club scene

club scene, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

after meeting Crystal and her boyfriend, they insisted on buying bottles of johnny walker black for all of us. everyone likes to dance in the club, but it is mostly swaying back and forth. timon and i apparently put a little too much umph in our step, as we were pulled into a back room by a manager and told in rapid fire chinese to watch our bags and passports and to not trust the people we were with. i responded with appropriately ingratiating apologies and thanks for looking out for the naive and ignorant lao-wais. the management was pleased, and we were released back to the dance floor.

china go-go style

china go-go style, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

this was an expensive bar - 5 US dollars for a beer. people like to be entertained with stage shows in chinese bars. this one included a girl dancing in her sheer underwear with a fully clothed boy, imitating various sexual acts. what would seem sleezy in new york is high class here.

hotel lights

hotel lights, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

neon in china: just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.

motorcycles

motorcycles, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

if not a bicycle lot, then little 250cc motorbikes.

typical street off the market

typical street of the market, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

watermelons

watermelons, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

agriculturally related jobs are often the poorest. luxury goods provide a much better income than the goods that everyone has to buy, daily. why?

street markets

street markets, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

this is a small local market strip, selling primarily to the people living in a 100 square foot radius. one of the amazing things about these densely populated parts of china is how much of the economy is based solely on feeding others. one of those economic phenomenons: people make money selling food in order to buy food to eat.

endangered tiger foot for sale

endangered tiger foot for sale, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

this is the illegal part of the market. the sellers seemed to be from rural areas, and relatively poorer than the other stalls. the tiger leg was $150 for a foreigner pre-bargaining. i could probably have gotten it for under $100 (speculatively of course, i would never!). on our little walk there were 5 or 6 sellers with these goods, including rhinocerous horns, complete monkey skeletons, tiger teeth, and other exotic animal parts. a little mindblowing to see these highly endangered species for sale, and so cheap.

kittens

kittens, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

then again, some pets were not in such good shape. much of the market is a sad scene.

puppies for sale

puppies for sale, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

the puppies stayed in these little baskets. not running around or jumping on people. most of them were in good shape and awesome breeds. it seeemed a bit out of place.

aquarium plants

aquarium plants, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

there must be a higher standard of living in this city since there were so many stalls selling aquarium supplies. aquariums aren't cheap to maintain and apparently a stable market exists. these plants were beautiful, and made me wish we had access to such amazing plants for our aquarium at home. i'm not sure if they farm them, or just remove them from nearby wetlands, streams and rivers.

turtles

turtles, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

once in Guangzhou we found a nice hotel on Shamian Island (the first place the British and other traders were allowed to set up business in China. it still retains some of the old character and remains a holdout for westerners). we then took a walk across the river to the market where literally everything was for sale. besides spices, plants, food, electronics, kitchen supplies, etc., there was also stall after stall of animals. many species of turtles, fish, scorpions, and more.

fields

fields, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

naturally, every inch not under construction is being farmed, right up to the tracks.

construction

construction, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

development in China is occurring rapidly, with new buildings popping up all over. construction appears to be going on everywhere, with many buildings abandoned halfway through when projected needs change. notice the scaffolding made out of bamboo. even scryscrapers in the cities have bamboo scaffolding.

agriculture

agriculture, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

taking the train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou.

cheap fun

cheap fun, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

by the last night, we figured out that the cheapest way to enjoy HK at night was just to sit on the pier with a beer. i haven't had a decent beer since we left the states, as tsing tao is probably the best tasting and still pretty watery. but on the hot nights, since the humidity is super high, a semi cold beer (if you are lucky) and a killer skyline do the trick. nice pose keely.

night in hk

night in hk, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

this one is a bit blurry, but the night view of Hong Kong looking across from shore of Kowloon is so fun to watch. around 8pm all the big buildings did a simultaneous light show that was totally insane. the tall one in the middle actually has a little brother building below to the right (hard to see) that it did a synchronized laser show with. it looked like a city on speed with flashing lazers going off all over. this image only shows about a quarter of the skyline viewable from where we were standing. the energy in this city is different than any other and frankly super fun.

crazy lighting

crazy lighting, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

the HSBC bank building is one of the strangest buildings i've seen yet with these elevators all lit up on the outside of the building and staircases on either side on the corners in red and white. hsbc colors i guess.

who designed this?

who designed this?, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

the architecture in HK is pretty incredible. on the far left of this image is the Bank of China building and peaking out from the right is the HSBC bank. not sure what's in the middle, except these tall buildings blanket the lower part of the island and are incredible to walk under. it's a more flamboyant new york that's for sure.

going out

going out, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

naturally the evenings fell to sampling HK's night life. by the second night we finally found a place more to our tastes, but this shot is from the first night where we found ourselves in the center of the action with frat boys, tourists, and partying locals jamming the streets. unfortunately we didn't take a digital image of this awesome bar we eventually found with a sort of victorian feel and great people. in fact, most of the digital images we post are from the moments we actually remember to take a digital image since keely and i both often shoot on that old relic called film.

up close

up close, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

up close the caterpillars are just awesome creatures. pretty large though i didn't give any good indication of relative size here.

hangin' out

hangin' out, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

these caterpillars were hanging out all over. i don't know enough about them to be able to tell which ones would turn into the blue or orange butterflies, but we kept running into them while hiking/walking the paved pathways around Victoria Peak on HK island.

one of many

one of many, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

this close up shows just how incredible the moths and butterflies were. most of them are impossible to photograph because they never really land. but every step while hiking around the peak was full of flashy, fancy insects.

stilt roots

stilt roots, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

it's definitely tropical here with stilt root trees, giant leaved plants, countless amazing butterflies, moths, insects. we saw the largest bee we've ever seen anywhere in the world, fully 2 inches long.

happy hiker

happy hiker, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

we took a day trip up to Victoria's peak to get away from the city and incessant call to shop, which we somehow managed to avoid pretty well. though, my backpack didn't arrive until a day later so i had to find a pair of shorts and this shirt at some shop called G2000. otherwise, we've enjoyed looking at shops and markets without needing to purchase anything. our trip is mandatory lightweight enroute to lhasa.

from a bus

from a bus, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

we rode a bus on the second day to a tram to take us up to the peak of the island for some hiking. this is taken from a moving bus and is just a terrible photo to show how buildings are built into the hillside.

from the top

from the top, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

arriving in Hong Kong was a great way to enter Asia. It's like New York only Asian. no real culture shock here. Of course, since Keely speaks Chinese so many cultural difficulties were easily overcome.

if you didn't already know, Hong Kong is an island built into a little mountian rising out of the sea. the skyscrapers are all on the flat parts near the bottom, so that when you get on top, you are looking out over them. pretty strange. also, it is coverd by clouds fairly regular, thus the haze in this image.

winter

fire 1, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

one way we like to spend our evenings (where is the wine in this photo?).

deleware water gap

gap 1, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

i spent nearly an hour trying to copy andy goldsworthy's awesome pine cone shaped rock sculptures, but it somehow, after laborious effort, came out looking like a pile of rocks. keely managed to have fun making fun of me, naturally, and playing on a large iced over pond for the first time in her life. can you imagine never standing on a lake of ice before? where did she grow up exactly?

holiday inn

holiday inn 1, originally uploaded by timon and keely.

this photo is a little out of date. i took it after keely finished arguing with the older chinese lady in charge of customers in chinese where we took the fung wah bus, or was it lucky star, from chinatown to boston, who was trying to swindle another passenger out of 10 more dollars for her extra suitcase on top of the $10 we paid for the entire bus ride, then, after 2 hours of new york traffic, we stopped at an arby's (i didn't know they even had arby's out here) and across the way we noticed this sign. how nice of them to offer.