Each evening at the stroke of 8 p.m., Hong Kong‘s Victoria Harbour is illuminated with a cacophony of dancing lights and laser beams, accompanied by a blaring soundtrack of synthesized music. It’s the Hong Kong Tourism Commission’s Symphony of Lights, a wonderfully tacky celebration of the city’s energy, spirit, diversity – and luminescence. The nightly spectacle includes more than 40 buildings on both sides of the harbour, earning it the Guinness Book of World Records title for “World’s Largest Permanent Sound and Light Show.”
Best part? The show is absolutely free.
The most popular spot to view the Symphony of Lights is on the elevated Tsim Sha Tsui promenade, in front of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. Get there early, or you’ll be left jostling with tourists eager for the perfect camera phone shot. A different vantage point can be had from Golden Bauhinia Square on Hong Kong Island, from which you can catch the action happening on the Kowloon side of the harbour.
More photos and video after the jump.
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[Photo and Video Credit: Jessica Marati]
“Budget Hong Kong” chronicles one writer’s efforts to authentically experience one of the world’s most expensive cities, while traveling on a shoestring. Read the whole series here.
Imagine knowing where your bag is even when the airline doesn’t. That’s the idea behind TrakDot, a new tech gadget that combines a $50 device, a $12 subscription and a cellular data plan. Switch the gadget on, pack it in your luggage, and if your checked bag doesn’t appear, you can find it more quickly than the airlines can using GloboTrac’s website.
If a bag doesn’t reach its intended destination, “the airlines don’t know where it is,” GlobaTrac CTO Joseph Morgan told Ars at the CES Unveiled event Sunday night. “If it ain’t where it’s supposed to be, they’ve lost it, they don’t know where it is. They will eventually find it, but that doesn’t give you peace of mind.”
A simple question remains unanswered: how do you recover your bag once you know where it is? You’ve still got to navigate the airlines recovery process, but perhaps you’ll sleep better (in your borrowed T-shirt) when you’re able to see exactly where your precious stuff is.
TrakDot goes to market in March. This traveler is sticking with traveling light enough to go carry on only.
It’s nine degrees below zero Fahrenheit and I’m the only soul out for a walk in downtown Durango on a Friday night. Everyone else in this idyllic town of about 16,000 in the southwest corner of Colorado is sensibly rushing into and out of businesses and some leave their cars running outside while they pop into shops or restaurants. It’s my first night in a town that I’ve imagined as a kind of adventure playground utopia and I have no intention of sitting in my warm hotel room watching TV.
Durango is a town that shows up on all kinds of best places lists. Outside magazine appears to crown Durango as the best something or other almost every year – in 2012 it was named one of their best new adventure hubs and one of America’s best river towns, and on at least two prior occasions, it was on their list of best towns. In recent years, my wife and I have been fantasizing about moving to a smaller, more laid back community and I’ve long been convinced that Durango would be a great place to live despite never having stepped foot in the place.
If you like to ski, snowboard, mountain bike and hike, you’re spoiled on choices within a short drive of Durango and a little further afield you have five national parks in Southern Utah plus the otherworldly Monument Valley and the Grand Staircase. There are a lot of places that people relocate to for jobs, but Durango is just the opposite – it’s mostly a refuge for outdoorsy people who are fleeing the big city rat race.
Before I landed in town, I met three people who loved the place so much that they found a way to live there, two in the airport and one on my flight in. Durango native Gregory Martin overheard me talking on the phone in the Denver airport about trying to find a medicine man on the Navajo Reservation and asked if I was “into sweat lodges” and things of that nature.
We got to talking and Martin told me he was a wilderness therapist at a place called Open Sky Wilderness, which helps heal troubled youths by bringing them out to live in a rustic, natural setting in the wilderness for two to three months. After talking to Gregory, I met a young man from Virginia who is studying music at Fort Lewis College in Durango. He visited the place and fell in love with it and his parents were sold when they found out that he could get free tuition because he’s ¼ Comanche Indian (the college provides free tuition to Native Americans).
“How did you prove you were Native American?” I asked, curious to know how a kid who looked very white could make the cut as a Native American.
“When I was born my dad got a card for me on the reservation, it’s kind of like a social security card – it proves I have Native American roots,” he explained.
And on the flight into Durango, a pilot who convinced NetJets, his employer, to allow him to base there about six years ago, sold me on the place.
“It would be a great place to grow up,” he said, and all I had to do was look over his shoulder at the dramatic, snow-capped mountains out the window to see what he meant.
Even after all the hype, I liked Durango immediately. The Animas River flows right behind Main Street, which is anchored at one end by a vintage train station where you can take the Durango-Silverton narrow gauge train, which has been in continuous operation for more than 130 years. I was bundled up and ready for the biting cold and the frigid night air felt oddly invigorating. Heat saps my energy and turns me into a sloth, but the cold puts a spring in my step, especially when there’s no wind.
On this bitter evening, the stars were out in force, the town was eerily quiet and the squeaky sounds of my shoes making impressions in the snow seemed oddly melodic.
I walked almost every block of Durango’s walkable, Wild West meets hip ski town center and felt like the place had pretty much everything I needed: two good bookstores, two brewpubs right downtown and two more nearby (four breweries in a city of 16,000!?), a nice collection of independent restaurants and shops, and a pleasant lost-in-time vibe.
I passed two old hotels, the Strater and the General Palmer, places advertising “Old West Photos” and Cowgirl apparel, a Tibetan Shop, a music store advertising “compact discs and tapes,” a Nepali, Indian and Tibetan restaurant and a shop selling a T-shirt, which read: OMG WTF is happening to the English language?
I had a glass of Colorado Kolsch at Steamworks Brewing and noticed that guys with ponytails shared baskets of peanuts with guys in cowboy hats and middle-aged ski bunnies in fluffy boots. When I asked a couple what the worst thing about Durango was they laughed.
“That’s a tough one,” the guy said. “We love it here.”
At six points into the game I’m absolutely crushing the ball with my racket. It’s taking the entire mass of my body to return each shot, but somehow they keep coming back. Finally, three points later, the right ball falls at my backhand and an errant slice lumbers awkwardly across the net.
“Good!” my opponent says, soothingly, meaning “finally!” and then he rockets the ball over my shoulder.
I’ve heard that voice before though, that same voice, used in that same playful tone. It’s the puzzle master, Will Shortz from NPR, that same voice that shepherds lost radio listeners through the weekly puzzle challenge, the same mind behind the New York Times Crossword. An eight-letter word starting with “T” and describing your skill at table tennis. Good!
Only this time, Mr. Shortz isn’t working on puzzles, he’s casually returning the missiles that I’m firing, one after another, across the table, four feet behind the line, tap-TAP, tap-TAP, tap-TAP, tap-TAP. If the sandwiches that I brought for lunch were nearby, I think he’d be snacking on them to pass the time.
That same voice happens to own a table tennis club in Pleasentville, New York, the Westchester Table Tennis Center, where rows of tables symmetrically divide players along columns of furious play. When David and I reach the center late that morning, two young men are lounging behind the front desk, rackets in hand, watching YouTube videos of famous players and games. We take the hour to warm up.
Will shows up at 1 p.m. precisely for our game, trailed by his friend and business partner Robert Roberts. The two have been collaborating in this space for just over a year, and were subject to a recent documentary about their journey here and abroad. For them, table tennis isn’t a localized sport. It’s about visiting community clubs, finding comfort in a foreign place and having a game in any corner of the world. So far, Mr. Shortz has been to 154 clubs around the country in 39 states as well as 46 clubs in 19 other countries. He was only one game short of playing for 365 days straight last year, and this year he hopes to beat that. An anagram for “acted died” starting and ending with the letter “d”. Good!
Which, when you think about it, is a pretty impressive task. As he recounts to me over lunch, the business of puzzles – both for the New York Times and National Public Radio — and table tennis is a time consuming affair. For a trip to China for a puzzle championship, Shortz and Roberts had to get up early to play at their club in Westchester, scramble to the airport and then fly across the world for a quick game just after landing – just to get in two games in two days.
This is what happens when passion intersects a busy schedule. Packaged in the right way, it’s always possible to take happiness on the road. I ask Will about this as we sit watching David and Robert sparring over a few points. He is happy here at the Westchester Table Tennis Club, surrounded by developing talent, built on an empire of crosswords and Sudoku. Abroad, in Greece, in Alaska, that joy is just one more club away, one more trip to an underground club in Dakar or to the massive training halls in Shenzhen. A four-letter word for a place of origin. Good!
The nearest beach to Merida, Mexico, is Progreso. The ancient Maya frequented Progreso to collect sea salt from lagoons near the coast. Salt was a valuable product for trade for the ancient Maya – so valuable that many Maya made the trek frequently, despite its semi-arid obstacles. And so, after walking around on the beach via Google Street View for a while, I decided to make the 30-minute or so drive to Progreso while staying in Merida. With bottled water in tow, I hit the straight-shot road that connects the two cities and arrived to the port city of Progreso just in time for lunch.
When I noticed the shirtless, drunk man pacing back and forth on the sidewalk behind my car, which I’d parked where the pavement meets the boardwalk, I hesitated and made sure I’d locked everything up. Reminding myself to hope for the best, I tucked my anxiety away and began my leisurely walk down the boardwalk. The sky was mostly empty of clouds revealing a crisp blue canvas. The ocean water’s color changed like Ombre hair – a deep, midnight blue yielded a bright sea-green at the sand. Progreso‘s famous pier, the Terminal Remota, protruded out toward the horizon, spanning a full four miles. Although it was a Saturday afternoon, the beach town was sleepy, which worked out well because I was sleepy, too.
%Gallery-175115%I weaved my way through stores selling Mexican tchotchkies. A charismatic young man offered me “unbeatable” deals on each item I touched in his store. He spoke to me in English with an unidentifiable accent. He was a student of the world and a speaker of many languages. It wasn’t easy to walk away from his melodic tongue, particularly where the French and Spanish accents merged into an indecipherable, charming blur, but I was hungry. I left only with his suggestion of where to find a vegetarian lunch.
As I strolled leisurely down the boardwalk with the Gulf to my left side, restaurant owners emerged out of their shaded corners, reciting their most popular dishes for me as I passed. But I had my sights set on what had been recommended to me and when I finally found it, a restaurant called Flamingo’s, I initially doubted my devotion to the local’s direction.
In line with the sleepy atmosphere of Progreso that day, I sat at the table awaiting service for 10 or 15 minutes. But when service arrived, it came boldly and warmly. An order of just-squeezed orange juice yielded an overflowing pitcher. Guacamole, refried beans, salsa, vegetable soup, lentil soup, fajitas, tortilla chips and fried bananas proved to be more food than my husband I could consume, but not for lack of fresh flavor.
My car was still parked and in tact when I returned for it, as was the shirtless drunk man, who was sitting curbside and rambling. I decided to make the 10 minute drive over to Chicxulub after lunch. Chicxulub is located at almost the exact geographical center of the Chicxulub crater. The crater, although unobservable, is an impact crater that extends into the Gulf. Created by the impact of a comet or asteroid around 65 million years ago, the Chicxulub crater is believed by many to be evidence of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event – the event that destroyed the dinosaurs.
I wanted to see this place for myself, although there was nothing to see (the remnants of the impact crater are buried far below today’s topsoil.) I walked out to the beach, which was littered with boats and debris from the sea. The sand smelled like cat urine. I stood there for a moment, thinking about the scientific importance of the ground on which I was standing, and ignoring the putrid scent.
Stray cats scurried away from my car as I approached it and I considered for a moment the delight these cats must take in the fish to be found in a port city like Chicxulub. I thought about the impressive degree to which mammals have evolved since this crater was formed. I dodged stray dogs on the way back to Merida and found myself back in my hotel room and preparing for a night out on the town before the sun began to set.
Read more from my series on the Yucatan and the Maya here.