It's the Chinese New Year and here I am in Hong Kong. I arrived here last night after a fairly pleasant 15 hour flight from New York. The plane was pretty empty which surprised the hell out of me, because I figured it would be full because of the Chinese New Year. I had a whole row to myself - in fact I think everybody in my section had a row to themselves. It was so nice to able to stretch out and sleep even if it was only for about 6 hours.

No screaming babies on this flight, although a woman in front of me had a little baby who kept sticking his head over the seat playing peek - a - boo with me. He was having a great old time just laughing and smiling and bouncing around. What a happy little guy he was!

It's a pretty dreary day out there today. It's cold and damp - about 50 degrees, but it's not raining. Tomorrow, the sun is supposed to come out and be pretty nice. Tonight there is a big parade that is supposed to be a good one - should get some good shots there. Tomorrow are the fireworks over the harbor, which is what I'm here for. I saw fireworks in Guangzhuo in 2002 during the Chinese New Year that were pretty amazing (Click Here). Ever since then I've wanted to see them in Hong Kong. So - here I am......

On this trip I had planned to take a train across China to Tibet, then from there go to Nepal and India, and then to Thailand. But beacuse of all the bad weather they've been having in China in the last few weeks (the worst in 50 years), I wont be taking any trains across China on this trip. Last week there were a half a million people stranded in Guangzhuo, which is where my train would be leaving from. On Saturday a woman was trampled to death at the train station. Not a good place to be right now. So, I'll do the trip in reverse, going to Thailand first and then on to India and Nepal. I'll have to do Tibet another time.

And so - another adventure begins.


Stay tuned.......