Hong Kong

I began my adventure with a two day stop over in Hong Kong. The original reason for visiting Hong Kong arose with the idea of reuniting with two friends from my Mongolian horseback riding trip two years ago. Leo Murray is a former Williams College classmate who has lived in Hong Kong ever since college and organizes adventure trips to Mongolia, Myannmar/Burma, and Nepal and Jim is a Brit who has lived and worked in Hong Kong most of his life. We went out to supper at a Chinese restaurant in Kowloon, a “suburb” of Hong Kong where I met their Hong Kong wives Elaine and Betty. Elaine is 5 feet tall and a ton of character, educated as a social worker at University of Alabama and interned on the streets of Washington, DC. We discussed the concept of silence which neither of them had experienced growing up in crowded Hong Kong.

I also am meeting up with an old friend Richard Goodrich from Berkeley, California, a fellow traveler, who is on a trip to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. He and I are lovers of jazz and attended one day the International Hong Kong Jazz Festival held outdoors overlooking the harbor.

Hong Kong is fascinating, with vertical high rises on precious little land, densely populated, with lots of good restaurants and markets. I wish I had allotted more time for this visit to Hong Kong, but that will have to wait for another trip.












Mongolian Reunion - Jim, Leo, Howard, Betty, Elaine

Pre-trip Planning

I have planed this trip to SE Asia for several months.

I retired last May and have been launching into retirement with gusto!
This summer I attended three jazz workshops to work on my jazz piano skills: Jazz Camp West at a redwoods campgrounds near La Honda, California; Jamey Aebersold's Camp at Louisville, Kentucky; and the Stanford Jazz Camp.

Then in August I joined a gang of adventurers my age for a canoe trip down the Big Salmon River in the Yukon. It was an exhilarating trip, featuring a pristine uninhabited wilderness, king salmon swimming upstream, eagles perched by the river, families of mergansers, and signs of grizzlies and moose (and one big foot track left by a merry prankster ahead of us down the river), but also a dramatic canoe capsize on the second day of the trip followed by the rescue from the raging waters of the three canoeists including one with a prosthetic leg and repair of the canoe thanks to the help and north country wisdom of Trevor and his Yukon Canadian family, a second capsize incident two days later, and recurrent days of cold rainy weather. I somehow avoided being a victim of either of these mishaps, the fear of falling in the icy cold water perhaps providing me super-human strength in avoiding capsize. After the second capsize incident, however, we all became very focused and proficient with our canoeing skills.

In September I celebrated my 70th birthday with a large gathering of friends at a rack of lamb feast at our home provided by gourmet chef Mahmoud.

Now I'm off to SE Asia for travels to Hong Kong, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, and a bicycle trip in Sri Lanka. I have traveled all of my life, with early travels around the US with my parents, many trips to Europe during my college years (Europe on 5 dollars a day during the 60's), courtship of my wife Rebecca with travel in Italy and Greece, and many trips to Central and South America, SE Asia, and Africa with my wife and children. This will, however, be my first trip to Sri Lanka.

Adventure travel is my passion!