Traveling as we do is not for the faint of heart. In our most recent case, it's often a grueling fourteen hours sitting on your **** in a less than sufficiently padded economy seat located midway in a metal cylinder traveling at 39,600 feet above sea level seat for fourteen hours.

Given that we've traveled to Hong Kong on this trip, it's now close to two days later than when we left. Standing in the queue for boarding at YVR, I'm very convinced that I could have been quite a successful basketball player for some Asian team. I was literally eight to ten inches taller than anyone else in the lineup. I now know how Kobe feels, but I digress.

I'm not talking about a short trip, like a trip to Salmon Arm or Kelowna, but it's a huge undertaking by holidaying in a place sixteen time zones away. It sounds like I'm complaining but I'm not. Our ability to undertake these adventures is one of the best things in my life. Everything went well aboard our Cathay Pacific flight. Our wheels pulled up about 2:20 p.m. (30 minutes late) on Monday afternoon for our scheduled 13 1/2 hour direct flight to an island about 30 minutes west of Kowloon's downtown on Chek Lap Kok island.

Years ago back in the 80's I used to travel quite regularly to Asia, but this trip was somewhat of a record for me. I had lunch, dinner, two snacks and was able to get in 4 1/2 full length movies. If you want to take in some movies, book a flight to Asia. I saw The Intern, The Room, The Big Short, Creed and about half of The Mocking Jay - Part II before I ended up shutting them down in favor of some Jazz on the headset.

Thankfully both Deb and I were here in October on our way back from Australia. It could have been very stressful arriving into a city like Hong Kong "in the dark" literally at 9:00 p.m. at night. But we knew everything. Where to buy our tickets for the high-speed train ride to Kowloon, exactly what stop to get off at, where we had to go for the free shuttle (K4 bus) at the massive rail terminal for our hotel and finally, exactly where our hotel was on the hectic streets just because it was close to the Butterfly Hotel, the place we stayed last time we were in Kowloon.

We're here for three nights before we grab our next flight to Phuket (pronounced "Pooket"). As I lay here and put today's entry together it's 5:42 a.m. Wednesday morning. The plan as we see it now is to make our way over to the Ocean Terminal and catch the hovercraft to Macau for the day, play a little in one of the many world famous casinos and then head back just before sunset for drinks and appies at the tallest rooftop bar (Ozone) in the world at the Ritz Carlton.