Airplanes - The modern day torture device

There's a reason why this blog is called "like.love.travel"...and it has nothing to do with the speech formations of a Californian "valley girl".
For all the wonderful horizon broadening, frame of reference stretching (and bank account shrinking) effects that travel has in my life; there's one part about it that I don't quite love so much... Travelling.

The actual "getting there" part is just sucky! People say "it's not the destination, it's about the journey" (and I want to agree with them), but these people obviously don't suffer from motion sickness! As a baby I threw up on my mother EVERY TIME we got in the car; being young and uneducated in the ways of babies she thought this was normal. Poor young fool. (This was in the days when adults felt it was okay for children to be transported in moving vehicles without being strapped into a car seat.)  It hasn't gotten any better with age... the motion sickness, my mother has gotten wise and not much older-looking. (I hope you're reading this Mom.)

Hong Kong Highlights

I've already tried to describe my infectious attraction to Hong Kong, like nerds to Cosplay. It's unnatural and cannot be rationalized. It's also clearly not conducive to writing a sane blog piece (which is already a challenge since my sanity is debatable and can only be stretched so thin). My attempt turned into a mushy love declaration to my sweet husband. Yuk! (Not the husband, the goowy-ness of my public affection.) After all that writing I'm still a little confused as to the origin of my love for Hong Kong, which made me realize that other people (those who read this blog for instance) must be A LOT confused! (So basically, one person then.)

So without all the touchy-feely nonsense here's some concrete "To Do's" if you ever get to Hong Kong. And when you get there, Hong Kong will work it's magic on you and you'll return a smitten, stammering, poop flinging buffoon like me.

10 Compelling reasons why I could never be a Vegetarian

Before anyone gets all self-righteous about animals being cute and fluffy and how wrong it is to eat them, I would like to start by stating: I love animals...I think they're delicious! Some may even be more delicious than others...

Exhibit A: Our fluffy fat-hobbit kitty! We rescued her from a flooding drain pipe when she was 5 weeks old and now she thinks she owns me. She spends her days following me around the house, insisting on every drop of my attention. And watching me pee. Due to her cuteness and soft jelly-belly, I'm pretty sure she would be delicious baked into a cupcake!

She thinks she's people!

My Love Affair with Hong Kong

Have you ever been somewhere that you didn't have a very high expectation of enjoyability beforehand, but for reasons you can't quite fathom you love it so much you can't properly articulate? When you try to string some nonsensical words together people look at you funny and quietly ponder the possibilities for your behaviour, such as falling on your head as a child or exposure to the Ebola virus.

Kowloon

 I want to tell you about how awesome Hong Kong is, but that's the problem I have right now. If I could I'd jump up and down like an overly excited chimpanzee and fling my own poop, but humans don't have the luxury of this being acceptable behaviour and quite frankly I'm concerned that it will reflect badly on Hong Kong. (And my upbringing - you're welcome Mom!) So I'll try to use only words, and no profanity which is a challenge all on it's own!

Number one for "number one"

For my very first blog post I was going to write about my favourite trip to date, and it was going well and I had really good intentions. Then I came off the high of proverbial digital ink, that's why this post has nothing to do with my travel experiences and more to do with life experience...

Don't forget the white gold!

Bush-pee like a boss!

Men have it so easy when it comes to this specific topic for obvious reasons, regardless of the fact that you now get a device that allows for women to stand up and pee(what?!). By no means am I claiming to be a pro but if you grew up in Africa like I did, somewhere at some random time and place you would have had to do your business in the wild... more times than you would like to disclose. Whether it's the actual “wild” where you could encounter any number of dangerous animals; the side of the road on an infinitely long stretch between civilisation; or any public toilet anywhere, ever. It's a basic survival skill a girl must learn at some point, mainly because you don't have a choice and hopefully before it's too late!