Travel

Travel is education. To go somewhere new for a few days of course is great, but the best is when you can stay in another country or locale for an extended period of time, preferably living with the people of that country, seeing where they work, where they shop, how they spend their leisure and so in - it's a real eye opener!

I've been so blessed to be able to do some of this on a limited basis. Most of my time has been spent at home, either in Canada or the United States. In the U.S. I have spent time in New York, Virginia, Florida, Washington State, Washington D.C., Texas, Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan, California, Nevada, and Louisiana.

Internationally, it's been my privilege to spend time in Italy, France, Switzerland, Iceland (24 hours!), The Netherlands, Spain, Ecuador, England, Scotland and Hong Kong - with a brief trip to Macao. I much prefer the country to the city, but if I had to choose a city in which to live, it would be either New York City - Manhattan - or Hong Kong. The only down-side to Hong Kong is getting there - about 20 hours in the air will do it and when it's midnight there, it's noon here. Truly the other side of the world. In Victoria Harbor you can still see Chinese junks next to ocean-going freighters from all over the world.

Of the places I have been Hong Kong was likely the most interesting and where I felt the most comfortable.  The people were most friendly, and would speak with you directly in perfect English. The subway system - the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) - was the cleanest and easiest to navigate of any I have seen. You can purchase a pass - called an Octopus Card - at any station. The scenery is breathtaking, and the view of Kowloon at night from Victoria's Peak is stunning (see picture, right). And for $90 Hong Kong dollars (about $11 U.S.) you get a great ride to the new Chek Lap Kok airport by express train - you just drop off your suitcase in Central Station and pick it up in when you get off your flight, anywhere in the world. No struggling with all your baggage!

If you like working on computers, you'll l-o-v-e Hong Kong. There are several complete malls with nothing but electronics and computer stores... the mall with the most computer stores is at the Yau Ma Tai (yama-tay) station on the Tsuen Wan (ten-wan) MTR line. You can buy a name brand PC main board such as Asus for about $20 to $30 U.S. - that would be about $130 in the U.S.

To view my travel tips, click here.

To visit Detective Kevin Coffee's excellent travel website, click here. This is a great site for travel safety information - everything from airport security to surviving an airplane crash. The site also offers some travel items you just can't find anywhere else.

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