Owner: Everything Everywhere Travel Blog URL:http://www.everything-everywhere.com/ Join Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 08:08:59 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: In March 2007 I sold my house, put my possessions in storage and hit the road. Since then, I have stopped traveling and blogging. I wont stop till I've seen everything, everywhere. I share my photography, thoughts Site statistics:Click here
Sitting under the Buddha 2007-12-11 05:14:52 The quality isn’t very good because it was taken with the camera on my laptop.
I am writing this on my laptop at a cafe at the Po Lin Buddhist temple in Hong Kong. The Po Lin temple has the largest sitting Buddha
statue in the world. I’m sitting right underneath the guy as I [...] Read more:Sitting
Hong Kong Phooey 2007-12-09 20:55:10 First, let me say that there is no way I could visit this place and not use this as a headline for a post. Impossible.
Second, I’ve been sneezing almost non-stop since I’ve gotten here. I have some sort of super hay fever. Perhaps it is some variant of SARS or the bird flu. I think [...] Read more:Hong Kong
Daily Photo - Majuro, Marshall Islands 2007-12-09 12:23:23 As part of the Compact of Free Association the United States has with the MarshallIslands
, we provide a group of Army Engineers to help with public works projects. Here is a soldier cleaning the outside of an elementary school which will be renovated. Read more:Daily
, Photo
, Daily Photo
Going Off the Rails on a Shinkansen 2007-12-08 21:18:38 You can see why they are called Bullet Trains
If you are going to travel through Japan, there is really only one way to properly travel between major cities: The Shinkansen, or as it is better known in the west, The Bullet Train.
The Shinkansen is a high speed train that links up most of the [...] Read more:Going
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region 2007-12-08 19:47:12 The first thing you must know is that I’m writing this in short sleeves….with a window open.
The next thing you must know is that Hong Kong is really an amazing place. It is an assault on the senses. The only place I’ve been which is comparable to this is Manhattan. Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei are [...] Read more:Special
, Administrative
Goodbye, Farewell, Amen 2007-12-07 07:53:20 Tomorrow I’m off to Hong Kong in the morning. My stay in South Korea wasn’t all I had hoped due to the weather. I still have a lot of things I’d like to come back and see some day.
Today I was supposed to go to the DMZ. The tour group I was with drove [...] Read more:Goodbye
, Farewell
Daily Photo - Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia 2007-12-21 12:29:24
This is a small boardwalk over a mangrove swamp at the resort I stayed at on Kosrae. This photo is a Hight Dynamic Range photo. It looks much better in a larger size, which you can see if you click on it.
Read more:States
, Photo
, Daily
, Daily Photo
Two Amazing Gadgets for Traveling 2007-12-21 07:07:35
iPod Touch showing photos
I carry a lot of electronics with me. I figure that if you include all my electronics and electronics related stuff (cables, wires, chargers, etc), I have more electronics with me than I do everything else combined. I’m not complaining, I like electronics. I like running the website, taking photos, etc. I have by necessity sort of become an expert on traveling with technology. I have recently purchased two items which have really made my life easier and I’m so giddy about them I just have to share.
iPod Touch
I missed out on all the hoopla with the iPhone. I didn’t acutally get to even see a real one until several months after they launched when I visited the Apple Store in Honolulu. Given my circumstances, an iPhone was out of the question. Constant moving between countries makes it very difficult to have any sort of phone, let alone something like an iPhone which is tied down to a provider.
I figured that Apple would mil Read more:Traveling
, Amazing
Not in Macau 2007-12-20 22:06:39 So, I’m not in Macau after all.
I decided to stay a bit longer so I can get new glasses here. Its cheap and I’d rather not wait until I get to Australia. Also, the impending Christmas season is making it hard to get rooms and flights. I’ll make the best of it. I need to find a store that sells sandals here too. I went to, what I can only call, the shoe district last night to find a pair. The only store I could find with sandals only had Men’s sandals in a size 11. Chinese just don’t wear sandals I guess.
I’m off to the 10,000 Buddhas Temple today. I’m going to take a photo of everyone so I have daily photo material for the next 30 years.
Last Day in Hong Kong 2007-12-20 01:30:38 Tomorrow I’m off to Macau. I’m sure I’ll be back to Hong Kong
just to get a flight out, but that’s about it.
Last night I had the best Mongolian BBQ I’ve ever had and got to see a street performer escape from a straight jacket. Can’t beat that.
If nothing else, Hong Kong has been very productive for me. I’ve had a big surge in new readers the last week. Some housekeeping issues and things I’ve been working on:
The page should be loading faster. I created a static version of the site to take care of traffic spikes I was getting. I’ve been getting a lot of people from StumbleUpon, so thanks to everyone who as been Stumbling my photos and posts.
I fixed the RSS feed. The RSS feed should now have full text and images. Before it was truncating everything and leaving the photos out. If you don’t use RSS or know what an RSS reader is, you can click on the email icon in the upper left and have new updates sent to your mail box
The Shrines and Temples of Japan: Part 2, Horyuji and Nara 2007-12-19 02:00:10 Read Part 1: Kyoto
Five story pagoda at Horyuji Temple
If you’ve been following along for a while, or if you at least take a look at the left column of my website, you’ll notice that I have an affinity for UNESCO World Heritage sites. I’m not trying to visit every one of them, for that would be impossible. I passed up four in Japan
and one in the Philippines. I use them as sort of a proxy for a guide book. (and I never use guidebooks). If you know nothing about a country and you wanted to know what “the” things to see while you were there, odds are most of them would be on the UNESCO list. Certainly if they are of historic, cultural, or natural significance. This rule doesn’t hold all the time. Some really amazing things are not on the UNESCO list. Nan Modal in Micronesia and the rock islands of Palau come to mind. I also got a bit of a mini-education from the head of the World Heritage committee in Rennell in the Solomon islands about how the Read more:Temples
Random Thoughts on Hong Kong 2007-12-18 23:45:36
A canopy of street signs
Here are various observations on Hong Kong
that are probably too short to justify their own posts:
Street signage in Hong Kong for stores are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. They not only extend into the road, but often will cross the meridian and overlap signs from the other side of the street. The effect it to almost cover some streets. At night almost makes Nathan Street (the main shopping street in Kowloon) look like downtown Las Vegas.
There was a great deal of concern over what would happen to Hong Kong after the hand over from the British to China back in 1997. With the exception of a PRC flag flying over a few governmental buildings, I can see nothing that would indicate that this is part of the PRC. In fact, I was very surprised yesterday to see an informational table set up by members of Falun Gong. I saw a similar table in Taiwan, but that’s Taiwan.
Hong Kong has a separate currency from China and Macau. The Hong Kong dollar is pegged Read more:Random
, Random Thoughts
Daily Photo - Nuku'alofa, Tonga 2007-12-18 12:23:46
While in Tonga, I stopped by a high school rugby match. I was introduced to rugby in the Pacific as it is the biggest sport in New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.
Read more:Photo
, Daily
, Daily Photo
The Pinoy Dispora 2007-12-17 23:15:59
Filipino kids in Vigan, Philippines. They begged me to take their picture
I don’t just like to write about what I see in certain places and then drop the country as I move on to the next. There are some subjects that deserve revisiting, and one that sort of jumps out at you in Hong Kong is the Philippines. Why the Philippines? You’ll notice it if you spend a little bit of time here. You’ll not only run into a lot of Filipinos but you’ll find many money wire stores that advertise sending remittances back to the Philippines. Some have Philippine flags on the front of the store. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that Filipinos constitute the largest group of foreign workers in Hong Kong.
Why? Not hard to figure out. The Philippines is relatively close, English is widely spoken in Hong Kong and almost universal in the Philippines, you can visit Hong Kong without a visa, where as most places require an application process. While I was in the Phi Read more:Pinoy
Daily Photo - Waya Lailai Island, Fiji 2007-12-17 10:09:11
This is a panoramic photo of the Waya Lailai Resort in the Yasawa Island
s in Fiji. You probably will want to click on the image to get a better view. Ultra wide photos like these don’t show well at only 500 pixels wide. Somewhere out in the distance is the island where the movie Castaway was shot. In the right side of the photo you can see the leg of my guide up the mountain, Barry. The stitching on the photo isn’t perfect, but I think you can get the gist of it.
Read more:Photo
, Daily
, Daily Photo
The Big Mo 2007-12-25 09:45:38 I just got back from Macau. It has been a really long day and I’m exhausted. I took notes on my laptop throughout the day and will be posting them tomorrow with images.
When you walk around a city by yourself, you get crazy thoughts sometimes. Last night I watched a really crappy pirate DVD of No Country For Old Men (a very good movie btw). The premise of the movie is that a guy finds $2m in the desert.
I realized how great I would be at going on the lam having traveled this much. Not just the distance and time I’ve been gone, but some of the tiny, out of the way places I’ve been. The Bourne Identity stuff about the CIA being able to track you anywhere is a bunch of crap.
Daily Photo - Appleton, Wisconsin, USA 2007-12-24 12:51:52
Oddly enough, I started my trip by going home. After selling my house, I visited my parents for two weeks to pack and take care of business. This photos is of an old paper mill on the Fox River in an area called “the flats”, named from the islands in the river. I thought this would be an appropriate photo for Christmas Eve.
Read more:Photo
, Daily
, Wisconsin
, Daily Photo
, Appleton
Merry Kiritimati 2007-12-24 10:35:24
Christmas time in Hong Kong HDR
Well, once again I didn’t get to Macau. Christmas day however it is going to happen. I know this because I have tickets booked. Today, by the time I got to the ferry terminal (I slept late. my room has no sunlight) the ferries were booked for several hours. I said screw it and just made sure I had tickets for tomorrow.
This marks the first time in my life that I have not been home for Christmas. It was one of those things that was bound to happen eventually, but it is still sort of weird. They have Christmas in Hong Kong, but it isn’t quite the same thing. I’m sure it is even less of a big deal outside of Hong Kong.
I hope everyone back home has a good Christmas. It’s the days like today when traveling alone can be rough.
I’ll be celebrating the birth of Jesus by visiting Portuguese ruins and Asian casinos. I hope to turn around the photos from Macau right away. I don’t want to get too far behind again. Perhaps I Read more:Merry
Everytime I try to get out, they just keep pulling me back in 2007-12-22 21:43:57 Not only am I still in Hong Kong, but I’m going to be here over Christmas.
Macau is booked solid. At least all the cheap places are. My lack of planning around Christmas is really the proximate problem here.
The place I’m staying in HK I had to check out today and I packed up and went to drop off the key. I had asked them earlier if I could stay a bit longer, but they said they were full. When I checked out and produced my receipts to get my key deposit, he realized I was a good customer, didn’t cause problems, and “suddenly” a room appeared. In fact, my very same room appeared. Cash does that I guess.
So the plan now is on the 24 and 25 I’ll just take day trips into Macau on the jet boat. Macau is a small place so it shouldn’t be too big of a deal. The plan then is to get a flight to Borneo on the 26th. I just need to decide on flying into Kota Kinablau or Brunei. That should be my last big long flight for quite a while.
Yesterday I tried Read more:pulling
, Everytime
Mungo Ahoy! 2008-03-11 19:01:23 I’m currently in Horsham, Victoria at the tourist information center because they seemed to be the only place that had an internet terminal.
The enormity of Australia is starting to sink in as I have to actually drive it. You can understand it intellectually, but until you have to actually cross it, it really doesn’t [...]
Recommend Site To A Friend
