Hong Kong

In Hong Kong for the weekend. Staying at the Island Shangri-La on Hong Kong island. Top floor, "club" room. Awesome hotel, 60 stories. Room is identical to a Kruengtep wing Shangri-La room in Bangkok, minus the balcony. Same intoxicating smell wafting through the lobby floors. I'm hording the L'Occitane soaps, of course.
Went to the Hong Kong philharmonic orchestra on night one. Good. Did Barber's Adagio for Strings first (the Platoon theme if that helps). Second was an original piece by a Hong Kong composer for the bamboo flute. The chick on the flute would give Ron Burgundy a run for his money. Third was Copeland's Third symphony, of which I'm not a big fan. Orchestra was young and talented. Definitely no London Phil or Tokyo Phil, but a great show all the same. Concert hall was on Kowloon side.
The shopping mall integration is pretty advanced here in HK. They are a far cry from Singapore, as all of the malls don't interconnect, and there are still sidewalks here as opposed to the only way to get through the city of Singapore is through the malls. But there are a shitload of malls all the same. Big emphasis on luxury items. Ultra-luxury watches are an obsession here, almost every billboard is for a super lux watch brand; Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet... watches that go for hundreds of thousands of dollars and make my watch look like a goddamn Swatch. Exchange rate with USD is terrible, makes everything more expensive than it should be. To the point where when shopping if you ask for the price in USD they will invariably give a 20% US discount on whatever you are shopping for, and that 20% will get your just down to a bit above full retail. Bogus. Except video games, which are about 1/2 price here. Brand new just released PS3 games for $30 US. Awesome.
There is a movie theater in the mall below my hotel that plays movies all night. I have reduced my sleep to 2.5 to 3 hours a night since I've been here and so far seen Red (actually quite good. Willis embraces his old age), The Switch (just awful and super slow paced. Everyone attached to this that usually makes good movies should hide their head in shame), Charlie St. Cloud (horrible. horrible. horrible.), Saw 3D (wow, so bad), Life as We Know It (terrible, too long, I really hate Katherine Heigl), Due Date (really not funny at all, however implausible that seems), and Grown Ups (unbelievably, Adam Sandler films just keep getting worse). So, lots of bad movies and one good one, but god damn its nice to go to the movies in a clean movie theater with a quiet audience.
Went to the two Michelin star classic French fine dining restaurant Petrus last night. Amazing experience, gorgeous restaurant on the top floor overlooking all of Hong Kong. Harp player, classic French motif. My dinner companion was a bottle of 1978 Chateau Petrus. Man it was delicious.
Every other meal I've had Sushi. Great sushi here, all the hard to find stuff I like; aji, uni, toro, ama ebi, you name it. Of course the gotcha is its way too expensive. Like $25 per piece of Sushi (not served in pairs like normal - one piece). Ouch.
Tomorrow heading over to Macao. My fool-proof roulette system will surely break the bank at each and every casino. I don't want to give away all of the details of my system, but, I'll let you know that it was originally developed by a Mr. Wesley Snipes in 1992's "Passenger 57".

I'll post some pics when I upload them.

Zimbabwe - Elephant Safari

Having once seen a "When Animals Attack" on Fox back in the day of an elephant rampaging through a zoo killing everyone in sight, as well as this video:



I was a little leary of an elephant backed safari. Luckily Jake the elephant decided not to kill us in cold blood and instead just walked around and ate trees. We got off lucky.

The vicious stare of Jake the elephant:


The murderous pachyderms lining up for their next round of hapless victims:


An elephant with the "ooga booga" strapped to his back. Roughly translated: "death saddle":


Jake lashing out for an unsuspected attack:


Clearly a recipe for disaster:


Jake stuffing what I assume to be a severed human hand into his mouth of razor sharp teeth:

Zimbabwe - Victoria Falls Hotel

Zimbabwe is pretty much a shithole. Sorry Zimbabwe. You can tell immediately how much more depressed the economy of Zimbabwe is than the neighboring countries Zambia and Botswana. They abandoned their country's currency recently due to hyperinflation and now just use the American dollar, which they are clearly trying to apply their habits of inflation to. Unfortunately, assuming that the country doesn't just start producing counterfeit US dollars (which I wouldn't put past them, honestly), they'll quickly run out of currency to exchange. A total mess.
The hotel we stayed was clearly the nicest hotel in Zimbabwe, and from appearance is quite attractive. The management was horrible, though, and the rooms were as well. There was a solid day's worth of fun things to do in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately we were there for three days.