Alan the Hong Kong Superstar

We were dropped off at San Francisco International by Jeffrey and Linda after what could be our last Italian supper in months (Yeah, I know you can get Italian in Kathmandu, but I'm going to try to stick with local food).

Since there's a 40-lb limit on checked luggage and we were ever so slightly over, we stuffed our pant and jacket pockets full of random heavy items.

After an uneventful flight from San Francisco, we had a 10+ hour layover in Hong Kong. This gave us time to ride the Airport Express train into Kowloon. The train dumped us into a manicured sterile complex of highrises and designer malls that we could only escape from by using the airport shuttle to the Marco Polo Hotel.

We went to the historic clock tower (remanant of HK's colonial days), and this led us to the Avenue of Stars with stars and handprints of our all-time favorite kung-fu stars (like Bruce Lee!!!, Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat).

So what if it's just like the Hollywood Walk of Stars... it doesn't have a cool statue of Bruce Lee.

As we were walking down the Avenue, two 8-year-old girls accosted Alan, squealing in Mandarin and waving him towards their mother, who was clutching a camera. Since my knowledge of Mandarin is non-existent, I could not understand what they were saying. But I think that they may have a) confused him for someone famous (i.e. Mr. Bean who has always been well-loved by the Chinese) or b) never seen a white guy.

I wish I could've gotten the snap of a bemused Alan standing between two beaming little Chinese girls with their mother taking a photo.

After his 15 (er, 2) minutes of fame, we ate congee and vegetarian tomato/egg over rice (yes, Mom, you can get veg food in HK). We took the Star Ferry to Hong Kong Island and climbed up the Escher-like escalators and stairs close to the tram for Victoria Peak.

Soon it was time to boogie back to the airport to board our flight to KTM. At the HK airport, we checked our email and found out that there was a transportation strike in Nepal, which is a somewhat common occurrence. The airline didn't seem to have much information, so we just decided to wait and see what would happen when we arrived.

The KTM airport was a low-tech affair with the security agents haphazardly X-raying bags, while arbitrarily letting others pass through without being X-rayed. After realizing our hotel pickup wasn't going to materialize, we took an exciting taxi ride (think lots of honking, near misses with bicyclists, driving towards oncoming traffic... not unlike riding in a Parisian taxi) to our hotel at midnight.

Sleep was lovely.

(Moving) Truck Drivin' Man

Despite Craigslisting/Freecycling/Goodwilling/landfilling about a third of our possessions (including a car, TV, VCR (yes, we're Luddites), couch, washer/dryer, and precious Star Wars/Star Trek toys (Wicket was getting exhausted from all of the moving)), we still managed to fill a 16' moving truck (!!!).

Even though it would be somewhat entertaining to have me drive the truck, we felt that it would give Alan a minor heart attack, so he begged to drive it instead. Many people know that it's been his lifelong ambition to be a truck driver.

I got to drive up in Alan's lil' race car instead and did a wonderful job not crashing it.

I still can't believe we had so much... stuff! I cursed each time I hauled yet another box up and down stairs. I like to think that I can still pull off a DIY move and that we really don't have a whole lot, but perhaps we've still managed to acquire way too much junk to do this? While piling our belongings into self storage, we realized that the bulk of our belongings fell into one of the following categories:

• Outdoors gear (Can't really get rid of this)
• Computers (Many of these can be easily turned into virtual machines, so no more carrying physical machines that aren't laptops!) and their associated accessories
• Books (Many of these can be referenced electronically/online, so no more carrying dead trees! Love Safari Books Online and Trails.com!)

Perhaps our next move can be a less stressful one once we've gotten rid of the myriad computers and books. Inflatable furniture also sounds appealing.

We've been hanging out with my parents in Sacramento and have a medium-length to-do list before we leave the country for a while. We will be celebrating the Chinese/Lunar New Year at The Pasty Shack. Alan has been waiting for this for a while. 

Happy New Year!