What I did on my summer vacation...

Yeah, I meant to post while I was on holidays but just never got up enough energy to do so! Here are some highlights of our trip. Loudest snorer in the world? I think so! From Dubai to Hong Kong a guy in the seats in front of us was going to suck the entire airplane interior into his mouth with his snoring. Apparently airlines have worked out this can be a problem with some travelers and fortunately for him everything was securely fastened (just like our seatbelts, of course ;-)). To make matters even more weird and loud, the guy next to him, in an apparent attempt to wake him up and stop the snoring, shouted every few minutes. Nice... Glad we had another 14 hours after that flight to catch up on our sleep. I got to see 2 of my lovely sisters on my side trip to Vegas. We narrowly avoided being shot while we were sitting home one evening. The guy across the street invites some not too savoury characters over and their rival gang came for a visit. (Ok, it wasn't that narrow of a miss. No bullets came our way but the house across the street got some holes in it.) We also checked out the new Wynn Casino (world's most expensive casino-resort, or at least until Dubai starts to allow gambling ;-)) and two of us went to see the show there called La Reve (a Cirque du Soleil type show). Managed to make it to he Liberace Museum too. (With many glittery feathered outfits (well, glittery everything) on display. SO Vegas, don't you think?) A couple of my own shots here. Had a mostly typical Alaska experience while there:

• Weather was mixed but mostly about half the temperature of Dubai (and I'm not exaggerating). Plus we got rain.
• Optimistically bought 3 day fishing licenses (to go halibut and perhaps salmon fishing) and then proceeded to have weather problems the first day when the boat was working beautifully. So day 2 good fishing weather (though it was very rainy) but boat was very badly behaved so we didn't go anywhere. Day 3 didn't even bother to put boat in the water so of course the weather was unbelievably good and it was even sunny. We did fish a little bit. As usual, Jim was the only one to catch anything: a rock fish on day 1 and a skate on day 2 (actually the skate was caught by him and our niece who managed to lasso the tail of it with her fishing line!). Both of those were thrown back.
• Saw the usual roundup of wildlife: moose, bald eagles, sea otters (I keep forgetting how bit these things are), a whale (OK, we didn't actually see it we just saw its spray as it was no doubt trying to get some salmon for breakfast), monster mosquitoes (which seriously loved Jim one evening when we went out for a walk; Jim kept them occupied so the rest of us were unbitten!) Didn't see a puffin, which I love. :-(
• Had forest fires blazing not far from Homer and thus got to smoke filled valleys and views for a few days.
• There was an earthquake. Granted it wasn't where we are, but it's just so normal in Alaska to have them.
• Went to a Russian shop in a nearby Russian village. (The woman running this cafe/shop was a very odd woman. She was dressed in traditional Russian costume and if you wanted a picture of her, you had to pay her! We were also privileged to witness her obviously well rehearsed sales pitch which covered most of the stuff in the tiny packed shop. (I got the feeling if you didn't pay attention to her sales pitch you'd be scolded!)
• Played lots of games. This trip it was all about poker.
• Saw the Alaska Railroad train travelling outside of Anchorage. (I enjoy that because they used to be one of my audit clients.)
• Non-typically, I got henna-ed again. My niece had a henna kit, which was much fun!
• Alaska pics here!

On the way back to Dubai, our LA to Hong Kong flight had a detour to Osaka due to a very ill passenger. Of course we weren't allowed off the plane. Then we had many hours to kill in Hong Kong between flights. So we went out and did a bit of exploring thanks to a friend who used to live there and gave us some sightseeing tips.

We took the train to a ferry which scooted us across the water (in about 7 minutes) to central Hong Kong. Got a great view of the city. Then we walked to catch the Victoria Peak tram. This tram ride is amazing because of the angle of ascent up the mountain. And, of course, at The Peak you get an incredible view. After wandering around The Peak for awhile we managed to go get some real Chinese food (Beijing style, at the oddly named American Restaurant). It was delicious!

Here are our HK pictures plus this panorama from The Peak.

Upon arriving back into Dubai it was 38C (100F) degrees at 9pm. That's warmer than it was during the day in Hong Kong and hugely hotter than Alaska!

Happy to arrive back to find cats and dog are all well. :-)