hong kong high life

Hong Kong is all about tall skinny buildings sprouting out of an island, and somehow it manages to be the home of both I.M. Pei architecture and butchers in flip flops. This city is a most excellent jumble of food, shopping, and personality and while the prices could be better, the vibe's about perfect.



In 1997 the United Kingdom returned Hong Kong to China, and since that time Hong Kong has been referred to as a "Special Administrative Region" of China and has its own flag and government, and freedom of the press. But it is still very Chinese. Rather than obliterating Chinese culture, the U.K. instead seems to have spent its decades in Hong Kong folding western appreciations into the eastern mix.



Hong Kong resembles a petite New York. It's a city that's easy to navigate on the subway and for all of its slick skyscrapers and banking acumen, its neighborhoods are where Hong Kong's personality really lives. Made up of Hong Kong island, Kowloon on the mainland, and the new territories, it's more than a single place and the people who live here can tell you about each area's specific nuances.



For a visitor, especially one from Seoul, it's amazing to see the amount of foreigners who live in Hong Kong. In fact there are areas of town where if you were to be dropped in blind-folded you would sooner guess you were in New Orleans than Asia. There's a real mix of people in this city and it produces an energy that I haven't felt elsewhere.



There's also the danger that comes with countries where cars drive on the "other" side of the road. At pedestrian crossings warnings of "Look Left" or "Look Right" are painted at your feet and I find that the quickest way to place yourself in the path of an oncoming truck is to look down and start reading the road.



Hong Kong is also like Beginner's China where your arrival is a gentle one. Things make easy sense to the Western mind but the personality of the place is still pleasantly new. Start your day with the view over Victoria Harbor. Wander through the bird market where vendors count out wriggling grubs with a pair of tweezers and a steady hand.



Eat spicy food and egg custard tarts. Drink tea from vendors along the sidewalk. Wait until sunset and then go to a rooftop bar where the highrises are level with your Campari and soda. Later swing back down for drinks in the nooks and crannies of the city.



I'd be happy to go back to Hong Kong. I love it's scraggly apartment buildings and the way all scaffolding is made of bamboo. I love the eating and the shopping. And I love the way the incense coils smell as they burn.



'Cause there's nothing that says vacation like incense wafting through a temple and food so spicy your mouth burns.

spring lights

Buddha's birthday is one of the biggest holidays of the year in Korea and its celebration would be nothing without light. Acres of lanterns and entire parades bloom from the glow of a zillion bulbs and flickers.



At this time of year Seoul's streets are hung with lanterns and temple courtyards are swathed in giant quilts of color. While the blanket of decorations is not as thick as the Christmas décor that sprouts in the U.S. after Thanksgiving, the extra color definitely stands out. Spring is a fleeting sensation in Seoul and quickly gives way to a suffocating summer, so the colorful decorations are just one more reason to love the season while it lasts.



Buddhist temples host street fairs and cultural festivals in honor of the holiday and everyone flocks to these events. Buddhists come to celebrate the religious holiday; other Koreans come to join in the fun; and tourists come to explore a colorful part of Korean culture. You will rarely see as many Westerners out in Seoul as at the Buddha's Birthday celebration. And for good reason - if you're in Seoul, this is considered a not-to-miss event.




Seoul's lantern parade, which winds it way through downtown every year, celebrates Buddha's birth with a gentle wave of light. Women in traditional dress carry large glowing lanterns. Flames shoot out of the dragons' mouths. Tiny blinks of light trace the outlines of elephants, lotus flowers, and everything else that is pushed or pulled along the route.



The atmosphere is festive and families line the streets waving and snapping photos. For the second year in a row there was a threatening drizzle as the parade began - resulting in some of the participants wearing plastic ponchos over their traditional attire - but the real showers never came.



The parade is always great fun; think Fourth of July meets the Disney Light Parade. Kids are happy, adults are happy, and occasionally a happy band marches past. It's also a great crash course in Korean tradition. Participants wear traditional outfits, play traditional instruments, and embody traditional characters.



And gigantic dragons breath real fire. Really, what more can you ask for?

tick tock tokyo

Tokyo is a giant wristwatch of a city and somewhere behind its ordered face there are interlocking layers of new technology and human drama propelling the city forward. But on the surface the focus is on lines; lines that are straight and lines that are diagonal. Lines that are as regular as the minute marks on a watch.



The populace moves at a regulated urban rhythm that looks a lot like time-lapse photography, all starting and stopping and coming and going. Anywhere else and this action could bleed into a blur, a swirl, a mess of the human form running headlong into itself and others - but not in Tokyo.

In Tokyo you wait in line for the ATM and you wait in line for the train. You wait in line next to the girl in the kimono who is behind the girl in the stiletto heels. And then someone gets in line behind you.



For an outsider, the city's order is a surreal dream that makes perfect sense while remaining utter nonsense. You don't know what the signs say, what the announcements are announcing, or how to communicate with most of the thousands of people surrounding you.



But you still know where to stand. It's as if everyone within the city limits is regularly swept up by Tokyo's minute hand and dropped perfectly into their place, which just happens to be in line with everyone else.

tokyo sidewalks

Tokyo is a buzzing beehive of a city, right up there with New York and London except with less diversity. Make that a lot less diversity: no one is overweight and no one left home without first looking in the mirror.



Take me to Tokyo to see men who dress like this. Show me red blazers and striped pants. Bold black glasses and bags that stand out in the crowd. In a city so criss-crossed with life and energy and blinking signs five-stories tall, these flashes of style bring you right back down to earth.



But the show comes flying past fast. And if you're not quick with the camera you'll only get a memory, because these guys don't dawdle - they swagger.

and tokyo makes 10

Locals may say otherwise but to an outsider Tokyo is all about organization and order, and when it comes to marathons the city does not disappoint. In fact, the only disappointing thing about the race was my left knee. And even that didn't stop me from finishing, although I'd give it credit for a damn solid effort.

Tokyo was a great place for a tenth marathon and felt suitably eventful. People kept asking me why I wasn't running the Seoul marathon instead of heading all the way over to Tokyo - but that was exactly the point. I wanted to go somewhere and make my tenth race something more involved than stepping out the front door. So, we hopped on a plane bound for Tokyo, onto a $30 bus bound for the city, and into an I'll-choke-if-I-write-it-down priced hotel overlooking the race start. Yes, overlooking the race start - because while Tokyo may be good at planning races, Stefano-shi is excellent at planning trips.



That being said, no one can prepare themselves for their first encounter with the Tokyo subway system. It's a thing of wonder, not only because the Japanese actually stand in line to wait for the next train, but because there are so many trains, and train lines, and station exits. Shinjuku station - the closest station to our hotel - is one of the busiest train stations in the world and it looks the part. Two million people pass through the station every day and it has around 50 exits. That's 50 ways to exit this station alone...



The day before the race we successfully, if perhaps a bit slowly at first, used the subway to get to the race expo. It was your standard marathon expo with vendors and samples and running-related merchandise, but it did differ from the usual race expos in one way: it shared the convention center with a manga (aka comic book) convention. And while it was fairly easy to distinguish between who came for the comic books versus who came for the marathon, the teenage girls could really throw you off. Apparently the dreams of awkward adolescent boys everywhere have come true in Japan where everyone, including fashionable young ladies, loves comic books.



We went to Italy for dinner the night before the race - apparently you can do these things in Tokyo. We actually went to Eataly, an Italian restaurant and gourmet food store in Tokyo's Daikanyama neighborhood. This place deserves any praise it gets. If I closed my eyes as we ate, I was back in Milan; their food is incredibly and deliciously authentic. We had a pizza margherita which was perfect (I thought I was back at Gamba Rotta on Via Moscova), and pasta with pesto reminiscent of meals we've had in Genoa. There is no doubt that this meal qualifies as one of my finest carbo-loading efforts in a long history of carbo-loading efforts. (Note: Carbo-loading before the Rome Marathon shall remain in a category all its own.)



Come race day morning I simply rolled out of bed and across the start line. Of course it was a little more complicated than that but not by much. I was one of some 35,000 people running the race so it was a pretty festive start with a great mass of people all moving in a single direction. It's always a thrill to be in a massive crowd that shares the same goal of forward motion. Some of us will take four hours, others will take two, but we all take the same path through the same rain or sun or shooting knee pain.

Alas, unfortunately the shooting knee pain was specifically for me. I don't really know what happened but at 35 kilometers my left knee stopped wanting to participate. I'm not really one for stopping or quitting so I just kept trudging along, alternating between the ultra-effective techniques of foot dragging and body lurching. (Think Swamp Monster exiting the lagoon.) I'm sure it was especially attractive along the highway overpass + bridge combination which was near the end of the race. A lot of marathons have these grim passages toward the end of the route and the only thing they're good for is reminding the human body that it's a lot harder to run uphill than on a flat surface.



Up to that point, though, it had been a good race. Stefano-shi made excellent use of the subway system and found me at two pre-determined locations along the route. There were also a lot of runners in costume to provide distraction, especially after the drizzle started halfway through. I spent a fair amount of time running behind a man wearing a towel and a shower cap who would sporadically squeeze a yellow rubber ducky at the crowd, and spent a few miles behind Mr. and Mrs. Claus. Also, due to the never-ending cheering of Japanese spectators, and because it sounds a lot like "shrimp" in Italian, I learned the word for "GO!" in Japanese.

I was ecstatic when I reached the finish line but also a bit cold since the weather had been steadily deteriorating. It was solidly grey and rainy when I finished and I was looking forward to my race "towel," whatever it turned out to be. Before the race we'd all received race packets replete with motivational advice such as: "For the first few kilometers, you had better run like warming up. No need to panic and be prepared for start in a relaxed manner." Having experienced this sort of English I was certain that the souvenir towel promised to race finishers would actually be the standard Mylar wrap, but no, it was an actual towel! Not bad at all.



After the finish line hoopla and medal-receiving, Stefano-shi found me and saved me from a long walk back to the family reunite area. Saving the ten minutes of wandering around looking for your family makes a big difference when you just want a hug and a piece of floor to sit on. Not only did I get a hug, and a place to sit on a folding table, but I also got a bowl of udon at a great fast noodle place by our hotel.

Not a bad way to end the day, and a 10th marathon.

cambodia is calling

Angkor Wat is one of the few places in the world where real life looks like the movies and where even the highest expectations exist only to be exceeded.



Our late night arrival in Siem Reap definitely lived up to our expectations in that it was hot and tropical and the absolute opposite of where we'd spent the weekend before. (Freezing our toes off at an ice festival in Northern China.)



On an Angkor Wat visit you quickly discover that there is driving that needs to be done. In fact, the temples of "The" Angkor Wat are but one grouping in an area absolutely teeming with beautiful temples. The sites closest to the tourism-fattened city of Siem Reap are a twenty-minute drive away while temples devoured by jungle can take almost two hours to reach.



Travelers can reach these temples in a number of ways. Some rent bicycles on the cheap and spend their days in a dusty haze of fatiguing adventure. Still others take a dusty, and dirt cheap, ride on the back of a motorbike. Others spend a little more cash for a tuk-tuk and battle the dust with a handkerchief held to their mouths. Still others splurge on a car and driver and regret their choice only when it comes time to hazard unpaved roads (in a Toyota Camry) because the driver's worried that without taking a short-cut they won't make it to the next temple before sundown.

You can guess which option we chose.



It's safe to say that this trip to Cambodia really struck both of us as something incredibly special. The experience of seeing the temples - in their varying states of grandeur and decay - was beyond wonderful and belongs on anyone's Life List of Places to See. These structures are of a scale that is difficult to imagine without literally standing at their foundations and struggling to see it all with one set of eyes.



The stones - and therefore the temples themselves - are covered in finely carved illustrations. They seem too beautiful and too well-preserved to be real. Different temples have different stories to tell but the imagery throughout the sites is consistently gorgeous. And awe-inspiring. Leave me alone for a year with a piece of stone and a chisel and I still wouldn't have a clue how to take a material that is strong enough to build buildings and finesse it into the delicate wrists and ears of Angkor Wat's female forms, the apsaras.



Several of the temple groupings have been unceremoniously ravaged by nature and serpentine tree roots are now as much a part of the structures as the original stones. The effect is mesmerizing because most of us have only seen this sort of thing in the movies or imagined it in fictional fantasy worlds where ancient temples have been hidden from the rest of the world by misty jungles. But these places exist. They're not just in books and movies and on Disney's Jungle Cruise. They are in real jungles, in the very real country of Cambodia, and they will blow your mind.



So will the lives of the people here. If you visit the outlying temples and spend any time driving through the countryside you will share the roads with mopeds, and cows, and shoe-less children riding bicycles that are a head and a half taller than they are. You will see the simple thatched homes - on risers about 8 feet off the ground - under which naked children chase chickens while still other kids play alone in rice paddies and puddles.



These are poor people and they live in very poor conditions - but you'll notice that they still send their kids to school. And these kids make it home along the roads, riding their oversized bikes and balancing brothers and sisters, on their way back to lives that are very different from what most westerners are fortunate enough to consider normal.



This is the poorest place we have ever been and yet it is also one of the best. Truly, one of the best. The treasures of Cambodia, the treasures of these people, are such a bounty of man-made miracles that you can only hope one day they'll bring a modicum of prosperity to those who call this country home. But I'd imagine that as tourism increases, and the numbers of visitors continues to swell, things will have to change or the temples won't last.



When you visit these places now there's a freedom that's difficult to swallow. There are very few barriers or blockades, and the temples become giant three-dimensional mazes. On our visit to Beng Mealea our driver had us climbing over and through the ruins, squeezing into corridors and exploring spaces that seemed straight out of adventurer's tales. I'd be shocked if it stayed this way - this unrestricted - and from what our driver told us, the numbers of visitors are only increasing.



During your visit - depending on the hour of day and which temple you're visiting - you can sometimes find yourself with a few minutes alone in a quiet corridor or maybe catch a perfect photo sans other tourists wandering through. But turn up for sunset or sundown at one of the traditional places to watch the occasion, and you will find yourself surrounded by an international gaggle of surprising proportions.

Not that the gaggle doesn't come in handy. Especially when someone neglects to bring a flashlight for crossing Angkor Wat's moat at the pitch-black hour of 5:00am and still doesn't have a flashlight when it's time to locate the lotus pond from which to watch the sunrise. (Note to self: bring flashlight next time.)



Then as the sunrise comes and both Angkor Wat and the gaggle are illuminated, it's a toss-up over which of the unveilings is more awe-inspiring. Angkor Wat and it's very recognizable silhouette? Or the large number of people who will quietly huddle around a lotus pond before dawn just to see that silhouette?



Cambodian cuisine is also worth a try and might best be described as the sweeter, milder cousin of Thai food. Siem Reap is teeming with good restaurants although visiting the town market might give you pause in all matters food-related. Vendors sit foot-to-gill with tubs of squirming fish while sharpening their blood-caked cleavers. There are piles of parts better left unidentified, and vendors catch catnaps between bags of separated egg yolks and small walls of bok choy.



But this is Cambodia. Cambodia with its tuk-tuks and its temples in the trees. Cambodia where it's hot and sticky and there's always dragon fruit for breakfast. Where temples have giant faces and flights of stairs so steep and so thin that you need to prostrate yourself to climb them. Where there's dust and there's beauty and there are more stones than you can count.



This is Cambodia. And this is one of my favorite places in the world.

Harbin is cold and icy

At one point during our visit to Harbin, Stefano-shi turned to me and said exactly what I'd been thinking: "This is the coldest place we've ever been." We were standing on a frozen river at the time and the wind was driving past us in snow-tinged gusts. Horses pulled sleighs along the surface, confirming that the ice was indeed solid, and people used what can best be described as fireplace pokers to propel themselves around on metal chairs doubling as sleds, assuring us that frozen rivers are meant to be fun.

It's worth noting that world famous ice festivals don't exist without ice and frozen rivers notwithstanding, cold temperatures in Northern China are all relative. For this time of year - the MLK long weekend - we were actually experiencing a veritable heat wave as air temps didn't plunge below zero.



In considering the geographic hand the city was dealt, Harbin deserves credit for the sheer unadulterated grandeur of its thinking. This city has affectionately taken its biggest drawback and amplified it into a full throttle advantage. Go ahead and name several cities where ice won't melt between December and February. Excellent, now of those cities, how many have responded with multi-storied ice palaces and full-sized ice pirate ships?

Workers scrape ice off the highways with squares of plywood nailed to boards and if you spend any time indoors your boots will quickly be resting in a pool of melted black slurry. Historically, Harbin was a Russian railway stop and so this Chinese city also has an unmistakable Russian flair. Much of the architecture is distinctly European, wooden nesting dolls are the easiest souvenirs to find, and the frigid airport is filled with underdressed Russians transiting through after vacations in warm places. The chemically-red cherry on top of Harbin's scenic milieu was the unmistakable pair of nuclear cooling towers we noticed on our way out of town.



Nuclear cooling towers and sandal-wearing Russians aside, Harbin's ice festival is one of the wildest things I have ever seen. The sheer scale of the ice sculptures and the intricacy and quality of the work is absolutely mind-blowing. This is also the most fun I've had outdoors in wintertime. Ever shot down a four-story ice slide with only your winter coat between you and the cold, smooth ice? I have, and it was awesome. All four times.



The festival has three main sites around town, each worthy of as many hours as your frozen toes can take. The biggest park felt like a small town populated by the world's most famous cathedrals, temples, and palaces - all made entirely of ice. The open spaces and paths of a second park were lined with gigantic sculptures made of packed snow. And a third park smack in the center of town was sponsored by Disney and its ice creations all referenced Disney's internationally recognizable repertoire.



The scale of the structures at all three sites was magical and the experience of being in the middle of these ice and snow cities was worth every flight of ice stairs we had to climb. Yep, even the stairs were made of ice - apparently you can still do that sort of thing in China.



It's hard to get photos that really do justice to the experience, partly because your camera keeps freezing and partly because photos can never really show just how good a pair of toe warmers feels on a cold Harbin night. (Among other things I credit our toe warmers with allowing us to join a very long bunny-hop on the ice field under Milan's Duomo, and with letting us hang out with a little Chinese girl who kept asking us - in English - to go down the slide with her.)

We should have taken our new bilingual friend to dinner; she might have been able to save us from our enough-food-to-feed-a-small-village ordering technique. We think the wait staff may have been trying to warn us but our lack of shared language got in the way and we ended up with one very large fish in sauce, noodles, and tofu; a big bowl of chicken, mushrooms and noodles; and about five pounds of deliciously vinegary shredded potatoes. Oh, and beer that we drank out of saucers.



When people walked past our table they laughed. Good naturedly and with big smiles, but they definitely laughed. And at one point in the dinner show performance - this was a restaurant in which costumed performers belt out party songs at ear-crushing volume - the man on the microphone directed all attention in the room towards our table and then said something hilarious in Chinese. I say hilarious because everyone else was smiling, not because I have any idea of what he said.



And that's part of the fun of visiting China - it's one big experiment. You don't know what people are saying. You never really know what you're eating. And you sure don't know how they built all of that stuff out of ice.