Cold Rag

Another hike up Old Rag for the sunrise this past weekend. I knew it had snowed earlier this week, but I didn't expect there to be quite as much snow as there was while ascending. Toward the summit there was a good five inches. I had never been up Old Rag after a snowfall and it was just absurdly beautiful. The thick golden light of the early morning sun reflecting and refracting through snow and ice creating flaring gradients from deep purple and honey yellows to pure whites. It was cold, to be sure, but I had never seen the Shenandoah Valley in that state before and it was absolutely worth the few hours of chill.

Hong Kong (i): Sauna City

At this point, my time in Hong Kong was four months ago. In the interim there have been weddings, another month in Timor-Leste, and an amazing few days in Tokyo, but Hong Kong still sticks in my memory as another fantastic Asian metropolis. I often tell people Tokyo is my favorite city, but Hong Kong sits comfortably in my top five. It's an oppressive sauna of a place, even more so than was Da Nang, and I often found myself having difficulty staying hydrated and even breathing, but it's an amazing, dense, delicious, and at times serene place. The verticality of the place makes Manhattan look lilliputian by comparison. The view from Victoria Peak is amazing, if infuriatingly crowded. Quiet oases like the Chi Lin Nunnery are mercifully refreshing respites from the city. I did, however, spend a lot of my time hanging out in Central and got quite well versed at navigating my way through downtown through all the underground passages and covered tunnels to spend as much time in air conditioning as possible. Like a lot of cities that I only visit for a few days, I wish I had more time to explore and eat my way through everything I missed. Here are a handful of photos about Hong Kong. Stay tuned for the food porn.

Vietnam (iii): Mountains, Bombs, Kings

On one my weekends in Da Nang I took a drive out into the countryside to the neighboring mountains and went through a traditional village. Departing Da Nang made for a dramatic transition from a dense urban sprawl to sparse farming villages. The drive wove steadily up a valley inland along a river under an overcast sky and intermittent drizzles. After a couple of hours I stopped by the river to cross a rickety, rain-slicked suspension foot-bridge to reach a historic village home to an indigenous ethnic group called the Co Tu.

I wandered about the village and met curious mutts, was shown blast craters leftover from the Vietnam War and a bell made from an old bomb casing (on which the US Marines serial number is still visible), and was served a traditional Vietnamese meal. It was a pretty sobering thing to see the relics and lasting impact of the war as still a reality for these people. I also met a man that was the former king of the Co Tu. He put on his traditional garb and played a number of instruments to demonstrate traditional Co Tu music. He also showed me the dragon emblazoned coffin he's already hand-carved for himself, his old Soviet-era war medals, and a portrait painted of him with Stalin. He was a badass old dude.

I also made my way to the famous Marble Mountains just aside Da Nang. The Marble Mountains are a series of large rock formations jutting starkly upward from a flat coastal plain, each one named after one of the five elements. They were shelters for resistance fighters during the war; snipers held positions at their peaks and a network of caves provided safe havens. They're now filled with Buddhist carvings, statues, and pagodas. At this point they're mostly a tourist attraction with villages of shops surrounding the base of the mountains and hawkers crawling over every inch of their paths. Nevertheless, making my way to the top of Thuy Son (Water Mountain) was still enjoyable. Somehow there are no signs directing toward the carved stairs to the highest point on Thuy Son. It took a lot of wandering and climbing to dead ends before I got to the peak. At around midday the peak was a bad place to be. The sun burned out all the moisture in my body like a microwave, but I lingered to take some photos and enjoy the solitude as Da Nang shimmered against the mountains 30km in the distance. 

Most of my free time in Da Nang was spent eating and I'm OK with that. The same was also more or less true of Hong Kong. I did get to see some cool stuff though. I'd love to go back and see more of Vietnam.