On a day trip from Hong Kong, Ben and I traveled by ferry to Macau, another special administrative region of China, and a former Portuguese colony and territory, turned back over to China in 1999. It is the most densely-populated territory on the planet, and it has a very high standard of living and one […]
Read More Macau: it’s not Hong Kong, but had ping pongDing dings, five-year plans, bamboo scaffolding, life imprisonment for selling CBD, and phone zombies?! Must be Hong Kong! It’s quite a unique and memorable place. This was Ben’s and my second destination, and in advance I coordinated with my niece (Ben’s cousin) Katelyn, who had been traveling solo around southeastern Asia, to meet us in […]
Read More Hong Kong, Ding Ding!To continue where we left off in the previous post on Taiwan, let’s have a look at some of the notable buildings and architecture. Taipei is a big city, and as one would expect, there is a variety of height, quality, and spacing of buildings. Ben and I stayed in an older, denser neighborhood called […]
Read More Xièxiè, Taiwan!Many of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs ruled over a united Egypt (both upper and lower), controlling a vast area along the Nile. We could understand the huge distance covered because we had taken an hour-long flight from Cairo to Luxor, traveled farther south along the Nile by ship to Aswan, and then flown on another […]
Read More State PharaohBudapest is a city worth staying in for more than one week, and I now wish I had sacrificed some Bratislava time for Budapest, but maybe I’ll need to come back one day, hopefully with someone else! What an interesting and different place! I think this is also an indication to me that I need […]
Read More Thermal BathsOn Sunday I joined a group of several people for a trip to a local shooting range to shoot three types of guns I’d never used before: a Glock (10 shots), an Uzi (10 shots), and an AK-47 (5 shots) (not a Kalashnikov – I hadn’t realized that there are different kinds). My group included […]
Read More Ten O’GlockThe river Oder passes through the middle of Wrocław, and along its banks are many nice parks. Additionally, there are several other parks around the city, including a couple of very large ones. While Wrocław itself is mostly pretty and not industrial or gritty, it’s still refreshing to get out into green spaces with loads […]
Read More Nature, Festivities, a Battle vs Russians, and Language Struggles
Major Meander 