Our Adventure in Seoul, South Korea: December 2016

Our week in Hong Kong was our last trip in Asia (for now) and a fantastic finale to our two wonderful years living in this part of the world.

Hong Kong is a former British colony. It is now a “special administrative region" of China. In 1997, London handed over Hong Kong to Beijing with some provisions in place for 50 years, at which point the integration of Hong Kong and China is supposed to be complete. So, under China's "one country, two systems," Hong Kong's economic and social systems have autonomy until 2047. China already has control of Hong Kong's foreign affairs and defense.

From our perspective, this makes Hong Kong a cleaner, friendlier and more urban-beautiful city than those we visited in mainland China. Plus, English is widely spoken, with a lovely British accent, no less. The people call themselves Cantonese, which is also the name of the Chinese dialect they speak. The traditional foods are rice- and noodle-based dishes, and of course tea.

Also noteworthy: Hong Kong is one of the most densely-populated areas of the world with almost 7.2 million people in just 430 square miles.

Hong Kong, here we come.

Our first order of business was to take a tram up to the top of the famed Victoria Peak, Hong Kong's tallest mountain.

The tram's glass bottom freaked out no one. Except me.

At the top of Victoria Peak.

Sight seeing around an old Chinese village.

Kung Fu master.

Buddha.

The city had a lot of green space and was remarkably free from litter and yuk in general.

Clear skies in Hong Kong. There doesn't seem to be the severe air pollution that most of mainland China has.

We don't pass a fountain without striping down and playing in it.


We took a sunset cruise on a traditional "junk boat" around the city's Victoria Harbor.

Our boat trolled around the harbor as the city lit up at night.

We took a two-day side trip to Macau, which a small island across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong. It is another autonomous region of China, but Macau was a Portuguese territory until 1999. As such, a lot of its architecture, art, food and, much to our delight, language is Portuguese. We really wanted to talk with Chinese people in our favorite second language (as a reminder, it's Portuguese), but really only immigrants from Portugal living there spoke it. We stayed at a Portuguese hotel, ate traditional Portuguese food and read/understood all the Portuguese street signs. An interesting side note: Macau is also known as the Las Vegas of Asia. Its "strip" is much smaller, but has big name hotel-casinos, like The Paris and The Hard Rock.