Beyond the Rhetoric

It’s been quite a vacation for me and boy are my feet tired. I’ve done so much walking over the course of these past two weeks, especially when you compare it to all the sitting on my butt that I normally do over the course of a standard freelance writing workweek.

It started with a tour of Tokyo, soaking in the electronics of Akihabara and the majesty of Mount Fuji. I then moved on to surviving the Great Wall of China, before proceeding to other Beijing landmarks. And then, it was time to head a little further south to the city of Hong Kong.

On one of my evenings in that town, we went to what is called The Peak, the highest point on Hong Kong Island. From this location — which took about 45 minutes on a public bus to get to — you can see the entire city. I quickly realized that Hong Kong really isn’t that large of a city; it’s just terribly dense. Most of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon light up the night sky. These immense amount of light is clearly reflected in some of the pictures that I took.

Obviously, I was not alone at the top. Just about everyone who made it up — the trip is faster if you take the tram, but you get basically no view on the way up (or down) — brought along a camera to take some cityscape pictures. We were told that nighttime is the prettiest, but it also provides for the most difficult picture-taking opportunity. I should have brought my tripod, because you need a lengthier exposure for night shots. I’m still a photography noob, unlike some people, but I know at least that much.

See what happens when you lengthen the exposure? I already opened up the aperture on my Canon PowerShot S3 IS as far as it would go (F2.7). I guess the guy on the right was staying pretty still.

Having visited Tokyo, Beijing, and Hong Kong, I can say with plenty of confidence that the three cities are very different from one another, just as Vancouver is different than New York or Las Vegas. It’d be awesome to expand my freelance writing portfolio into the realm of travel writing. Imagine if companies started paying for my vacations, just so that I could write about my experiences afterwards.

Filed under Travel.