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One of the nice things about going to New York from San Francisco was the jet lag. Staying up late was pretty cool since New York seemed to never sleep. On many nights after Mark and Akiko left to go home, we would walk around Times Square back to the apartment and do window shopping as well as stop for a midnight snack at one of many great cafes. However the uncomfortable flip side of that is waking up late and I’m talking about 11-12 (similar to college). That pretty much left half a day to go hit up museums and shops that would close early.

The MOMA was pretty incredible. They had a very interesting display by Marina Abramovic who does live performances. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t been but it definitely will make you think. The other interesting thing about the MOMA was that they have a very good collection of paintings and sketches from big artists such as Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, etc. Starry Night by Van Gough was also there. The one thing that we weren’t able to see was the Tim Burton exhibit since the tickets were all sold out.

One of the many stackable parking lots in New York

Inside one of the many art galleries in the West Chelsea gallery district

Porterhouse Steak at Keens Steakhouse

The specatular Grand Central Station.  

Last Wednesday Jeff and I flew out on my b-day (yeah!) to Manhattan, New York. The main purpose of the trip was to It was a little surreal to wake up early and spend most of the day on the plane. Once we landed it was a little rainy but good to be at our destination. Jeff’s friend Mark lives near Grand Central Station which made it super convenient to stay at. Lucky for us, he was in the process of moving in with his girlfriend Akiko which left us full run of his apartment. We dropped off our luggage and gear and took a quick walk over to have some yummy Korean Tofu Soup at Seoul Garden, which was nice after eating nothing but snacks on the plane ride over.

Until the model shoot on Sunday, we spent a lot of time wandering around the city. The crazy thing is that it was pretty warm at the start of the trip which made all of our cold weather gear look silly. However as the trip moved on, it started to cool down a lot and the rain moved in. Next time we’re definitely packing 50/50 on the cold and warm weather clothes. Mark and Akiko played tour guide for us after they were off work and on weekends. We went to different parts of the city and saw a variety of different things. Chinatown was humongous compared to what is here in the Bay Area and LA. Block after block of touristy stuff and other interesting shops. Times Square was very bright and flashy. Jeff said that it reminded him of Las Vegas with all of the big signs and large crowds of people. We went through this area a lot since it was only 20 minutes walk from the apartment. There was also a park that was build on an old train track that went over the city streets. Really cool to be walking around for a few blocks and being able to get shots of the streets and people around.

The food was really good out and let me get off on a little side talk about Starbucks and Chase. It seems that almost every other block had at least a Starbucks or Chase. It worked out for our advantage and was really convenient but it begs the discussion on is there really that much demand that there have to be so many of these stores in one area? Anyway, the food was pretty fab. Jeff’s favorite was the gargantuan pastrami sandwich on rye that he split with Mark at lunch from the Carnegie Deli. There was literally 4 inches worth of meat. The yakitori at Yakitori Totto was super delicious and the sushi at Sushiyasuda was great with wide selection of fish. They offer 4-5 different kind of salmon from different countries. My favorite was the unagi, that was really the best unagi (and most expensive) that I’ve ever tasted in my life !

me @ Central Park

Giant tulips by the Apple store. Photo by Jeff

M&M World

Shanghainese dumplings

Inside the Museum of Chinese American. David Ho and his team developed the HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy), the gold standard for AIDS treatment today

I never thought Bing cherries are related to Ah Bing!

@ Highline Park, one of the coolest parks that I’ve been. The entire park was converted by out-of use railroad, suspended above the city

To be continued…

Once we left Chengdu we were headed back to Hong Kong for a few days of rest and relaxation. Or probably more appropriately eating and shopping. There was some drama though before we left Chengdu since our plane had to sit on the tarmac for almost 2 hours due to a backup in flights leaving/arriving due to the poor visibility due to pollution. I was really happy to be back in Hong Kong with my cousin and her family.

Over the last few days in Hong Kong I did more than enough shopping with my cousin and her friends. Jeff got to sample a lot of different types of food that he never had before. One day my cousin Mabel took us to a Noah’s Ark theme park. Interesting but it definitely was not Disneyland. We gave up on part of the tour since it was taking forever to move from one section of the ark to another.

One of the best meals was at a seafood restaurant near my cousin’s place. Within about 10 minutes walk, we reached the restaurant and the cool thing was that you buy your seafood from vendors across the street from the restaurant and take it to the restaurant for them to cook it up. A whole bunch of different types of seafood that we don’t have here in the US and some really great flavors.

Alas we had to finish up our trip and made our departure towards the airport. Jeff was mad at the Hong Kong Airport since they had a second security inspection right after you hand over your boarding pass to board the plane. They confiscated his bottle of water that he just bought. Bummer.

Noah’s Ark 1:1 replica

Jeff loves sushi

my daddy

my aunt and cousin Mabel

Waking up the next day in the darkness of our monastery room we did a quick clean up and pack so we could start making our decent down the rest of Mt. Emei. After a quick breakfast we started the slow walk down the mountain. We kept a steady pace going down stairs and after a little bit our sore legs started to feel the pain. However as we kept walking we realized that we were getting much closer to the next waypoint.

Sure enough we reached the next major stop within an hour. Our hope began to rise that we would soon be off of the mountain. Not saying much, we continued to focus on our slow decent down. Locals would see us and try to have us pay them to carry us down the mountain but we refused. After a while it became a pride thing.

There wasn’t much to see except the usual cliffs and trees as we continued to walk. Then we happened to hit the monkey zone. This was an area of the mountain where the wild monkeys congregated and interacted with the tourists by stealing food and drinks. One of the park staff walked with us for a bit scaring off the monkeys with his stick. Unfortunately for Jeff, a monkey tried to climb up his leg and while shooing him away, his buddy climbed up a pole and snatched a bottle of Coke from his backpack. After hearing him swearing at the monkey I took a swing with my monopod to no avail. Score Monkeys 1, Us 0.

After leaving the monkey zone we thought that we would be right at the exit of the park. Oh no, it was much more deceiving than that since we had to walk along a rocky trail past a temple, around some shops along a lake, and then along a mountain road next to a stream. Finally after another hour of walking we made it to the parking lot where we grabbed the first bus out of there!

We took the bus down to the Teddy Bear Hotel and ordered up a big lunch and then grabbed our bags. Our French friends, Pierre and Jessica, left us a note on our suitcase with some contact info but it was a little hard to decipher their e-mail address. Hopefully when they return from their trip we’ll get in touch. We finished up lunch, switched the boots out for shoes, and grabbed a cab down to the bus station and caught the next bus to Chengdu.

The ride back was slow due to rush hour traffic and once in Chengdu we had to battle the locals for a taxi to get to our last hotel. I was able to snag a taxi and after a long day of hiking we made it to the Tibet Hotel which was a very nice looking hotel. We got into our room and took a long shower and decided to splurge and have room service again instead of venturing out to look for a restaurant. The food was good but I wanted a massage so I took Jeff with me downstairs to the hotel spa.

The spa was quite nice and pretty empty probably since it was a Friday night. We went further back to a private room with 2 tables and a bath tub and shower area. Quite nice. Our masseuses came in and it was a pretty standard massage except that they focused mostly on the spine and also lit our backs on fire. Mind you it wasn’t like they poured gas on us and threw a match. They had some soaked face towels which they lit on our backs causing some intense heat onto our spine. Pretty different stuff which I don’t think they do back at home.

[caption id="attachment_2263" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Super tired after 10 hours of 'Stair Master'"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_2268" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="Tibetan Hotel, Chengdu"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_2269" align="aligncenter" width="900" caption="This was a super nice bathroom compared to the one in the monastery"][/caption]