We love Bangkok, and we've been looking forward to coming back. This was our fourth time in this cosmopolitan, cool city. We went right away for Thai food. Kristina is enjoying a mango, passion fruit and strawberry smoothie.
Green papaya salad is always a favorite.
Because we've visited here a lot we didn't do a lot of sight seeing, but we did check out the contemporary art at the Bangkok Art & Culture Center. They had an exhibit by artists age 18 and younger. This piece entitled United Through Dhamma is by a 14-year old named Ploypailin Sukkawat.
We spent a Sunday afternoon at Lumphini Park. It has a big lake and there were pleasant breezes.
We saw birds like this egret . . .
. . . and several large monitor lizards. The lizards seem to prefer to swim rather than walk on land, but this big one did walk around a bit before returning to the water.
The park also has a rock-surface to use for foot massages, along with a chart showing how massaging different parts of the soles of the feet affect the body.
Pete tried it out briefly.
We came to Bangkok for medical and dental services. Of course we had to have massages too! Kristina looks so relaxed after her 90 minute foot massage.
We always like to look at the spirit houses.
This one had so many figures!
In this photo Kristina is enjoying an avocado smoothie that has been sweetened with chocolate sauce, yum!
One night we went to Chinatown for dinner. On the way we checked out the Chinese temple Wat Mangkon Kamalawat. Behind the candles is a statue of Avalokitesvara, the Boddhisattva of Compassion.
We had eaten at Y&K Seafood with our friends Paul and Julie when we visited in December 2013. Because it was packed, we figured it was still a good place.
Although they have a formal restaurant, most of the tables are outside on the street (with metal barriers to separate the customers from the traffic). While we were waiting to sit down, the staff pushed out the barriers further into the street to make room for more tables. Bangkok is awesome!
We loved the snapper with lemongrass.
For the final days of the trip we went to Hong Kong. We stayed in the Soho district, which is south of Hollywood Road.
The narrow streets that wind up the hillsides of Hong Kong Island remind us of San Francisco. Many are pedestrian-only alleys. Along Pottinger Street we this railing that had been yarn-bombed.
There was some interesting graffiti like this piece signed by the artist Cat Time Biatch.
We didn't see anyone riding a bike in Hong Kong, but we did see some parked bikes like this one set up for deliveries.
On Wellington Street there are produce vendors and butchers.
Another street had all kinds of dried goods.
Merchants often have small offerings in front of their shops, like this incense.
We enjoyed riding the double decker street cars.
We saw lots of evidence that Chinese New Year was approaching.
The red colored decorations were available for sale everywhere.
It would be fun to be in Hong Kong for the week of fireworks and festivities!
One day we hiked up to Victoria Peak. We liked seeing trees growing, no matter how challenging the environment was.
This is the tower at the top of Victoria Peak. Unfortunately the air was smoggy and the views weren't good.
We also took a trip to the Tian Tan Buddha, known as the Big Buddha, on Lantau Island. It takes almost 2 hours to get to the Buddha, including a 20-minute cable car ride over to the island.
The Buddha is a huge bronze cast that was completed in the early 1990s.
The Big Buddha is surrounded by large devas (goddesses) depicted making offerings to the Buddha.
Like any Buddha statue worth a pilgrimage, this one sits atop a hill that must be climbed. But being modern China, a commercial shopping arcade (in the style of an ancient Chinese village) must first be navigated before the climb. Because it's the Year of the Goat/Sheep, the village was filled with these charming mascots.
On the way to the Big Buddha, we saw this girl who was headed to Hong Kong Disneyland dressed as Snow White.
When in Hong Kong we think it's mandatory to eat dim sum!
This is duck breast with jellyfish; It tasted incredibly good.
We had a raw dinner of oysters, scallops, clams, shrimp, and our favorite, sea urchin.
We went to Yardbird restaurant for chicken yakitori. Shown here is a skewer of thigh with shiso and umeboshi plum topped with fresh green onion, and a skewer of chicken neck seasoned with yuzu pickle.
The maitake mushroom tempura was also outstanding.
We were amazed that Yoshi recognized us, as it had been over a year since we'd eaten at Yardbird. We met him when we ate at Yardbird's sister restaurant, Ronin, on New Year's eve of 2013.
The owners of Yardbird and Ronin recently opened Sunday's Grocery so we went there for lunch.
They serve creative sandwiches like this modified bahn mi made with chicken liver and pork pate rather than Vietnamese style pork.
It was cute inside and we ate standing up at the sandwich counter.
For our final dinner in Hong Kong we went back to Ronin. This is the chef-owner Matt Abergel who we met at Sunday's Grocery and we enjoyed talking with at Ronin.
We ate so many tasty dishes, including tilefish with fried water chestnuts.
Here is a dish of uni (sea urchin), fresh nori (seaweed) and panko (bread crumbs).
These are snapper skewers that are seasoned with shiso leaves and umeboshi plums.
After almost 50 fabulous days of traveling in eight different countries, we reached the end of our trip to celebrate Kristina's 50th birthday. We each read several books while we traveled, and we want to share our favorites with you. Kristina read The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, which is a fictional story set in present day North Korea. Johnson won a Pulitzer for it.
And Pete loved Ruth Ozeki's Tale For The Time Being. It's the story of a suicidal teenage Japanese girl, a writer named Ruth living in British Columbia, and a 104 year-old Japanese Zen Buddhist nun. It's the first book that we've encountered which has an book trailer. Now we are trading books so we can each read both.
Kristina has selected her top 10 favorite sites and activities on the trip. Number 10, Chinese New Year displays were abundant, especially in Hong Kong. She especially liked the Singapore Flower Dome's display with three incredible wooden goat sculptures.
Number 9, at Korean baths called Jjimjilbiangs, there was plenty of soaking in hot water followed by skin exfoliation with scrubby mitts like these.
In this photo Kristina looks scrubbed and hungry!
Number 8, Thai massage is vigorous and healing. Here Kristina is getting her feet washed before a 90 minute foot massage, aahhh.
This was our second time to visit Tokyo and this time we really enjoyed walking around looking at the architecture. Number 7 favorite was finding interesting structures such as this bench.
The many lights in the Za Koenji Public Theatre by Toyo Ito are reflected in Kristina's glasses.
While exploring Tokyo we went to the Asahi TV building and checked out their museum. It was fun to see exhibits of Doraemon, the Japanese manga and TV character for his new movie, Stand By Me.
Number 6 highlight was the cool Soho neighborhood in Hong Kong where we stayed that was vibrant and interesting.
Making it into the top 5 was the chance to learn a bit about the Abhidhamma, Buddhist ethics and psychology, with a study group in Burma.
Singapore definitely lives up to its motto of "A City in a Garden," and the Gardens By the Bay Cloud Forest was the most beautiful garden we visited this trip, her Number 4 selection.
For Number 3, having the new experience of skiing in Japanese powder was terrific! The snow was so abundant and light it felt like skiing in the clouds.
Going back to the first days of the trip is Kristina's number 2 fave was the night dive with Manta Rays in Hawaii.
Our dive leader was Keller, aka Manta Man, and he has made over 10,000 dives. He co-founded the Manta Pacific Research Foundation. He is shown here with a shark puppet that he uses to make underwater dramas; (We plan to post another YouTube video with his footage soon.)
And our six days of diving in Raja Ampat, with its tremendous diversity of coral and fish was Number 1.
What an amazing trip and wonderful way to celebrate Kristina's 50th! Thanks for reading about our adventures.
Green papaya salad is always a favorite.
Because we've visited here a lot we didn't do a lot of sight seeing, but we did check out the contemporary art at the Bangkok Art & Culture Center. They had an exhibit by artists age 18 and younger. This piece entitled United Through Dhamma is by a 14-year old named Ploypailin Sukkawat.
We spent a Sunday afternoon at Lumphini Park. It has a big lake and there were pleasant breezes.
We saw birds like this egret . . .
. . . and several large monitor lizards. The lizards seem to prefer to swim rather than walk on land, but this big one did walk around a bit before returning to the water.
The park also has a rock-surface to use for foot massages, along with a chart showing how massaging different parts of the soles of the feet affect the body.
Pete tried it out briefly.
We came to Bangkok for medical and dental services. Of course we had to have massages too! Kristina looks so relaxed after her 90 minute foot massage.
We always like to look at the spirit houses.
This one had so many figures!
In this photo Kristina is enjoying an avocado smoothie that has been sweetened with chocolate sauce, yum!
One night we went to Chinatown for dinner. On the way we checked out the Chinese temple Wat Mangkon Kamalawat. Behind the candles is a statue of Avalokitesvara, the Boddhisattva of Compassion.
We had eaten at Y&K Seafood with our friends Paul and Julie when we visited in December 2013. Because it was packed, we figured it was still a good place.
Although they have a formal restaurant, most of the tables are outside on the street (with metal barriers to separate the customers from the traffic). While we were waiting to sit down, the staff pushed out the barriers further into the street to make room for more tables. Bangkok is awesome!
We loved the snapper with lemongrass.
For the final days of the trip we went to Hong Kong. We stayed in the Soho district, which is south of Hollywood Road.
The narrow streets that wind up the hillsides of Hong Kong Island remind us of San Francisco. Many are pedestrian-only alleys. Along Pottinger Street we this railing that had been yarn-bombed.
There was some interesting graffiti like this piece signed by the artist Cat Time Biatch.
We didn't see anyone riding a bike in Hong Kong, but we did see some parked bikes like this one set up for deliveries.
On Wellington Street there are produce vendors and butchers.
Another street had all kinds of dried goods.
Merchants often have small offerings in front of their shops, like this incense.
We enjoyed riding the double decker street cars.
We saw lots of evidence that Chinese New Year was approaching.
The red colored decorations were available for sale everywhere.
It would be fun to be in Hong Kong for the week of fireworks and festivities!
One day we hiked up to Victoria Peak. We liked seeing trees growing, no matter how challenging the environment was.
This is the tower at the top of Victoria Peak. Unfortunately the air was smoggy and the views weren't good.
We also took a trip to the Tian Tan Buddha, known as the Big Buddha, on Lantau Island. It takes almost 2 hours to get to the Buddha, including a 20-minute cable car ride over to the island.
The Buddha is a huge bronze cast that was completed in the early 1990s.
The Big Buddha is surrounded by large devas (goddesses) depicted making offerings to the Buddha.
Like any Buddha statue worth a pilgrimage, this one sits atop a hill that must be climbed. But being modern China, a commercial shopping arcade (in the style of an ancient Chinese village) must first be navigated before the climb. Because it's the Year of the Goat/Sheep, the village was filled with these charming mascots.
On the way to the Big Buddha, we saw this girl who was headed to Hong Kong Disneyland dressed as Snow White.
When in Hong Kong we think it's mandatory to eat dim sum!
This is duck breast with jellyfish; It tasted incredibly good.
We had a raw dinner of oysters, scallops, clams, shrimp, and our favorite, sea urchin.
We went to Yardbird restaurant for chicken yakitori. Shown here is a skewer of thigh with shiso and umeboshi plum topped with fresh green onion, and a skewer of chicken neck seasoned with yuzu pickle.
The maitake mushroom tempura was also outstanding.
We were amazed that Yoshi recognized us, as it had been over a year since we'd eaten at Yardbird. We met him when we ate at Yardbird's sister restaurant, Ronin, on New Year's eve of 2013.
The owners of Yardbird and Ronin recently opened Sunday's Grocery so we went there for lunch.
They serve creative sandwiches like this modified bahn mi made with chicken liver and pork pate rather than Vietnamese style pork.
It was cute inside and we ate standing up at the sandwich counter.
For our final dinner in Hong Kong we went back to Ronin. This is the chef-owner Matt Abergel who we met at Sunday's Grocery and we enjoyed talking with at Ronin.
We ate so many tasty dishes, including tilefish with fried water chestnuts.
Here is a dish of uni (sea urchin), fresh nori (seaweed) and panko (bread crumbs).
These are snapper skewers that are seasoned with shiso leaves and umeboshi plums.
After almost 50 fabulous days of traveling in eight different countries, we reached the end of our trip to celebrate Kristina's 50th birthday. We each read several books while we traveled, and we want to share our favorites with you. Kristina read The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, which is a fictional story set in present day North Korea. Johnson won a Pulitzer for it.
And Pete loved Ruth Ozeki's Tale For The Time Being. It's the story of a suicidal teenage Japanese girl, a writer named Ruth living in British Columbia, and a 104 year-old Japanese Zen Buddhist nun. It's the first book that we've encountered which has an book trailer. Now we are trading books so we can each read both.
Kristina has selected her top 10 favorite sites and activities on the trip. Number 10, Chinese New Year displays were abundant, especially in Hong Kong. She especially liked the Singapore Flower Dome's display with three incredible wooden goat sculptures.
Number 9, at Korean baths called Jjimjilbiangs, there was plenty of soaking in hot water followed by skin exfoliation with scrubby mitts like these.
In this photo Kristina looks scrubbed and hungry!
Number 8, Thai massage is vigorous and healing. Here Kristina is getting her feet washed before a 90 minute foot massage, aahhh.
This was our second time to visit Tokyo and this time we really enjoyed walking around looking at the architecture. Number 7 favorite was finding interesting structures such as this bench.
The many lights in the Za Koenji Public Theatre by Toyo Ito are reflected in Kristina's glasses.
While exploring Tokyo we went to the Asahi TV building and checked out their museum. It was fun to see exhibits of Doraemon, the Japanese manga and TV character for his new movie, Stand By Me.
Number 6 highlight was the cool Soho neighborhood in Hong Kong where we stayed that was vibrant and interesting.
Making it into the top 5 was the chance to learn a bit about the Abhidhamma, Buddhist ethics and psychology, with a study group in Burma.
Singapore definitely lives up to its motto of "A City in a Garden," and the Gardens By the Bay Cloud Forest was the most beautiful garden we visited this trip, her Number 4 selection.
For Number 3, having the new experience of skiing in Japanese powder was terrific! The snow was so abundant and light it felt like skiing in the clouds.
Going back to the first days of the trip is Kristina's number 2 fave was the night dive with Manta Rays in Hawaii.
Our dive leader was Keller, aka Manta Man, and he has made over 10,000 dives. He co-founded the Manta Pacific Research Foundation. He is shown here with a shark puppet that he uses to make underwater dramas; (We plan to post another YouTube video with his footage soon.)
And our six days of diving in Raja Ampat, with its tremendous diversity of coral and fish was Number 1.
What an amazing trip and wonderful way to celebrate Kristina's 50th! Thanks for reading about our adventures.
