The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 1, 2011 - I'm On Top of the World!

After the SYS Memorial, our next stop was Taipei's most famous landmark, Taipei 101.  For a brief time, it was the tallest building in the world, until it was supplanted by that tower in Dubai.  Now it's #2, unless someone else has built a bigger tower recently that I'm not aware of.

Not only is Taipei 101 the tallest building in Taiwan, it is way taller than any building in Taipei, which thankfully made it very easy for us to find our way there on foot.  While the four of us trudged towards the tower, it rained off and on, but fortunately it was a light rain.  The downside was that the rain and cloudy skies weren't good for taking photographs, like this picture below that I took of my wife and kids with Taipei 101 looming up behind them.  To get this shot, I got down on the pavement so that I could get my family and the tower in the same frame.

Before making our way up to the the observation level, we decided to take a load off our feet and get a bite to eat in Taipei 101's luxurious shopping mall.  I didn't take any pictures of it, but Nino has plenty of pictures here to give you an idea of the scale of it (it has multiple levels).

After that, we bought our tickets and went up the incredibly fast elevators (among the world's fastest) to the Indoor Observation Deck on the 89th Floor.  There is also an Outdoor Observatory on the 91st Floor, but due to the inclement weather, access to it was closed for the day when we got there.

The observatory offers commanding views of the city in all four directions.  On each side, to help you figure out what you are looking at, there are large interactive screens where you can touch the buildings or other sites displayed and it will tell you what it is.

I was able to easily spot our hotel and take a photo of it as seen from Taipei 101.

After taking in the impressive vistas, diminished as they were by the clouds and rain, the object of our attention turned to the ubiqituous Damper Babies.  The Damper Babies are basically these cute animated characters, sort of like Teletubbies, who explain in the short video below Taipei 101's damper, which is a structure that serves to stabilize the building during strong winds. 

I didn't take any pictures of the damper, but below is one from the Wikipedia page for Taipei 101.  For some reason, it makes me think of the derelict ship in the movie Event Horizon.

There were also plenty of Damper Baby statues for posing with in pictures, of which my wife and kids availed themselves.

Other photo opportunities involved posing in front of pictures of Taipei 101, one of which my son used to good effect.

After we had our fill of the Observatory, we walked down a flight of stairs and encountered a shop displaying rather ornate and extremely expensive jade figurines.  I didn't take pictures, but if you want to check some of it out, this blog post at Oz Soap Box has several photos.  Just scroll down to the bottom.

We lingered awhile in the jade shop mainly because my wife wanted to look at and possibly buy something, but fortunately her good sense prevailed!  With that, we took the elevator back down and prepared for the trudge back to our hotel, though I managed to get one more shot of Taipei 101.

While I complained about how the cloudy skies made for crappy photos during the day, I have to say I like how this night shot turned out.  The clouds in this photo serve to create a smoky effect.

Our first day in Taipei was not finished yet, as we still had a night market to find on our way back to the hotel, but that can wait for another post.

The Philippines Trip - September 1, 2011 - On to Taipei

After recuperating at the Shangri-la in Mactan on August 30th, the next day we flew back to Hong Kong for a one night stay before heading on to the next leg of our trip, Taipei in Taiwan.  We arrived in Hong Kong around 3 P.M. local time, and after getting settled into our room at the Regal Airport Hotel, which is just a short walk from the airport itself, we took the Airport Express train into Central to meet a professional acquaintaince of mine at a noodle restaurant at the IFC Mall.

The next day we returned to the airport and caught our flight on EVA Air to Taipei.  If memory serves, our flight departed around 10:30 A.M. and the flight was about an hour and a half at most.

So, why were we going to Taipei, you might ask.  After our first visit to the Philippines in 2004, I thought that on each future trip we could take the opportunity to visit a different city in Asia for a few days after leaving the Philippines.  In 2007, Hong Kong was the obvious choice, because it was a stop over during the flights between the Philippines and New York. 

For the 2011 trip, I considered several different possibilities.  One was to stay in Hong Kong again, but to use it as a launch pad for ferry trips to Macau and Guangzhou (Canton).  Another was to spend several days in Shanghai.  The other option was Taipei.  Part of the appeal for me to visit Taipei was the chance to support with my tourist dollars a democratic Chinese state rather than the authoritarian Peoples Republic of China.  I also felt it would be a friendlier place for Americans to visit than the mainland.  While I doubt that American tourists face overt hostility when visiting the PRC, I do know that whenever the occasional international dispute between the United States and the PRC occurs, outbursts of anti-American behavior does happen.  Taipei was also closer to Hong Kong than Shanghai, and I didn't think my 8 and 10 year old kids would enjoy day trips to Guangzhou and Macau, so Taipei it was.

Me being the meticulous travel planner I am, I consulted my copy of The Rough Guide to Taiwan to see what places we might like to visit as well as where we should stay.  I also did some research on the Internet, where I eventually came across a blog called My Kafkaesque Life by a Slovenian expat named Nino who is currently living in Taipei.  Nino's writes about virtually any place in Taipei you could think of seeing, and being an avid photographer, his posts contain lots of photographs that really bring the sights to life in a way that tour guide books do not.  If you ever plan to visit Taipei, or Taiwan in general, as he has visited other parts of the island, then Nino's blog is immensely helpful in helping you figure out where you want to go and what you can expect.  Just don't ask him to make any reservations or purchase any tickets for you!  ;-)

So, before our flight even touched down in Taoyuan International Airport, I already had planned exactly what we were going to do on our first day in Taipei.  Step one, of course, was to hook up with our ride to our hotel, the Shangri-la Far Eastern Plaza in Taipei's Xinyi district.  If memory serves, it is the tallest hotel in Taipei, and I specifically booked us a room with a view of Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.  Below is a picture of Taipei 101 as seen from our room.  As you can see, the sky was rather overcast and it rained off and on throughout the day.

Once we were settled in our room, my daughter wasted no time in sprawling on the couch in one of the bath robes that were provided to us.

But there was little time to relax, as we had an ambitious itinerary planned for the day.  The first stop was the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, where I looked forward to seeing the changing of the guard, which is performed at the top of every hour.  I was hoping we could catch the 3:00 P.M. performance.  After consulting with the door men at our hotel, we were able to find a bus stop where we caught the bus that would drop us off near the Memorial Hall.

Unfortunately, the changing of the guard ceremony was already underway when we got there.  I tried taking some pictures of the ceremony, but the room was not very well lit and only one shot came out even halfway decent.

Silently overlooking the ceremony was a large statue of Sun Yat Sen himself seated in a chair, reminding me of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  Again, due to the lack of light, the picture did not come out well, with the famous Chinese nationalist largely bathed in shadow.  I used to have a photo editing program that allowed me to brighten dark pictures like this in order to make it more visible, but it seems to have been lost when the computer guy updated my computer to Windows 7.

If you want to watch a video of the changing of the guard ceremony, I found the video below on Youtube:

Nino also has a post on his blog here about his visit to the SYS Memorial Center, and unlike me, he was fortunate to have lots of sunshine for his photos!

After the changing of the guard ceremony was over, we spent about an hour looking at some of the exhibits on display about the early 20th century history of China, including the war with Japan in the 1930's, as well as lots of photographs of Sun Yat Sen and his family.  Needless to say, my kids were bored and with that, it was time to move on to the next destination of the day, Taipei 101.

The Philippines Trip - August 29 - 30, 2011 - The Perfect Storm

WARNING: THIS POST IS NOT MEANT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART AND THOSE WHO ARE SQUEAMISH.  IF YOU CONTINUE TO READ THIS POST AND FEEL ILL, WELL YOU CAN'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU!


So, after our pleasant little diversion at the Loon Macaques Sanctuary, we headed back to Mia and Stuart's house.  As the miles passed by, I drank more and more of that bottle of chocolate milk I had purchased a couple of hours earlier.

It had been a long time since I had drank milk.  Because of my lactose intolerance problem, I normally drink soy milk.   However, my body is not consistent when it comes to dairy products.  For instance, I generally have no problem eating yogurt.  I eagerly devour pizza covered with mozzarella cheese and suffer no ill effects.   Apart from milk, probably the only other dairy product that I can't handle is ricotta cheese.  Usually the worst I suffer is a bout of diarrhea and within an hour I am back to normal.  While I was drinking the chocolate milk, the possibility of developing that urgent need to suddenly evacuate my bowels was there in my mind, but I figured I knew the worst I could expect.

By the time we had gotten back to Mia and Stuart's house, I think I was already beginning to feel those first signs that trouble might be afoot.  But that was not the only problem.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, to get back and forth from Cebu to Bohol, we rode the fast ferry.  Me being the organized planner that I am (at least when it comes to planning vacations), I had ordered the tickets for the Supercat fast ferry before we had left the United States.  Our original departure date from Bohol back to Cebu was supposed to be Monday, August 29.  When Stuart had e-mailed me that they planned to take us to Danao Adventure Park on that day, I contacted Supercat and told them that instead of August 29, we needed to change our reservations for the trip back to Cebu to August 30.  They answered me acknowledging the change in the itinerary.

When we had arrived at the Supercat terminal the previous week to board the ferry for the trip to Bohol, we were also given our tickets for the return trip back to Cebu.  In retrospect, I should have looked at them when they were given to me, but I didn't.   So, back at the house in Loon, hoping against all hope that I would avert the impending shit storm that was waiting to unleash its fury on me, I pulled out our Supercat ferry tickets to give them a look over to make sure everything was in order and then my jaw hit the floor.  The date on the tickets for the return trip to Bohol was Monday, August 29, 2011.

"Oh, Mia!" I called out to my lovely sister-in-law, "I think we have a problem here."   I explained the situation to her and she said she would call the ferry company, but she cautioned me that there could be a problem because it was a holiday in the Philippines (National Heroes Day, I believe), which meant that the ferry office would have a skeleton crew and the ferry for the next day might be sold out.

My sister-in-law Mia at work in her garden.

The first thing you need to understand about Mia is that she is a lawyer who often argues cases in court before a judge.  Sure, she may look sweet and innocent enough in the picture above, but from the way she argued my case on the phone with whoever the hapless person was at the Supercat ferry who had the misfortune to answer her phone call, I could get a sense of what it must be like to be grilled by her on the witness stand in a court room.

Mia relentlessly hammered away at the Supercat representative, pointing out that they had acknowledged by e-mail the change of date of our departure before my family and I had even left the Philippines.  She refused to take no for an answer and kept insisting that the ferry company had to provide us with tickets for the 12:00 ferry ride to Bohol the next day.

I think it was around this time that I was enduring my first attacks of the brown tide.  To my dismay, it kept coming on wave after wave far beyond what I would have expected.  But that was not the worst of it.  At that cafeteria back at Danao Adventure Park hours earlier, I ate a plate full of thick noodles.  Now I was starting to feel this heavy sensation in my chest.   While I was sitting on the toilet unleashing a veritable waterfall of diarrhea, I felt the unmistakeable need to puke.  Thankfully, the bathroom sink was just a couple of feet in front of me, so as soon as I felt a lull in shitstorm, I leaned forward and heaved into the sink what looked like the equivalent of a bowl of noodle soup.  And then I heaved some more.

I couldn't help but ponder the terrible arc of my day.  That morning, I had zipped across a canyon on the Suislide and did The Plunge.  I had gone from feeling like hot shit to unleashing hot shit.  And from there, my stomach had become a Mount Vesuvius of vomit.

During a merciful lull in my excretory activities there was some news to cheer me up.  Mia informed me that her negotiations were successful and that tomorrow the Supercat would have tickets for us for the 12:00 fast ferry to Cebu.

Sadly though, the puking continued.  Even worse, the sink in our bathroom, filled to capacity with my vomit, was clogged and would not drain.  I was also becoming rather dehydrated, as I could not hold any fluids down.  At one point, my wife and her sisters Mia and Myla (who was staying with us that night) discussed the possibility of taking me to the hospital, but I wasn't enthusiastic about that idea.

Weakened though I was, I undertook the unpleasant task of emptying the bathroom sink of my afternoon lunch by dipping a small cup into it and then pouring it into the toilet.   It was a rather tedious affair that probably took the better part of an hour before the sink was largely empty.  After that, I collapsed onto the bed, while Mia was able to unclog the drain and my poor sister-in-law Myla mopped the floor.   An inglorious end to what had initially been a glorious day.  And all because of my stupidity in drinking a bottle of chocolate milk.

During the night, I was able at last to sip and hold down some Gatorade.  The next morning we gathered all our things and rode in Stuart's truck to my wife's parents house in Tagbilaran.  A little later we got our tickets and we drove to the pier, where we said goodbye to the family before entering the ferry terminal.  It had been four years since we had last visited them and hopefully it won't be that long before we see them again.

The ferry ride was uneventful, and a little over an hour and a half later we caught our taxi to take us to the beautiful Shangri-la resort in Mactan.   We ate dinner at one of the restaurants in the resort and then relaxed in one of the pools while my daughter made repeated runs down the water slide.  It was time for some rest and recovery before moving on to the next leg of our trip, the city of Taipei in Taiwan.







Happy Palm Sunday

Today, I am going to do something I haven't done in a long time, I am going to attend a Sunday Mass.  It couldn't be a better day actually, as today is Palm Sunday, the day when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people laid down palm leaves in front of him.  And like Christ entering Jerusalem, I will reenter the church that I abandoned more than two decades ago, humble in heart and asking for acceptance and forgiveness.

The Philippines Trip - August 29, 2011 - The Loon Macaques

After our bit of fun at the Danao Adventure Park, we headed back to Loon.  Along the way, Stuart wanted to stop at this dairy shop by the road to get some bottles of locally produced milk.  All of us bought a bottle, including, against my better judgment, myself, as I bought a bottle of chocolate milk.  The reason I say against my better judgment is because I do have a problem with lactose intolerance, though only certain dairy products have an adverse affect on me.  At worst, I figured I would have quick case of the shits later on in the day.  But that's a story for the next post.

Anyway, after the stop at the dairy, we continued on to the Loon Macaques Habitat.  The habitat is located in a mangrove swamp near the shore of the northwest corner of Bohol island.  If you click on the link I provided, you will see a picture of the entrance to the bamboo footbridge that brings you into the swamp.  Led by a guide, we walked about 100 yards or so to the end.  The guide had some food with her for the macaques, who in small groups or one-by-one, started to gather around us.

 

During our time there, about twenty minutes, I observed a variety of behaviors displayed by the macaques, including some episodes of fighting and bullying amongst some of them.  But then you see moments like this one.

 

 

The whole time we spent at the macaques habitat was about a half an hour at the most.  If you're in the northwestern part of Bohol, I would say it is worth a visit, though you would be advised to add it to either the beginning or end of your itinerary for the day. 

Quote of the Day

From Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince:

"To those seeing and hearing him, he should appear a man of compassion, a man of good faith, a man of integrity, a kind and religious man.  And there is nothing so important as to seem to have this last quality.  Men in general judge by their hands; because everyone is in a position to watch, few are in a position to come in close touch with you.  Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are."  Emphasis mine.

The Philippines Trip - August 29, 2011 - Danao Adventure Park

The highlight of our stay in Bohol was our last day, when Stuart and Mia took us to Danao Adventure Park, which is located near the center of the island.

During the course of our ride there, which was probably a couple of hours, the quality of the roads varied greatly.  There would be stretches of freshly paved road, followed by several miles of unpaved road, followed by more paved road, and so on.  I distinctly remember one odd moment where we were on a lengthy stretch of unpaved road, and then suddenly the road was newly paved for at most 50 feet, and then after that it was unpaved again for another few miles.  I was puzzled why they would pave just a small segment of road in the middle of a long stretch of unpaved road rather than starting from where the last paved section ended and then working their way onward to connect to the next paved section.

The first activity, which we all participated in, was a zipline called the Suislide.   It's actually a double zipline.  For the first part, you zip acoss the canyon to the other side.  Then after you get there, you walk over to the next line, which takes you back across to the side where you started from.  Stuart went first, because he wanted to film us all during our arrival at the end.

That's Stuart with the yellow helmet and Flip camera in hand, getting into position for his launch.  Below is a picture of the cable strung across to the other side of the canyon to give you an idea of what it looks like.  While it's not very long, it is rather high and you definitely would not want to fall.

And away goes Stuart!

Next up was my wife and my son.  They opted to go tandem, with my son riding alongside my wife.

My daughter and I woud follow them.  She rode on my back.  Unfortunately, I don't have any picture of us on my camera of the two of us.  For the return zipline, I was able to get photos of my wife's sister Myla and her sister Mia and Mia's daughter Zoe.

Next up was my turn to shine as I decided to take The Plunge.  The following set of pictures should tell you everything you need to know about it.

As you can see, I went head first instead of feet first.  After the drop I was supposed to pull out my feet and then lift myself up to an upright position, with my hands holding on to where my feet were.  I had trouble getting one of my feet out for a moment and briefly feared that my sneaker would come off and fall down into the river below.

For the next one, it might be a little hard to see me because I am so far down. 

And then for the return.

 

Yeah, I just did that!

After that, the whole gang road together on the Sky Ride, which is like the zipline except you ride in an open air cable car that goes much slower and the zipline.  It was more for the view than anything else, but it did allow me to take some photos that give a bird's eye perspective of the Suislide and the Plunge.

Now here's a birdseye view of the Plunge.

And here's the Suislide.

After the day's adventure activities, we stopped at the Adventure Park's cafeteria for some Filipino buffet.  Afterwards, I went roaming outside and came across this sign.

For someone who lives outside of the United States of America, this sign would be considered unremarkable.  But here in the good old USA, words like "socialized" and "socialism" are considered dirty words.  I can just imagine how your average Tea Party Republican would react if they saw a sign like this at some national park here in America.

"Whut?  My park fees are supporting socialism?  That's a goddamn disgrace!  I want my fucking country back!  Take this sign down or I'm never coming to this park again for the rest of my life, so help me god!"

Philippine Sunsets

After our Ngong Ping 360 Crystal Cabin excursion, we returned to the Hong Kong International Airport and caught our flight to Cebu.  We arrived at Mactan International Airport around 7 PM, and after clearing immigration and claiming our luggage, we found our ride to the Montebello Hotel in Cebu City.  The next morning, we went by taxi to the Super Cat ferry pier to catch the fast ferry to Tagbilaran City in Bohol, which takes about 90 minutes.

During our stay in Bohol for this trip we were guests of my wife's sister Mia and her husband Stuart at their new house in Loon, north of Tagbilaran City.  The house is perched on high ground overlooking the Cebu Strait to the west.  This afforded me the opportunity to take numerous photos of the sun setting behind Cebu.

The last one is my favorite, with the fast ferry in the Cebu Strait approaching Tagbilaran City on its last run of the day.

Darn! I'll Have to Bail on the Reason Rally

I was looking forward to going to the Reason Rally this coming Saturday and getting the chance to meet fellow nontheists, including some of my favorite bloggers.  But alas, I simply have too many errands and things to do around the house.  To all those who are going, I hope the weather cooperates and you have a great time.

Maybe Rick Santorum Was Right

I recently finished reading Jon Krakauer's Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which in part tells the story of the murder of a woman and her toddler child by two of the brothers of her husband because they believed it was a deed sanctioned by God.

I started reading Under The Banner of Heaven a few days after Republican presidential candidate and self-appointed busy body of all things sexual Rick Santorum called colleges "indoctrination mills" and claimed in an interview with Glenn Beck that “62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it.”

Where Under The Banner of Heaven ties into this is near the end of the book.  One of the persons Krakauer introduces the reader to is an apostate from the Mormon Fundamentalist Church named DeLoy Bateman.

Bateman tells Krakauer what led him to eventually leave his church and abandon his faith.

"Even as a young boy," he says, "I remember wondering about contradictions between what the religion taught and scientific truth.   But Uncle Roy told us that the way to handle that was just to avoid asking certain kinds of questions.  So I trained myself to ignore the contradictions.  I got good at not letting myself think about them."

When he turned 18, Bateman attended Southern Utah State College, because his church wanted him to become a teacher.

Bateman says, "I loved college.  Looking back, I suppose it was the beginning of the end for me.  I stayed in the religion for another twenty years, but going to college in Cedar City was when I had my eyes opened.  That's where I took my first geology course.  Afterward I came home and told Uncle Roy, 'There's a professor over there trying to tell us the earth is four and a half billion years old, but the religion says its only six thousand years old.  How can that be?'  Which shows you why education is such a problem for the Work.  You take someone like me, who was always as stalwart as can be, and then you ship him off to get an education and the guy goes and apostasizes on you.  Happens over and over again.  And every time it does, it makes the leaders more inclined to keep people from learning."  (Bolding mine).

You see some of that with Rick Santorum, who constantly likes to point out that he homeschools his kids.  After all, he doesn't want his children to be exposed to somebody else's agenda, and Heavens forbid, be indoctrinated into becoming a liberal!

One of the things I have noticed about right wing conservatives is the way they frame their language.  They begin with the premise that their beliefs are normative and correct.  Therefore, anyone who advocates for positions that run contrary to their own have "an agenda."  Anything taught to their children that runs counter to their beliefs is an attempt to "indoctrinate" them.  These people are either being disingenuous or willfully obtuse when they refuse to recognize that they too have an agenda and trying to teach their children strictly in accordance with their own beliefs involves indoctrinating them.  After all, to believe in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation ultimately involves telling a child, "This is what the Church teaches.  You just have to have faith and believe it."

I don't know if anyone has explicitly asked Santorum this, but I would like to see him be asked, "What is the difference between telling a child that a Communion wafer becomes the flesh of Jesus Christ when it enters one's mouth and telling a child that human activities are releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, which traps heat and warms the planet?  After all, one cannot physically test the communion wafer to detect changes in its properties when it enters the mouth of a believing Catholic, but one can measure the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the rise in temperature and the shrinking of glaciers and Arctic sea ice." 

Rick Santorum may consider it a terrible tragedy if an 18 year old Catholic enters college believing in the doctrine of transubstantiation and leaves college at 21 believing it to be nothing but medieval superstitious nonsense, but it shouldn't be a reason to oppose expanding opportunity for Americans to  attend college.

Mormonism in One Sentence

A religion founded by a guy so that he could have theological justification to bang as many women as he wanted.

Another Philippines Trip - Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car - Hong Kong - August 22, 2011

After a lengthy delay, I'm finally getting around to writing about our trip to the Philippines this past summer.

This being our third time, the trip is starting to take on a familiar rhythm.  We flew out of JFK on a Saturday night on Cathay Pacific and had a brief stopover at Vancouver where some of the passengers departed and the cleaning crew came on to tidy up the plane before new passengers boarded.  I have to say I really like to the food they serve on Cathay Pacific.  I don't remember all of the meals I ate, but I do remember having liked the seafood congee. 

We arrived at Hong Kong International Airport on the morning of August 22, 2011 at around 7 a.m. local time, as usual.  Our connecting flight to Cebu in the Philippines wasn't scheduled to depart until roughly 4 p.m., so as usual we had some time to kill in Hong Kong.  The last two trips, we rode the Air Train into Central to meet a business acquaintance of mine for lunch.  This time, I wanted to do something touristy, so I decided that we would ride the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car to the Tian Tan Buddha Statue on nearby Lantau Island. 

I ordered the tickets online before we left New York.  The option I chose was to ride the Crystal Cabin (which is a cabin that has a glass bottom) to Ngong Ping village and a regular cabin car for the return trip to Tung Chung.

My plan was to ride the bus to Tung Chung, which is where the cable cars depart for Ngong Ping village, but I wasn't able to figure out which bus to get on.  I decided to play it safe and go there by cab.  In Hong Kong, taxi cabs are colored based on where they go in the city.  For Lantau Island destinations, you take, if memory serves, the blue colored taxis.  The trip cost the four of us 50 HK dollars, which is roughly $7.00 US.

We got to Tung Chung a bit early as the ticket office for the Ngong Ping cable cars wasn't open yet, so we went to a nearby shopping mall to kill some time.  Around 9:30, we headed back to the ticket office.  There was already a long line, but thanks to my infinite wisdom in ordering our tickets online, we got to go directly to the ticket office and obtain our tickets after only a brief wait.  From there, it was probably another 15-20 minutes wait online before we were able to board one of the crystal cabins.

What follows are two videos of our ride on the crystal cabin.  We shared the cabin with a Chinese family who sat across us.  The wife and the daughter (I'm guessing) were directly in front of me when it came to shooting the video of what was in front of us, so they show up in the video from time to time.  Also, there were moments when I was holding the camera while it was still recording while I was not looking into it, which probably explains why the camera seems to linger on them here and there.

Luckily for me, the memory card had just enough memory left in it to hold out until we actually came in sight of the giant Buddha statue.   If you watch the videos and listen to the audio, you can tell that we had a lot of fun on this ride.  If Hong Kong is ever part of your vacation itinerary, or even if, like we did, you find yourself with a few hours to kill while waiting for a connecting flight, the Ngong Ping 360 cable car ride is a good way to spend your free time.  The potential downside is that the Ngong Ping 360 is sometimes closed for service, and when I went on the website to get the link for this post, I saw a message that it is closed for the next two months.  So it looks like it might not be up and running again until April of 2012.

When we got off the cable car, we began to make our way to the Tian Tan Buddha Statue and took some pictures along the way.  Ngong Ping village is basically a theme park, so you shouldn't get the impression that you are experiencing an authentic Chinese village.  But it did make for a nice time killer.

No, I didn't end up buying him the hat.

A very pretty arch that evokes classical Chinese architecture.

The Tian Tan buddha at last.  The view from the bottom.  My wife took this picture and if you click on it to enlarge it, you can make out me and the kids at the midway point, with me waving to the camera.

Almost there.   It was a hot August day and I was already dead tired and sweating my ass off by this point.  Then I remembered that the first noble truth of Buddhism was that life is suffering.

The view of the way I came from near the top.

I wasn't intentionally trying to get a silhoutte in this close up of the statue.  As you can see from the sky in the background, the sky was rather cloudy, so the Buddha statue wasn't well lit.  To see some really good photos of the Buddha statue and the Ngong Ping village, Nino of My Kafkaesque Life has photo rich blog posts here and here.  Nino is a Slovenian expat living in Taiwan who has an excellent blog that I highly recommend if you ever plan to visit Taiwan, and I will provide further links and references when I get to the Taipei leg of our trip. 

After a long, exhausting walk, we rejoined my wife at the foot of the stairs and made our way back to the village where we had lunch at a noodle restaurant before riding the cable car back to Tung Chung.  When we got there, I was able to find the bus station nearby.  You can catch either the S1 or S64 bus back to Hong Kong International Airport.  For the four of us, the cost was a mere 10.5 Hong Kong dollars and the buses run about every 10 or 15 minutes.

Aqua Lung Hot Shot Fins and Departure Carry On Bag - My Review

As I wrote in my post on day one of the Bahamas trip, I had brought along my newly purchased Hot Shot travel fins by Aqua Lung.  I also bought Aqua Lung's Departure Carry On bag, which was specifically designed to accommodate the Hot Shot fins.

I'm happy to say that I was able to pack all of my diving gear into the departure bag, namely, the aforementioned fins, my travel bcd, my regulator, my mask, my underwater flashlights, and my body skin.  However, it wasn't easy and I had to figure out by trial and error on my first few attempts before I could get everything to fit properly.  One trick was to stick some of the smaller items, like my dive lights, into the foot pockets of the fins.  All in all though, it worked out really well and I liked that I could have all my dive gear with me rather than being entrusted to the mercy of airport security checking my luggage or baggage handlers possibly misplacing it.  On the other hand, if I was travelling to a dive location where the water was warm enough to require a wet suit, I don't I could have gotten the wet suit to fit into the departure bag.

Now on to the Hot Shot fins.  For me, the best apart about them, besides being able to fit them into my carry on luggage, was how easy it was to slip them on and off.  There was no need to fiddle with clips.  All you need to do is to pull back the foot strap and slide your foot into the foot pocket.  As for their performance underwater, being a novice diver and having experience with only one other pair of fins, I couldn't say how they stack up against other fins.  I can say that I didn't have any trouble getting where I wanted to go with them.  I did relate in my Bahamas trip posts how I found myself in a couple of situations facing a strong current and having difficulty making headway, though it's highly likely that I wouldn't have fared any better with regular sized fins.

There is one caveat I do want to raise with respect to the Hot Shot fins.  According to the description of the fins on Leisurepro.com:

This fin is designed to wear without dive boots, so leave the boots at home. Aqua Lung has designed the foot pocket to give unsurpassed comfort with the top and side of the pocket manufactured from a soft, comfortable against the bare skin material.

If you are going on a vacation trip where you will be doing just a handful of dives, you should be fine diving with bare feet in the Hot Shot fins.  This is not the case, at least based on my personal experience, if you are going on a trip on a liveaboard or dive resort where you expect to be diving anywhere from three to five dives a day for an entire week.  By the third or fourth day of the trip, my feet started to become badly scraped in a number of spots.

When I got home from the Bahamas trip, I tried to see if I could fit my feet in the fins wearing the neoprene booties I had, but they were too thick for my feet to fit into the foot pockets.  I ended up buying a pair of dive socks from a local dive shop and I was able to slide my feet into the foot pockets without any trouble.  I am expecting to go on a trip to the Caymans this coming July and I will see how my feet hold up wearing dive socks.

So, in conclusion, if you want to go on a dive trip to a warm, tropical destination and plan on flying there, the Aqua Lung Hot Shot fins and Departure bag are a great choice.  From my experience on the Bahamas trip, I realized that when it comes to diving in warm waters during the summer months, I can make do with just a t-shirt and a pair of shorts.  It's no problem, under those conditions, to fit everything I will need for my dives into the Departure bag.  I just hope the next five months go by quickly so that I can get into the water again.

Interesting Observation of the Day

One Million Moms, the organization that tried to get JC Penny to fire Ellen DeGeneres as the company's spokesperson because she is openly lesbian, has barely more than 40,000 "Likes" on its Facebook page.  On the other hand, the Facebook page of Ellen DeGeneres has well over two million "Likes."  Maybe they should change their name to Forty Thousand Moms.

The Order and Pattern of Creation

So far, Putnam and Campbell's Amazing Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us has been a veritable gold mine for me when it comes to blogging topics.

In my previous post, I wrote about one of the churches visited by the authors, Our Savior Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas.  There is far more material on this church in the book, and after a few pages on the abortion issue, the next topic covered is the role of gender in the church.

One easy way to tell that a particular religion is man made is if it puts the emphasis on the Man part.  Our Savior Lutheran's Pastor White sets the tone.  "When God created mankind, at the core of that creation was gender."

The book goes on the quote one of the male congregants:

Congregant Jim Carver echoes this view: "To say it doesn't really matter that Adam was created first" is to "forget the order and pattern of creation," adding that "as protector and provider man has all the responsibility."   Really?  God created Adam, and then after some time went by, He thought, "You know, now that I think about it, Adam probably could use some pussy."

Get enough women to believe that, and they will become complicit in their own oppression.  Our Savior Lutheran does not allow women to vote in its congregational assemblies.  A woman congregant, Sharon Middleton, is quoted as saying "Pastor White will show you exactly bibilically that women aren't supposed to vote."  She goes on to add "There may be a lot of people that will disagree but that's one good thing about Pastor White...you do according to what the Bible says."

And that is the order and pattern of control, at least when it comes to religion.  Convince a number of people that a text or collection of texts contains divine commandments and then convince these people that your interpretation of those commandments is the only correct one, thereby putting yourself in a position of authority over them.