Our Adventures in Hong Kong!

During the first few days of September this year, we were in Macau – the Vegas of Asia – and you can read all about that fabulous trip in my previous post. From Macau, we took a Turbojet High-Speed Ferry over to Hong Kong. We were there in the wake of a terrible typhoon and although the weather was sometimes cloudy and a little wet - as you'll see in the photos - that didn't stop us from having the most fabulous few days there.

Hong Kong has long been a fascination to us. We were thrilled to be there at last and determined to make the most of every minute of our visit. We had a lot planned but found it actually impossible to do and see everything that Hong Kong has to offer in the time we allowed.

The first thing we did after checking into our hotel – the Holiday Inn - was to put on comfortable shoes for a long sightseeing walk. This is of course the best way to see the sights and attractions and to browse the shops and markets and street food stalls – of which there are thousands!

We must have walked along the street and the entire length of Hong Kong and Victoria Harbour. Feeling pretty tired afterwards, we hopped onto a traditional tram all the way back to our hotel. The transport system around the city is really good and there are a constant stream of buses and trams and trains and subway trains and taxis and boats to take you quickly and easily and cheaply (not sure about the taxis as we never used one) to wherever you want to go.

On the corner from our hotel was a restaurant called Dim Sum Square and this was where we ate on two occasions because they had the best dim sum we have ever tasted. As you might expect, the best dim sum is in Hong Kong!

We also ate at several other small restaurants – not the fancy western ones or hotel linked ones – but in the side streets where the locals ate and we found the food delicious and reasonably priced. I did see various unusual and strange bugs and insects and sea creatures and parts of animals being cooked and eaten in Hong Kong and, although I'm normally quite adventurous with food, I have to admit that I stuck to what we consider to be normal Asian foods, like fried rice and shrimp and chicken and duck etc.

One thing that fascinated and also appalled me in equal measure in Hong Kong was the amount of traditional medicine shops that are selling very strange things as tonics and remedies. I won’t go into the details.

The next thing we did was to take the famous and charming Star Ferry boat across Victoria Harbour to Kowloon. This is the most inexpensive way to see the famous city skyline and to experience a beloved icon and traditional mode of transport that has been in operation since 1888.

We spent some time in Kowloon, exploring once again on foot, until we eventually ended up at the famous Temple Street Market – the last remaining example of a traditional market in Hong Kong. This is a famous market in its own right for shopping and souvenirs and street food but also the star of many a movie – as it is every movie makers ideal China Town.

One of my very favourite things to do in Hong Kong was our visit to The Peak on The Peak Tram. Not only will the tram take you to the top of Victoria Peak – to the Sky Terrace and a 360 degree fabulous view over the whole of Hong Kong and its skyscrapers, the harbour and all the surrounding islands - but you get there on the world steepest funicular railway. It was an amazing experience and the views – oh my goodness – they are truly breath-taking.

The night before we left Hong Kong we did something so memorable and so iconic that I will forever hold it dear to my heart. We took an old junk boat - an old traditional boat with its billowing red sails - out into the harbour after dark to watch the spectacular nightly light show from the best vantage point possible.

The Symphony of Lights – a light show set to music and colourful lasers and spotlights and LED screens flashing and streaking across all the tall shiny glass and steel buildings around both sides of the harbour is now recognised as a signature icon for Hong Kong – and was simply stunning.

I will forever hold Hong Kong in my heart as a wonderful, romantic, happy and exciting and memorable place. But we were ready to leave simply because our flight the next morning was to take us to Seoul in South Korea – where for the next ten days we would be visiting our family there – our son James and his wife Sujeong and our beautiful two-and-a-half-year-old grandson Aaron and our in-laws, the lovely Kang Family.

So next time here on the blog, I’ll be in South Korea. Join me soon!

Love Janice xx

Our fabulous weekend in Macau – the Las Vegas of Asia!

At the very start of September this year, we were looking forward to spending a couple of days in Macau – the Las Vegas of Asia!

It’s a place that has long been on my bucket list and I was keen to see for myself how its fun attractions and cosmopolitan hotels and casino resorts really compared to those we enjoyed in Las Vegas USA.

Macau has its own international airport although it is just an hour away on a fast ferry from Hong Kong. So, we planned to fly from Kuala Lumpur into Macau and spend two nights there and then three nights in Hong Kong to make the most of our time in these two iconic cities. But, right up to the last minute, we really didn’t know if our trip was going to happen at all because just a few days earlier a terrible and devastating category typhoon had hit Macau and Hong Kong.

I contacted our airline for an update and we were told our flight was unaffected and leaving as scheduled. I contacted the Parisian Hotel, where we had tickets for the final night of the Michael Jackson tribute show ‘Thriller’, and we were told the show was going ahead as planned too.

We were concerned and also sensitive to the loss of life and the destruction that Macau and its people had suffered, but it was made clear to us that the city was recovering quickly from the terrible storm, and that it was business as usual. We decided to go ahead but to keep away from the old historic town that had been worst hit by the typhoon. We certainly didn’t want to add to the burden and pressures of the recovery effort, and so decided to confine our stay to the Cotai area, and to The Strip.

The weather was not so good after the typhoon – it was wet and stormy - but that hardly mattered at all when almost all attractions are undercover and there are walkways between them. We stayed right on the Strip by all the big hotels that both Macau and Las Vegas are known for – like The Wynn, The Venetian, The Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, The St Regis, The Conrad, The Sheraton, The Holiday Inn, and others - and still in Macau - the famous Sands Hotel and Resorts.

It was sad, however, when we were able to venture outside, to see some of the evidence of damage and what was left of the palm trees in the area. They just looked like broken stumps.

We did manage to have a fun ride in the gondolas at The Wynn and we had a fabulous lunch there too at the famous buffet – which we had enjoyed in Vegas too - and can report that they are both equally as good!

We had a good walk around the resort hotels, and in the Venetian Hotel particularly, I wouldn’t have known that I wasn’t in the one in Vegas as it was exactly the same and as equally impressive with its canals and operatic singing gondola drivers and exclusive shops and fabulous skydome interior.

Perhaps the highlight of our trip was attending the Thriller Live Show at the Parisian Hotel. It was the final performance in Macau and this show had started in the West End in London and has travelled throughout the world.

It was truly fabulous and everyone was up dancing!

After a truly amazing couple of days, we were really excited to be leaving Macao knowing that we had not only done it proud but we were going on to Hong Kong next by TurboJet High Speed Ferry.

Join me next time here on the blog when we explore Hong Kong – the iconic city and the colourful harbour with its famous skyline, the mouth-watering food and the history and the culture, our trip by tram up to Victoria Peak and our Star Ferry trip over to the island of Kowloon with its famed Temple Street Market.

Love, Janice xx

An amazing month in beautiful Vietnam…

The end of July through August is a tricky time of year in South East Asia – as many places are having their monsoon season. Having spent a month on Koh Chang in Thailand in the rainy season and then a few fun days in Singapore and Batam Island, which you can read about in previous posts, Trav and I were back in Kuala Lumpur and looking for somewhere to settle down for a month or more, where I could get down to some concentrated work on my current writing project and where he could get in some scuba diving.

We were also looking for somewhere that satisfied several other criteria too - hot sunshine, a nice beach, and most importantly, affordability. And, quite crucially, to satisfy our wanderlust, it also had to be somewhere we hadn’t ever been before.

So, rather than stick a pin in a map, we did our usual research. I’m aware that my posts and photos on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram just show us jetting off and exploring places - but I think you might be really surprised at how much time and effort we spend on planning our travels. Actually, we often don’t go to our first choice of destination. This could be because it would prove too damaging to our current budget or because of the possibility of violent weather (like somewhere being affected by a category tornado/hurricane) or simply because we have reluctantly decided to heed the advice of the UK government’s warning about a place being deemed too unsafe for travel just now. (The UK Gov's website is a good place to check on your travel plans HERE).

Anyhow, after doing our research, we decided on beautiful Vietnam.

Vietnam ticked all our boxes.  We hadn't ever been there before and August is at the end of their hot summer dry season. Our research told us to expect the weather to be good there for at least another month. The coastal regions are renowned for their stunning white sandy palm-fringed beaches and scuba diving and, because it was the end of the season, we expected the price of accommodation to be low.

Also, we had spotted that Air Asia had a bargain flight from Kuala Lumpur to Da Nang in Vietnam, which is very close to the coastal resort of Cua Dae Beach and the larger An ban Beach, and the beautiful ancient town of Hoi An, which is one of only seven UNESCO World Heritage sites in Vietnam.

The river running through the old town at Hoi An Vietnam

At this point - but only once I had completed my writing project - we thought our tentative plans might even lead us up the coast to Na Trang and onto Ho Chi Minh City too, as we have friends there whom we’d love to catch up with again. Then maybe to even flying on from HCMC to Siem Reap Cambodia, to take in the amazing sights at Ankor Wat as it has always been on my bucket list?

The first thing we had to do, however, to get into Vietnam, was to secure a tourist entry visa. We applied online, and as there wasn’t much difference in the price between a one month or three-month visa, and as we were still unsure of our onward plans, we went for the longer one. Then once the visa came through into our email we were able to go ahead and book our flight with Air Asia.

For our accommodation, I looked at Agoda and Booking.com. First, we stayed in a homestay right opposite Cua Dai Beach. It was clean and reasonably priced – a little bit pricier because of its beach location – but we were swayed by the sea, the sand, the seafood restaurants nearby, and so we booked for two weeks.

Our homestay on the beach at Cua Dia Vietnam

An Ban Beach Hoi An Vietnam

During those first two weeks, Trav went diving and I sat on the bed writing. Really, for almost two weeks, I hardly left the room in daylight hours and because there was no desk I had no choice but to sit on the bed! When I did FINALLY finish my project (seriously concerned that I'd damaged my bum irreparably) I really wanted to spend my days lying in the sun and swimming in the sea, but by this time, we decided we needed to move into town, where the accommodation was a bit more affordable.

Trav enjoying the diving off Cham Island Vietnam

So we moved into Hoi An. Again we stayed in a family homestay – there are so many of them in Vietnam and they are run like small boutique hotels.

We had a nice room with a balcony overlooking a pool. Luxury in this incredible heat! I should mention that during this time, the weather was so HOT that it was almost unbearable at times. We have been to many hot and humid places in the world and we can usually cope with it - even when we don't have air conditioning - but my goodness I can’t think of anywhere hotter than Vietnam!

Consequentially, we spent our days not in town but back on the beach at either Cua Dai or An Bang (and that's when I took all the photos). In the early evenings, however, having gone back to our homestay in town for a lovely swim in the pool and a glass of beer, we often took a walk into Hoi An looking for either a restaurant or good street food.

With the fruit sellers in Hoi An Town Vietnam

Hoi An is at its best at sundown when hundreds of lanterns are lit and all the traditional old boats are on the river. Also in the evenings, the use of motorised transport is banned in the old town and so it is enjoyable to explore the pretty streets at this time, either on foot or in an old-fashioned cycle tuk tuk.

As well as the historic buildings in Hoi An, a must-see sight is the iconic old wooden covered Japanese Bridge dating back to the 16^th century, built by the Japanese community.

The Old Japanese Bridge in Hoi An Vietnam

One of our favourite spots in the Old Town was the White Marble Bar – where you can sit in the open (no glass) windows (opposite a fan!) with a vodka lychee martini cocktail (oh wow – they were good!) and watch the world and the hundreds of beautifully dressed Chinese tourists wearing Vietnamese hats being transported around in those cycle tuk tuks.

Hoi An is also very famous for its tailors. You can get beautiful clothes made to measure very inexpensively here. It seems that every Vietnamese in the town is a dressmaker or seamstress – as was our landlady, Moon. I had a dress made by her during our stay (that's the fabric below right) and Trav had two linen shirts, a pair of smart city trousers, and his old denim shorts that were falling to bits perfectly replicated. We were delighted. You'll see the resulting outfits being worn in an upcoming blog post!

Moon, our landlady, was also an expert tailor and we had our new clothes made to measure

After spending a whole month in Vietnam in Cua Dai and Hoi An, quite spontaneously, we spotted an absolute bargain flight to Seoul in South Korea. 

We immediately called our son James and his wife Sujeong, to ask if they were up for having us come over to see them and our grandson Aaron and the Kang family of South Korean in-laws. Like many of our spontaneous trips – they are booked on the basis of a favourable price – and this flight, in ten days time, was from Hong Kong to Seoul return.

So we just had to plan to be in Hong Kong in time for our flight.

We had been to Hong Kong once before – but only as a transit stop between flights. I fell in love with Hong Kong when I had looked down at the city from our plane and saw it lit up like a Christmas tree as we flew in. So this was our big chance to spend a few days and nights there before flying onto Seoul. 

I’d also always wanted to tag a couple of nights in Macao onto a Hong Kong trip too. Macao, known as the Las Vegas of Asia, was just a one hour ferry from Hong Kong. I could see a fabulous adventure materialising before my eyes!

So we abandoned our plans to explore more of Vietnam and Cambodia (for another time) and we flew back to Kuala Lumpur for a few days - not exactly a direct route to Macao and Hong Kong - but it actually worked out cheaper as all the bargain flights were out of KL. Good job we don't mind flying!

So, at the end of August after spending a whole month in Vietnam, we were back in our Asian hub of Kuala Lumpur for a few days. We relaxed at our favourite hotel just outside the city and we booked flights, hotels, and looked up transport schedules for buses, ferries, and trains in Macao and Hong Kong and South Korea. See, I told you we did a lot of research and planning.

While we were back in KL at this time, through his own research, Trav happened to find the right tattoo artist to do our ‘his and hers half-sleeve travel tattoos’ that we had been talking about doing this year for our thirty-fourth wedding anniversary, and so we jumped at this fabulous window of opportunity.

These are our final fabulous designs for our tattoos.
You see mine (left) has a feather pen to represent my writing.
Trav's (right) has a diver to represent his passion for scuba diving.
Both tattoos have a compass and a map and palm trees and our astro signs.

Please do join me in my next post, where I’ll be excited to show you our fabulous new half-sleeve matching travel tattoos now permanently on our arms!

Love, Janice xx

January 2017 - a bittersweet month back in the UK

At the end of my previous blog post written just after New Year – a summary of our travels in 2016 that you can read by clicking HERE – I mentioned how we had no immediate plans to leave Koh Tao in Thailand. But that all changed very quickly on the 4th January when we had word that my mother-in-law was gravely ill.

Happier times: Trav's mum and dad celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary

We checked for flights back to the UK straight away - but as it was still peak time for new year holiday travel - we had problems with availability. We left Koh Tao by boat and bus and plane and headed to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where we knew there was a flight to London with British Airways the following day, on which could be on standby.

We managed to get the last two seats on a flight back to the UK via Hong Kong. 

We were hoping to get back to the UK in time to say goodbye to Trav’s mum before she passed away. Trav was on the phone several times a day with his mum’s nursing carers, and the good news was that his mum had improved slightly, so allowing us more time to get back to her. The bad news was that we heard Trav’s dad had fallen and badly broken his hip. He was now in hospital and due to be operated on the very next day.

We managed to get the last two seats on a flight back to the UK via Hong Kong. 

Then from London we flew straight up to Glasgow because our son, Iain, had kindly allowed us to use his car to save us the cost of car hire. We also managed to see our son, Ben, while we were in Scotland. We had a meal out on the night we arrived in Edinburgh with him and his girlfriend Hayley and her family. I hope they didn’t mind that we were suffering from climate change, we were totally jet lagged, and hadn’t slept for 48 hours!

It had been two years since we’d been back in the UK and it felt quite surreal to sudden find ourselves back there. I had been missing my family very much over the Christmas holidays, so I knew this albeit unplanned trip would be bittersweet time, because it would be wonderful to see family and friends again but very sad indeed to see Trav’s dad in hospital and his mum for what would be the very last time. We had been warned she was now in the last days of her life.

After buying some warm clothes and footwear more suited to the UK in January, we headed down to England, shivering under gloomy grey and rainy skies. I couldn’t help but to think of the sunshine we had left behind us in Thailand – until I checked my Facebook notifications to discover that the very day after we left Koh Tao a monsoon had hit – bringing the worst rainfall in decades. I’m sure that as we had left so quickly and unexpectedly some peeps might have thought we knew something was about to happen – but we didn’t – honest!

Once in England, we visited Trav’s mum and dad, who were in two different locations: Whiston hospital and a Runcorn nursing home. My best friend, Dina, who happens to live an equal distance between the two places, kindly said that we could stay with her for which we were extremely grateful.

Often, while Trav was with his mum and dad, I went to visit my mum and it was so wonderful to spend time with her. I also got to catch up with my brothers and sisters. It was hard to arrange to see everyone during this unplanned trip, even though we were back for a month, when everyone worked during the week and often had plans over the weekend. I did manage to have a meal out with my brothers one evening and to spend a couple of nights with my sister Lorna and her family at her house.

With my mum and brothers David and Steven

Sadly, on the 17^th January, with her three sons and daughter-in-laws at her bedside, Trav’s mum, Dorothy Horton, passed away peacefully in the early hours of the morning. She was 84 years old and she had been suffering with dementia and Alzheimer’s. She hadn't known or recognised her family during her last months but, in the moments before she drew her last breath, I saw her open her eyes, shed a tear, and look with absolute clarity upon her boys.

Sadly, as my father in law was still recovering from his hip operation, he wasn’t able to be with his wife at the end. As you might imagine, this made for an extremely difficult and emotional time, when we had to break the sad news to him later that day at the hospital.

The funeral couldn’t be held for another 15 days due to the Christmas and New Year holidays and with January apparently being a busy time for the funeral services generally. This posed a problem for Trav and I as we had a return flight to Asia booked a couple of days before the funeral date.

We spent a long time on the phone speaking to several departments within British Airways until we finally got someone who could help us. BA were more than helpful and, although there should have been hefty charges associated with changing our flights, they wavered all of them and moved our flights forward by one week to allow us to attend the funeral.

During the next two weeks, we continued to stay as house guests at my lovely friend Dina’s house. As we hadn’t seen Dina since she had come out to see us in Koh Tao the previous January. It was wonderful to see her again.

My best friend Dina and I on Koh Tao Thailand last year

Trav and I were aware that we needed new visas to get back into Thailand, so we made a trip into Liverpool to the Royal Thai Consulate there. I hadn’t been to Liverpool for decades and yet I had been brought up there. My family moved to Liverpool when I was 6 years old and moved out of Liverpool to Runcorn when I was 14. I have to say that the Liverpool I knew back then is a far cry from the rather swish cosmopolitan city that it is today.

I immediately wished we’d been able to spend more time staying in Liverpool at the Albert Dock than the one night we had planned. Especially when a lovely friend who we met on the island of Utila in the Caribbean last year – who plays with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra – got in touch on Facebook messenger and offered us ticket for the following evening’s performance.

We did however manage to catch up with a couple of lovely friends who we’d met a couple of years ago while we were in the Bahamas. Jen and Gregg live in Liverpool and are planning to come out to Koh Tao in March to see us and do some diving – so it was great to meet up with them in Liverpool while we were there. They showed us a great night out in the city. We stopped outside Horton House for a photo and went on to a fabulous Brazilian all you can eat restaurant called Fazenda followed by a cocktail bar called The Alchemist where the cocktails all look like science experiments!

We also managed to catch up with our closest friends Jeannette and Nigel and Sara and Douglas and Jane and Pete in Scotland. It was so wonderful to see them again and to catch up with each other over a wonderful dinner that Jeannette cooked for us all. 

While in Scotland, we also briefly go see our eldest son Ben again in Edinburgh and to stay with my sister Lisa and her family who live in Ayrshire. While staying at Lisa’s I was very keen to have a ride on my niece Shannon’s new pony. Her pony, called Star, was her Christmas gift. Lucky girl!

Then we returned to England for Trav’s mum’s funeral. It was a sad and poignant day. Again we were able to meet up with friends and family we hadn’t seen in a long time. Unfortunately, Trav’s dad wasn’t able to attend, as he was still too frail and that made for an even more difficult and emotional day for the family. After a service at the crematorium everyone gathered at a nearby old Cheshire pub that is opposite All Saint’s Church in Daresbury. The church is famously the burial place of Lewis Carol and there is a beautiful stain-glass window there dedicated to Alice in Wonderland.

Trav’s mum’s funeral. It was a sad and poignant day.

Rest in Peace Dot Horton

The day after the funeral Trav and I headed back to Asia with heavy hearts. We decided we needed some down time before heading back to the island of Koh Tao and our busy lives of teaching diving and writing projects. We decided to take a short diversion and fly over to the island of Penang in Malaysia. It is very easy and inexpensive to fly to Penang with Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur and it's a place we had yet to visit. Not that we planned to explore much – that would have to wait for another visit – we just wanted time to rest and recuperate and to get over our hectic and stressful month and from the jetlag of travelling. We were very fortunate, due to Trav being a card member with Holiday Inn - that we were given a fabulous top floor suite upgrade for the three nights of our stay and so were able to get our R and R in absolute luxury!

Next time on the blog I’ll be back on Koh Tao in Thailand. We have lots to do there – Trav is heading up a team of Dive Master Trainees and I have a new book to bring out soon and another to start writing.

So pop back soon for island updates and writerly news and please do consider joining my 2017 mailing list. Every new subscriber will receive a free copy of my bestselling ebook 'How To Party Online' just for signing up to my occasional newsletters by using the form at the top right hand side of this page.

Love, Janice xx