Saturday, January 15, 2011

Hong Kong

So you know what? We got on a plane and we flew to Hong Kong and it was just as smoggy as on the way in. We went to a mall on top of a mountain, walked around the mountain, had many opportunities to buy things, ate dinner at a restaurant on a barge, and then we flew home to Canada.

I promise I'll get back to airplanes, day after tomorrow.

Here's a last goodbye and thank you to everyone for supporting this trip. I believe this boy was going to live in the first house I helped build. I don't know his name.

And finally, here is the seven people on a motorbike with two cartons of noodles photo. Let this be inspiration for me whenever I am loading cargo.

13 comments:

Traveller said...

Thanks for the travelogue. I enjoyed reading about your trip.

My first pattern match on the verification word was "cornfrog", but it didn't survive the double-take.

Angkor Wat was mentioned in one of David Weber's Empire of Man books. I was most interested in your descriptions of that place. I will have to get there myself one of these days.

majroj said...

Photo one: nickname must be "Lucky".
Photo two: 1.That bike appears spotless, what you can still see, and 2., notice balance calculation was uneccessary with a human piloting? (Why can't an airplane be trained to accomodate loading balance automatically?).

Peter said...

Thanks for blogging your adventures in Cambodia. The stories were all interesting!

Anonymous said...

At least they are thinking about safety. The driver is wearing a helmet:-)

Mario in PY said...

majroj: Motos also need some weight and balance calculations! Mostly done by intuition. If you put to much weight towards the back, you lose steering ability because there is not enough weight on the "nose"-wheel. ;)

Aviatrix: Thank you once more for sharing your impressions of Campuchea with the rest of your fans.

Alistair said...

Aviatrix,
Thanks for your posts, I found your blog last year and find them all most interesting, aviation or not. I haven't commented before as I read at work during lunch and commenting would be frowned upon but thought I should say 'Hi'.
Cheers,
Alistair, Cumbria, UK

Anonymous said...

Good stuff,

Looking forward to the next adventure of our aviatrix. Helping people feels good.

j said...

What a great report.

Anonymous said...

Trixie,
Love your posts. You always seem to pick up on an oddity that the rest of us would not notice and then expand on it. Your curiosity and descriptive skill has no bounds. Absolute great reading.

By any chance do the Cambodian trucks have their differentials painted with devils? I noticed this in India but nowhere else. I understand the devils are to keep tail gaters from ramming the truck.

Aviatrix said...

There weren't actually very many trucks in Cambodia. The most common large transport vehicle was a motorcycle pulling a long shallow trailer with boards across it. It might have twenty or thirty people on it, sitting on the slats like paddlers in a large canoe, or a huge mound of agricultural produce all strapped down. There were a few trucks, mostly painted all one colour; light blue was popular. The tuktuks had decorations on, but they seemed mostly designed to help the tourists distinguish one from another.

Mike Kear said...

@Mario ni PY: Not to be a nit-picker, but Kampuchea was the name for the country under the vile, disgusting, murderous regime led by Pol Pot. The country was renamed Cambodia in 1990

@Aviatrix: I have thoroughly enjoyed your posts on your trip, as I've enjoyed all your posts. I get lots of enjoyment telling my friends that I know who is the only pilot from North America who can compare any food item to the taste and texture of Tarantula Ass.

Aviatrix said...

The Kampuchea/Cambodia distinction is more a matter of transliteration than a real name change. The Khmer p/b and ch/j/d distinction is sufficiently difficult for a foreigner to discern that Kampuchea and Cambodia are the same word. The French called it Cambodge, from which the English got Cambodia, but the word in Khmer has been closer to Kampuchea all along. You see the word Kampuchea in plenty of modern contexts, including some latin transliteration of the long form of Kingdom of Cambodia. They also call it something like Srak Khmer, which may mean "mother Khmer" or "Khmer home" or something like that, and there are Angkor something versions, too.

In other words, I don't think you're committing a faux pas if you call it something other than Cambodia that recognizably identifies the territory.

I still want to learn to speak Khmer, but I'd prefer if there were a Rosetta Stone or other reliable instructional course.

Aviatrix said...

I guess the above doesn't mean there aren't dire political issues in some circles surrounding the correct English version of the name. After all, Ukraine has a hissy fit if you call them the Ukraine, even though Ukrainian doesn't even have a word for "the."