Hong Kong 7's

Ever since I moved to Asia, one of the items on my Asia bucket list was to go to Hong Kong for the Rugby 7's tournament.  I had heard stories about this weekend and was determined to go see if before my time in Asia was over!  This year in coincided with a friend's 30th birthday so it was a great weekend to go!

Friday night I got in late and met the group in Lan Kwai Fong which is a district of Hong Kong known for it's bar and club scene.  I have never seen more people crammed in one place in my life.  You could barely move to walk down the street...like a salmon swimming upstream...trying to fight the people taking Jell-O shots and shots out of large medical syringes in the street.  It was quite the sight!

On Saturday we went to the rugby tournament and had to dress up in costumes as it's almost a mandatory rule (unspoken of course).  Our group went as Minions from the Despicable Me movie.  Our costumes were pretty tame compared to others we saw!  They served alcohol in jugs which was convenient so we didn't have to keep running to the bar.  It was a long day of rugby, i.e. drinking, but I'm glad I can say I went!

Sunday I did a bit of touristy stuff before going to the airport.  I didn't get to see much of Hong Kong itself but enjoyed what I saw.  I also saw some great places to go shopping but didn't have time to browse...I'll have to go back!

First night in Hong Kong in Lan Kawi Fong...so many people!

Elevator selfie

Mark with one round of drinks

The rugby stadium

The Minions

Trying to do some sightseeing from The Peak, but it was too foggy :(

Chinese herb shop - just like Chinatown in SF!

Skiing in Japan for Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is probably the biggest holiday in Singapore (even bigger than Christmas).  This year we got a long weekend so a group of friends and I went to Japan for a week to go skiing.  We went to Niseko which is on the island of Sapporo; well north of Tokyo.  Niseko is known for it's insane amount of snow, specifically powder.  It snowed every day we were there, sometimes up to 6'' over night.  

We had a lift pass that allowed us to go back and forth between 4 resorts on the mountain.  They were all interlinked at the top so we could ski a different resort during the day and still ski back to our chalet which was on the bottom of the Grand Hirafu resort.  I originally started the trip on skis but decided after a few days to switch to a snowboard which I was much more comfortable with.  The powder was absolutely amazing...so much so that it didn't hurt when I fell!

Niseko was full of great bars and restaurants too.  If I ever get the chance, I'd love to go back!

The view outside our window

Skiing through the trees

 

Fresh powder

Off one of my favorite runs through the trees, Blueberry

The girls dominating in beer pong

The girls after 3 pong wins in a row...2 games of wine pong and 1 game of Gin & Tonic pong.  Sorry boys...

The whole gang out at dinner

Bar hopping

A recap of the past 8 months...

First off, WOW, time flies!  I truly didn't think it'd been 8 months since I last posted to my blog.  For everyone reading this out there (hi Mom & Dad), sorry!  I'll try and do a recap of places I've been to in the past few months in different blog posts but we've got:

Trip home in August

F1 in Singapore

Kristen & Greg's Trip to Singapore

Ho Chi Minh / Hoi An, Vietnam

Trip home for Christmas / New Years

Skiing in Japan for Chinese New Year

Mom & Dad's Visit to Singapore

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Hong Kong 7's

Kari's 30th birthday in Paris

And here we go....

Hoi An, Vietnam

The next stop on our tour of Vietnam was Hoi An, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  This was a charming little city located on the coast and is a very well preserved trading post from the 15th to the 19th century.  We did a lot of wandering the streets of the Old Town which were closed to cars and motorbikes, eating great Vietnamese food, getting clothes made and soaking up the culture.  While the weather wasn't fantastic the few days we were there, it was still a great time!

Japanese covered bridge constructed in the 1600's

Shop houses in the Old Town part of Hoi An

The view of the beach from our hotel during one of the storms

Drinks with Greg & Kristen at the hotel bar

A kid selling lanterns to float down the river

Riding in an old sidecar courtesy of the hotel

Hoi An is known for their paper lanterns

Kristen and I having tea at a traditional Vietnamese tea house that was run by deaf women

The Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam

While in Ho Chi Minh, we took a day trip out to the Cu Chi Tunnels.  I'd heard from a few people that this was something we shouldn't miss.  These were the tunnels that the Vietkong lived in during the Vietnam War to avoid the US troops.  They were incredibly inventive in trying to survive - creating tunnels that went down 4 stories and were tens of miles long.  The tunnels were incredibly tiny and claustrophobic!  Vietnam has widened a portion of the tunnels to allow visitors to crawl through them...Westerners couldn't fit in the normal sized tunnels.  Even with them being widened, they were still very small!

A booby trap - yikes!

Trying to fit in to one of the entrance / exits of the tunnels.  Crazy small

Shooting an AK47...why not?

Managing our way through the tunnel

Vietgiving in Ho Chi Minh

While Kristen & Greg were in Asia, we decided to go up to Vietnam to do some exploring.  We (well I, they stayed in Vietnam longer) spent 2 nights in Ho Chi Minh and 2 nights in Hoi An.  

One of those nights in HCM was Thanksgiving and for our Thanksgiving meal, we went on what could have been one of the best things I've done in Asia yet.  It was a 5 hour tour on the back of a moped through the crazy, no rules of traffic streets (who pays attention to a red light??) of Ho Chi Minh to go to various places that normal tourists would't go to and eat traditional Vietnamese food.  

We ate frog, goat, scallops, other random things, but overall it was a wonderful experience!

One of the drivers cooking the goat

Kristen looking really forward to the shot of liquor that they couldn't tell us what it was....banana maybe?

Frog

A traditional Vietnamese delicacy called Balut which is a fertilized egg...see pictures below and yes, they love this.

What's inside the egg....don't worry, I didn't touch any of the egg or the bird!!!

North Queensland Risk Tour

Every year, one of our Gen Re guys takes a group of people on a car trip for a week through Northern Queensland to show different types of risks that we reinsure.  This year I was lucky enough to get invited to attend along with two of the girls in our Shanghai office.  It was a full week of driving of about 700 miles over the 5 days.  In my mind, the landscape of Australia looked like the Crocodile Dundee movie or something shown by Steve Irwin.  I was wrong though!  Parts of it were very lush and overall it was very pretty!

We started up in Cairns, which is home to one of the main places tourists go to see the Great Barrier Reef.  Unfortunately I didn't get to see it, but hopefully one day I will!  From there we stayed nights in Townsville, McKay and Yeppoon.  Little did I know, but Australia grows a TON of sugar cane!  That and coal are two of their main exports.

We saw a lot of sugar mills and sugar warehouses, coal loading terminals and ports, power plants, aluminum smelters and other various industrial places.  It was a very educational trip from a work perspective - it was great to see things in person and to realize that a lot of hurricanes go through this area of Australia.  I wasn't too aware of that, but they've had some big ones in the past few decades.  Not too many people live in these areas which is good, however a lot of Queensland industrial sites are located here so there is a fair amount of damage that can be done. 

Port Douglas

Sugar Warehouse - this was about two football fields long and during the harvest season is filled to the peak of the roof with raw sugar

How they load sugar on to a cargo ship

This jetty is coming from another sugar warehouse to take sugar out to load onto cargo ships.  The jetty though is about 3 miles long as The Great Barrier Reef is along here and they didn't want the ships getting too close to it.  This jetty was severely damaged by a hurricane in 2011 but it is now working again.

The largest sugar mill in Australia

The Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal - this is one of the largest coal terminals in the world.  This place was massive!

This machine puts the coal in to piles in to piles in the yard, before it gets on the ship.  The piles are based on size and grade.  So if China calls and says we want 50 tons of 'XYZ' grade to be put on the ships, they know where to find it to put it on the conveyor belts to send out to the ships.  The jetty which takes the coal out to the ships is maybe 1.5 miles long.

Cargo ship getting loaded with coal.  This machine dispenses the coal into the various holds on the ship.

Another view of the ship.  Each of these holds on the ship were filled with coal - can hold something like 100,000 tons of coal I think? 

My trip to Australia

Hi Everyone - I feel like every time I start out a blog post, it's with an apology for not writing for a while!  This time I have a decent excuse though; I was in Australia for a week and then back home for a week and a half...pretty good reasons, eh?

I'm going to break my Australia post up into two parts as some of it was for fun and some was for work.  I had to go down there for work and decided to go a few days early to check out Sydney before flying up to Cairns to meet my coworkers.  I then spent an extra night in Brisbane on my way back.  I have to say, I'm now a huge fan of Australia - maybe because it was the closest thing to the 'Western World' that I'd been to since I came over in January?  Regardless, I'll be back!

Sydney

Really reminded me of San Francisco and it was such a beautiful city!  It's winter there now but wasn't that cold; however it was nice to finally be able to naturally cold (not air conditioned cold) and wear a scarf and a jacket!  I walked around a lot and saw the Opera House, Bridge, etc. on the first day.  On the second day, I went out to Bondi to meet up with a coworker from the Sydney branch and some clients for lunch.  I then did the Bondi to Coogee cliff walk around the ocean.  Bondi Beach wasn't too crowded since it was winter (there were still surfers though) but I'd love to see the madness during the summer!  

Here are some pictures from Sydney:

Sydney Harbor Bridge

Darling Harbor - sort of Sydney's version of San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf

Sydney Opera House by day....

And by night...

Bondi Beach

What you can't see in these pictures are the guys wearing Speedos or 'Budgy Smugglers' as the Aussie's call them.  They seem to be the swimsuit of choice for the guys that shouldn't be caught dead in anything that tiny!  

Bondi to Coogee Cliff Walk

Brisbane

I was only in Brisbane for one night so didn't have a chance to see a whole lot but I think I got a fair amount accomplished.  A river cuts through the city and most people seem to commute by the river taxi.  I thought it might be a good way to see the city but it got dark while I was on the boat, so that didn't work out too well!  I did see some pretty nice houses overlooking the river...and their nice boats docked up to their yards!  The second day I walked through the Botanical Gardens in the morning before having breakfast and catching my flight back to Singapore.

Brisbane from the river

Brisbane's Story Bridge

Botanical Gardens