At the table, I was feeling better, but not so much. Peter handed me a menu, but, as I said, it was pig knuckles on this or that, and chicken wings with an egg on whatever … yuck. I ordered a Sprite, and just chatted with them. They ordered rice and some kind of pork. The smell almost made me gag. In fact, most of Hong Kong smells like the inside of an Asian market. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t growing on me. In fact, most of the local food makes me nauseous. I’m still trying to figure out what tried to kill me today. I had a Green Tea Latte at the Giant Buddha (Starbucks are EVERYWHERE),...

Once we got down from the plateau, it was across a plaza with synchronized water shooting out of the street. There’s actually a cinema there, and I was keen on getting photos of the movie posters. “Terminator: Salvation” is being heavily promoted. I also saw some “Star Trek” coming soon posters. One poster was actually for an Asian film. It was for “Blood: The Last Vampire,” a film I was hoping to see in Japan. According to the poster, it’s still to come. As we went into the subway, my stomach started to hurt, and I realized that I probably should have gone to the restroom. I was...

I woke up around 8 a.m., and Skyped Smith. I also started downloading and uploading my photos. In 20 minutes, I think I uploaded only about 12 photos to Flikr, and I had about 100 plus to go! Because of this I bought a three-hour Internet card. I took my shower and got ready to go. BTW, this is a pretty awesome hotel for services. We got complimentary shower cap, tooth brushes, tooth paste, shampoo, shaving gel, soap, razors … maybe something else. Very nice. Sometime around 10:20 or so I got a phone call from Natalie – one of the three of us who stayed home from church – and she was wondering...

We got off the plane we went to the luggage carousel, and then blasted through customs. (It was a breeze, something I didn’t expect.) We then went to exchange our money, which was infinitely better than Amsterdam. NO charges, and we ended up getting 7 HK for every one US. I gave them a $50 and got back something like $373! Of course the first thing I saw coming out of the baggage area was a Coke machine. I never fell over when I saw the price beneath each can was $10. In HK money … it’s expensive but not THAT bad. Peter bought our train tickets, and we took one to Kowloon. Then we took a...

The flight from Amsterdam to Hong Kong was good in just ONE way – because we were seated near the Exit, we had plenty of room to stretch out. The bad part of it was everything else. First off, we had a couple seated on the opposite side, right behind us, with a baby, and it made a lot of noise. Not wanting to put up with it – I hadn’t had any sleep so I was very tired and cranky – I put my headphones on, plugged in my iPod and cranked it up. I then covered myself with my blanket, put my shitty small pillow at the base of my back, blew up my travel pillow, wrapped it around my head, and...

We disembarked at around 11 a.m. in Amsterdam, found a money exchange booth – they shafted us about 3.40 Euros for every transaction – which means that for $20 US I only got 9 Euros back. Not much you can buy with that. We went to the train ticket booth and got tickets for Midcity. The ride was about 20 minutes, and I was going in and out of consciousness. (Trains have the effect on me.) We arrived at our destination and I was immediately struck at the sheer number of bicycles that were absolutely EVERYWHERE. Every inch of railing had bikes by it. And these aren’t the lightweight, dinky bikes...

Space wise the flight could have been better. I was seated next to Ryan, and in front of us were two twits who pushed their seats back all of the way. This limited our space to an uncomfortable degree. On the plus side, we each had our own TV monitor in front of us and a remote control from which we could select whatever movie, TV show or music we wanted to watch or listen to. I watched “Rock N Rolla,” which has been on my Netflix list for awhile, and “K-20,” a Japanese movie starring Takeshi Kaneshiro that I never thought I’d get to see. “Rock N Rolla”...

Left for Eppley Airport at 9:50 a.m. for our 12:15 flight. Went through check-in with some difficulty – I kept sliding my passport through the booking machine upside down – and once I figured THAT out, we continued through gate security. We all got to chatting. A lull in conversation caused me to look up at one of the television sets in the lounge area. On the screen was a story about a group of American students who were quarantined in Southern China for suspected cases of swine flu. This news did not put my mind at ease. Maybe it was a harbinger of bad shit to come. I glanced over at the...

I just added a video of Bodhi barking on YouTube. Check it out.