friends and family, though they are becoming relatively familiar to me. I hope to travel around China in the coming years, and more of Southeast and East Asia.

If you're interested, leave comments and suggestions below and that night help guide me the next time I make a trip. Or tomorrow, for that matter!

Back in Hong Kong

I'm back in Hong Kong for the holiday weekend. I came for practical reasons. There are some things you can get in Hong Kong that you just can't get on the mainland. Mostly in the grocery store.

Nevertheless, I will be making an effort to find some events pertaining to dragon boat festival and post some photos.