Category: English

The flight to Hong Kong went pretty well. I think I slept quite a lot. I got to my hostel, took a quick shower and immediately went to do my traditional aimless wandering. Hong Kong is really beautiful and interesting – streets crammed with small shops alongside huge shopping centers and malls that are inside ginormous buildings. The people are really nice but unfortunately most speak very little English.

I did all my shopping early (got a new pocket camera with some accessories, a small MP3 player, padlocks (for Thailand) and the new Prodigy album. Woohoo for that :) Apparently shopping is a very common tourist activity here and luckily I’m not into it. For lunch I went looking for a local restaurant and found a dumplings place that had very few tourist guests. An English-speaking waitress was called to serve me and she brought with her what appeared to be the one and only English menu in the restaurant. I was seated in front of a local that helped translate my request for Diet Coke to the waitress. In an attempt to eat stuff that I don’t usually eat, I ordered “Shrimp and assorted meat dumplings.” I hope “assorted meat” doesn’t mean kitty.

I continued walking around until I got tired and decided that I need to replace the old camera with the new one, went back to my hotel room, charged all the new gadgets and went back out. I didn’t last long after eating dinner because my body was signaling that if I push it further it’ll get back at me. Instead of exploring the night life as I wanted to, I got back in the hostel, started writing this post and fell asleep during (I guess I was tired.) Now I’m completing it at around 4am because I got up feeling so-so. I think closed hostel rooms (I don’t have an outside facing window, just air conditioning) don’t agree with me.

Tomorrow (actually today in a few hours) I’m considering going to Ocean Park, which is an educational amusement park about “life” and is supposed to be very good. However, this may take the entire day. Another option is going to Hong Kong Park, which is an urban green area inside Hong Kong, and later visiting the famous Victoria Peak. Haven’t decided yet.

I’m sitting at the airport terminal and still have some time until my flight departs so I can report this day and the next post will be at the end of the first day in Hong Kong.

The drive to LAX went uninterrupted. I stood in a little in what seems to be typical LA traffic and saw all the exits to famous places like Sunset Blvd, Venice and Van Nuys. I went straight to the airport, though. Before returning the car I took this picture:

Now let’s do some math: I drove 22861 – 18719 = 4142 miles,which are 6666 km (hmmm… interesting number.) Over 26 days that’s pretty impressive even if you don’t account for the fact that the car didn’t move an inch during my time in San Francisco (for 9 days!)

I’ll write again from Hong Kong :) Cya

Today was dedicated to getting ready for tomorrow’s trip – first doing my laundry and then packing. I’m not happy that I have more stuff than I did when I came (mainly the coat – it takes a lot of room in the backpack.) I went to O’Reilly’s Irish pub again, where I met one of the employees of my favorite cafe, 901 Columbus. His name is Eddie and he is half Mexican, half Guatemalan. We then talked for quite a while about life in Israel, in Mexico and in the US. This is the longest conversation I had with someone that wasn’t a friend of mine from before.

Later I went to see Maz Jobrani,the Iranian stand up comedian. I haven’t heard of him before but apparently he’s very famous (YouTube videos.) He was very funny and the crowd was a mix of mostly Middle Eastern people and other different ethnics. Being the only Jew in the crowd I waved to a bunch of Palestinians who waved back as a gesture of peace orchestrated by Jobrani. It was funny, but I was happy to be tagged “the Jew” and not “the Israeli” (it didn’t come up) although I don’t think there was any danger from this fun-loving crowd.

I technically have another day in the US, but tomorrow I have to drive almost 7 hours to LAX airport and then fly 14+ hours to HKG airport. It’s all going to seem like one long day, so I won’t be blogging at least until March 2nd. Hong Kong is 6 hours ahead of Israel, so I’m going to have more overlap which will make it easier for making phone calls and text messaging,

It was rainy in the morning so I gave up on my plans to visit the Golden Gate Park (in retrospect I could have gone because it didn’t really rain after the morning showers). Instead I went last-minute-shopping for a friend (I couldn’t find what he was looking for.) On the way I went to the Virgin megastore to see if the have The Prodigy’s new album in stock early, but they didn’t. The different release dates in different countries thing is so stupid in this age where everything is connected.

On the way back I went through the very steep Broderick street (see pictures below) and while walking down the steep part I saw a drunk homeless guy trying to walk it up but tripping. So I asked him if he needed help. In return he asked me if I had any spare change on me to give him. I gave him all the change I had (less than one Dollar) and then offered my help again. He accepted my offer but succeeded going up pretty much on his own. On the way up he promised me a hug and when we finished our ascent he kept it and gave me a hug. I don’t get hugged much these days so I’ll take whatever I can get :) Walking down the street again I found some of the change I gave him that he probably dropped.

I sent everything I got for friends to Israel. Hopefully that’s the last assignment on this trip. If you’re a friend of mine reading this and you have requests from the UK (I doubt anyone wants anything from Thailand) please submit your requests now. Then I went to do my laundry and met there three other slightly drunk homeless people – a woman and two men. there was actually another one who slept under the table almost the entire hour I was there, then got up, was upset about something and left.

The three were kind of entertaining – we talked about all kinds of stuff but mostly they couldn’t really keep focus on an ongoing conversation. I gave them about 2 Dollars. Some of it so they can dry their clothes in the dryer and the rest of the money they’ll probably use to buy more drinks. I’m not happy about it but I don’t judge them.

I still enjoy just being here and walking the streets of San Francisco. Everything is so colorful – the architecture, the people, the sounds. Anyway, preparing for the next flight I started sorting out my stuff. Here’s a picture of almost all the electronics and cables I carry with me:

From The Trip – Misc

In the picture:

• Palm Tungsten T (in the aluminum case)
• Palm universal charger cable with exchangeable power sockets
• Polar watch and transmitter
• Israeli cellphone and USB charger cable
• American cellphone and wall socket charger cable
• Camera non-standard USB cable (assholes)
• General purpose USB extender cord (never used it)
• USB SD card reader (easier to use for transferring camera pictures)
• Wall-socket-to-USB converter (useful for charging stuff that has USB cables without a computer)
• ASUS Eee PC
• ASUS Eee PC charging cable
• Garmin nuvi 265WT
• Garmin USB standard mini USB charger and data cable
• Headphones and microphone set
• Head light (haven’t used it yet, but presumably will be useful in Thailand)

Not in the picture:

• Nikon Coolpix camera (sucked from day 1. I’m not buying Nikon again)
• Batteries (the camera needs a lot of them)
• Garmin mount (for the car window)
• Garmin car FM receiver and charger cable
• Universal socket adapter (just got it today, the picture was taken yesterday)
• Carrying case for the Garmin (also got it today)

I won’t use the American cellphone and the GPS on the rest of my trip, so they will go in the big bag wrapped in the warm clothes I won’t be using over the next few weeks in Hong Kong and Thailand.

Tomorrow it looks like I might be able to go jogging again. Then I’ll try go to the Golden Gate Park and later in the evening to that comedy club that I went to on Saturday.

The sun was shining when I got up. It was still pretty cold outside. Perfect for jogging, so that’s exactly what I did – this time I went a little further and probably ran between 9 to 10 km. It feels great to start the day with a workout. I actually mean it feels great to be after the workout because during I’m just a sweaty pig struggling for air.

After a shower and breakfast I went again to walk around the San Francisco downtown area. Luckily I’m not the shopping type because if you’re into shopping you can spend there entire days going in and out of shops. All the famous names are there, crammed into a relatively small area so you don’t have to walk much from Saks to Macy’s to the Ugg store.

So after walking quite a lot I was very tired, went back to the hotel to rest and later went to Golden Flower, a small and very good Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. I love those small places, where the cooks are the owners and the waiter is probably a relative, treating restaurant guests like house guests and all speak English with an accent, like me :) And after that I was even more tired (I think I ate too much, but it was so good) so I went back to the hotel again just to watch TV and catch up on my reading (a lot of stuff happens in the Tech industry in 4 weeks.) It feels great not be uptight about going places and seeing stuff. I’ll have enough of that in Hong Kong, where I’m going to spend only 3 nights.

Later I went to 901 Columbus, my favorite neighborhood place and called it a night. Tomorrow, if the weather allows, I plan to go to a place a homeless guy recommended for me today – Golden Gate Park – where in some places around it things are supposedly preserved from the 60s (at least that’s what he said.) It should be a nice park anyway. It’s pretty far, but I think I’ll walk.

Today’s pictures are just street pictures of San Francisco. Nothing special.

I started the day late and went downtown to do some shopping for my travel agent and friend who deserves some gifts for the attention she gave me and the price she got me for the tickets. Later on I went to the excellent Mexican restaurant, Mercedes.

Then I did the Alcatraz night tour (more like an evening tour), which I would recommend to anyone coming here (pre-order your tickets! I was lucky.) The prison, originally a military fort, has some interesting history, famous characters and many myths related to it.

Today was again too wintery to go jogging, but hopefully tomorrow will be a nicer day. I really need more activity, even though I walk probably 10 to 15 km every day (I haven’t used any transport other than ferries so far.) I’ve started preparing for Hong Kong – trying to find information on what to do, how to get from one place to another (no more GPS :( ) and preparing mentally. After 4 weeks in the US it’s like starting a new trip.

Today started with light rain that later turned into non-stop-can’t-do-anything-outside kind of rain. I really don’t like rain and refuse to use an umbrella. So I just spent the entire morning and afternoon relaxing and catching up on my online reading (600 Digg stories, as an example :) It’s not like I had big plans, anyway. I’m just a little upset that I couldn’t go jogging. I guess I could have gone to the closest gym and get a one day pass but it takes me time to get used to a new gym and I don’t feel comfortable walking in and starting to work out in a new place – too self conscious.

In the evening I went outside for a while just to walk, breathe fresh air and eat (had very good Shepherds Pie at O’Reilly’s, an Irish pub and restaurant.) Then it started raining again (my coat protects me very well) so I went back in my room. Hopefully tomorrow it won’t rain as much. I have no special plans for the day, but at 4pm I have the trip to Alcatraz.