Too Powerful for Asia

From Seoul, we travelled to Hong Kong (more details below) and Bangkok to do some propper shopping. We've experienced the same thing in pretty much every place - very little fits us. They don't make shoes in our sizes and we don't have the same body-types as most Asians. We've chosen not to refer to ourselves as fat either. Instead of specific reasons as to why each article or piece doesn't fit well, we've resigned ourselves to the fact that we're too powerful. We're too powerful for Asia.

Anyway, after our spectacular time in Korea, we got to Hong Kong and had a great time. We did most of the touristy things but one of the highlights was the Wednesday night horse races. Perin and I had big plans to win enough money to upgrade ourselves to business class for the rest of the trip, but it wasn't meant to be. The horse Amazing Fortune did not win us any money. Neither did any of the other horses we bet on, but Amazing Fortune really got my hopes up.

We knew that Chinese food in America is way different to Chinese food in China. That proved to be true. We also expected Japanese food to be way different in Japan. That was not the case; Japanese food is nearly identical in both places, which suprised us.

And speaking food, it's not Korean BBQ like we think of in the States, but one of my favorite meals so far was the place Teri and Saint took us to where we cooked our own food at our table. Every single meal we had was really good in Korea, but that's because we had local guides. We were rather hit and miss in Hong Kong on our Chinese food selections. However, Thailand has come through on pretty much every meal too, and it's all quite spicy.

Hong Kong was an amazing experience and a really cool city. It's an interesting mix of high-wealth status, luxury, and power brokers, super high skyscrapers built onto incrediably steep hillside, and every Chinatown I've ever been to. Millions of densely packed people, dirty buildings with laundry hanging out the windows and the smells of rotting vegatables and dead sea life wafting through the air at times, interspersed with insence and the smells of delicious noodles and grilled meats wafting through the air at other times.

Perin and I are getting better and better every day at negotiating so we're getting ripped off by fewer and fewer orders of magnitude every time. The people of Bangkok have been super friendly and that's helped us out quite a bit. The best was when we got the Emerald Buddha, we discovered that it had closed 10 minutes before we got there at 1:40pm due to it being an Imperial Buddha Day in Thailand. Some tuk tuk driver wanted to extort us, but we walked down the block, got our map out and decided what else we wanted to do.

Some stranger walked up to us, expained about the Buddha Day, then got his pen out, circled everything we should see that afternoon on our map, in what order, flagged down another tuk tuk, told him to wait for us while we saw each thing, negotiated a price for us and it was cheaper than everything we've done since. It ended up with us taking a water taxi through the canals of the city to skip having to wait in traffic. That guy was SO helpful and it was a great experience! We wish we could have tipped him.

It's pretty hot and sweaty here so it's hard to try on clothing, but we're getting winter coats made for Russia so it'll be worth it when we get there and it's zero degrees outside. I've promised to get Perin some winter boots in Russia too so she'll be stylish and warm at the same time!

We're off to see Siem Reap tomorrow and will be back in Bangkok on the first of March. Maybe you'll get some pictures then. Maybe you'll continue to wait.