The Journey so far, Hong Kong and Bangkok
After a lot of stress and uncertainty about if my flight would leave
from Mammoth Airport everything worked out fine. They weighed my carry
on bag in LAX but since I had another checked bag allowance I started
to make one for that and they let me split it into 2 carry on bags
(and then I just shoved it all back into my carry on bag). The flight
across the Pacific to Taiwan was long. I watched 4 movies and tried to
sleep some. I reset my watch to local time so I lost track of how long
I had been up. I had a few hour layover in Taipei before continuing
on to Hong Kong. There I collected my stuff and put more stuff into
one bag and left it at the storage area before eventually meeting up
with Sam and Raquel who had been there for over a week already. We
took the bus to the Big Buddha and played tourist there for a while.
Then we returned to the airport, picked up my bag, and headed to the
city for an Explorers Club presentation by Ray Zahab who among other
things ran across the Sahara.
The next day we planned a paddling adventure. A subway and bus ride
later we walked up over a hill to a beach where we inflated our
watercraft (2 Alpacka packrafts and a Hala SUP). One of the rafts rode
behind the SUP and carried all our extra gear and bags. Sam and Raquel
were on the SUP and I was in a raft. We headed on into the wind and
waves to Shelter Island to a sea-cave cove. Then back across and south
along the coast to another little island and then through some rather
threatening waves and side-wind before we turned the corner and had a
tailwind to another beach. We got there just about dark and took out
and packed everything back up before taking the bus back home to
L'Hotel (where Sam and Raquel were put up for teaching at the Yoga
Festival and a few more classes at Flex Studio.
The next few days we combined teaching classes with a little
touristing, an acro jam, and hanging out with Heather - who was
instrumental in bringing Sam and Raquel to Hong Kong. The last full
day we went rock climbing at the Zawn - a sea cliff area where we
walked down the old path to some WWII era bunkers before rappelling
into a cove. There were a lot of people climbing there who were happy
to share ropes and beta. I think we did climbs ranging from 6a to 6c+.
We left just about dark for a long walk back to public transportation
and a stop for Indian food for dinner. The last day we packed and
weighed everything before a ride to the airport and the separate
flights to Bangkok.
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| belaying Raquel at the Zawn |
My flight on Sri Lankan Air was nice except it left after dark so I
couldn't really see anything out the window and they took away the
earphones with about 45 minutes left in the flight so I didn't hear
the end of the movie. I should have had my own earphones more
accessible (actually they were, but I didn't realize it at the time). It took a little bit to find Sam and Raquel in the airportbut then we all loaded up in Tee's car and drove to his Bangkok condo.
The next morning we had a breakfast of street food and then went to
the climbing gym where Tee wanted to try a bit more climbing. It was
fun, but awfully hot near the top of the wall. I would have been happy
to stay a bit longer to get completely pumped out but we were planning
to meet with some others for acro and handstand training. That was fun
but tiring trying to get my shoulders to do what they were supposed to
(plus being tired from climbing probably didn't help). Then we moved
to the pool for some 2-high fun. It was getting dark and cold by then.
We followed this up with a delicious Thai feast. yum.
That was enough fun so that we wanted to do it again. First we had to
go to the train station to get tickets to Chiang Mai, then we went to
the park for more training. This time pops - so basically the flyer
got launched into the air and hopefully caught again in a safe manner.
Spotting was essential. This was a festival day and lots of families
with little kids were going to the park to launch their floating
krathong often with candles and or incense. Some were all dressed up in
sparkly traditional garb.
For Thanksgiving we ate Thai food and played in the pool like
unsupervised kids - 2-high, underwater videos, etc. Then to a
Vietnamese restaurant for Francis' birthday dinner followed by a Thai
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| blowing air bubble rings in the pool |
iced tea ice mountain and a lot of laughs. On a Thai tea caffeine sugar high we went home and watched Star Wars (a new hope) in preparation for episode 7. We repeated the pool day and then joined Jenny and Jay (who work at a school here). I first met Jenny back when I lived in Portland and it was nice to catch up again (and eat Lebanese food).
The last day in Bangkok we sorted and packed things up. It got tedious so we made some time-lapse movies of it. That didn't speed things up but was more fun.
I'll try to be a little more on time with these updates, but I can't count on it.
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