Hi!
Many of you are enjoying all of the lovely offerings of Fall in the states – college football, tailgating, stadium nachos, apple picking – and I have to admit I am quite jealous. Although Fall in Hong Kong is growing on me. The humidity has dialed back a bit and 85 degrees is now very comfortable. We are making the most out of our last few weeks in Hong Kong – more on that below – and thought we would provide a re-cap of our summer in S.E. Asia.
June brought some pretty awesome friends to Hong Kong, but these guys didn’t have to travel very far. Matt and Allison are dear friends from Boston who relocated to Singapore about 2 months before we moved to HK. Allison and I worked together in Massachusetts for several years and when she told me she was moving to Singapore, I decided the only rational response was to follow her. Normal. I know.
Matt and Allison were amazing guests for a lot of reasons, but the best part was they didn’t have to recover from any jet leg so we hit the ground running when they arrived and kept going. We walked through the ladies market and flower market, watched the dragon boat races, hiked every peak we could in two days and ate so much dim sum. It was incredible to share Hong Kong with these two and even better that I’m now working with Allison again! More on that below. (You see what I am doing here?)
After celebrating the 4th of July with some of Hong Kong’s finest expats, we hopped over to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam for a few days. Dom was able to dive into work and I entertained myself with a photography tour around the city. I signed up for Vietnam’s Photo Adventure’s group photography tour and as luck would have it, no one showed up, but me! So I had a private tour of one of my favorite cities with the most patient french man I may ever meet. Arnaud is a truly gifted photographer, but he is equally as talented at teaching a total novice like me how to actually capture the beauty of our surroundings. Most importantly, my new best friend taught me how to properly cross the streets of Saigon. Turns out it takes more than wincing, running and a prayer.
We had some vacation days planned in August and neither of us had ever been to the Philippines, so we packed up and shipped out for a 2 hour flight to Manila. We only had a couple of days in Manila before we headed to the beaches of Boracay, but we made the most of it. Our hotel connected us with a tour and again we were the only two people to show, so we received a private lesson on Manila from a retired high school history teacher – Dom was in heaven.
The first part of our tour brought us to the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial – think Arlington National Cemetery only in the Philippines. We could have walked this memorial all day. There are more than 17,000 headstones in this memorial and the wall of the missing (photo below) honors more than 36,000 MIA – It’s the largest American military cemetery outside of the U.S.
The rest of our tour took us through Intramuros, the old town center of the Spanish colonial period that features beautiful architecture and extraordinary catholic churches. I know the U.S. recently celebrated in a visit from Pope Francis, but I am not sure it holds a candle to the enthusiasm this country displayed when he visited earlier this year. Every part of our tour included a factoid about the visit from His Holiness and every gift shop was packed with Pope souvenirs.
After our day-trip in Manila, we boarded a tiny plane to the island of Boracay – famous for it’s white sand beaches. Despite arriving in rainy season, we were very fortunate to have had plenty of days in the sun. Boracay is a very popular beach for tourists from mainland China and South Korea… and their selfie sticks. Somehow, even though the restaurants were crowded the beaches felt like they were our own. We traveled from our villa to the beach and market in a covered motor trike and I remain impressed that I didn’t fall out the back. We stayed at a lovely villa and made friends with the owner who after a few dinners together kindly reduced our room rate… forcing us to extend our time on the island. Twice.
Late August brought another very special visitor, all the way from D.C….. the man, the myth, the legend: Robbie Elsworth. Robbie is a hometown friend of Dom, a personal favorite of mine, and the only other person I know who travels as much as Dom. So when he decided to come to Hong Kong for a weekend with only a weeks notice it felt totally natural to all three of us. Thank you Congressional recess.
Robbie and Dom hit the links in Hong Kong on probably the hottest and most humid day of the year, but luckily they had some very generous help to carry their clubs. We hit the streets of Lan Kwai Fong that evening and the following day we hiked our way to the Peak to earn us some delicious dim sum. Since this was Robbie’s first dim sum experience, we had to go all out and order the whole duck. We were really sad to send Robbie back to DC, but someone has to fix that place so we let him go.
September was a jam-packed month, though absent any visitors. Some highlights include another trip to Vietnam for Dom, a birthday celebration fit for a queen (and she is!), a trip back to the states for Dom, a live performance of Bon Jovi in Macau, and the start of a new job for me. I feel very fortunate to have found an incredible opportunity to work during our time in Asia. I joined ConneXionsAsia (CXA) in August to help launch their Hong Kong operations and I cannot speak more highly of this team and the mission behind our work. CXA is Asia’s first private workplace exchange that allows employees to spend their corporate-sponsored flexible benefit dollars on health and wellness services that are designed to… wait for it… make you healthier. Imagine that. Now, we just need the U.S. to catch on to this brilliant concept.
I came upon CXA through Allison, who works at their headquarters in Singapore and it has been so fun to reconnect with my friend and colleague while in Asia. Who would have ever thought? Sadly, though, our days in Hong Kong are numbered and so is my time with CXA. We will be returning to Boston in December (lovely that time of year, eh?) as Dom’s assignment in Hong Kong is complete and he will be taking on a new role within Shorelight’s headquarters. It will be wonderful to be closer to family and friends in the U.S., but we have truly loved Hong Kong as our home for the last year and enjoyed even more the friends who are like family.
We are going to make the most out of our last days in Hong Kong and our B&B still has a few more guests planned for October, so more to come!
LearningToFly.me 