Started with breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong.  The Ritz-Carlton cruise line arranged for a vehicle to take us to Hong Kong International Airport on the island of Chek Lap Kok.  Remember their old Kai Tak Airport?  I do. Memorable, because planes went right over building rooftops, coming as close as 100 feet. Air traffic would fly low over Kowloon City, making 47-degree right turn at under 1000 feet to line up with the runway. Passengers could see people showering. Watch this video of the world's scariest airport? Finally closed in 1998. In stark contrast is the new ( opened in 1998 ) Hong Kong International Airport. Confusing, but Kai Tak was also called Hong Kong International Airport. More accurately, this current one should be called Chek Lap Kok International Airport, but this is not used much, and the airport code is HKG, the same one used by Kai Tak. The story of the new Hong Kong International Airport is remarkable . Skytrax rates it at  #6 airport in ...

Day 2 in Hong Kong started with an excellent buffet breakfast. For lunch in the Club Lounge, the feature was, of all the things. Spaghetti Bolognese. Not the standard SB, but good enough.   Decided then to look around the environs of the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong hotel, which is an anchor tenant with the newish Kowloon Station in West Kowloon, linked to a sprawling and grandiose shopping mall.  Hard to find total costs, but perhaps $10 billion has been spent, and another $10 billion will probably be needed to complete the development.  The International Commerce Center, which was built in 2010 with the Ritz-Carlton Hotel at the top, paved the way for this all.  There is the old Hong Kong around the Peninsula and Sheraton hotels, but the West Kowloon Cultural District, with the tallest building and Kowloon Station, which opened in 2018, is already the Hong Kong of the future. A stroll around the outside. As we were about to leave, we noticed a free tram that took yo...

About Taipei, we did not do a tour because we were on this ship six years ago, and I will today get into what we saw in 2019, plus bring you up to date on what is happening today. I thus start with some nostalgia, as  on 4December2019 I posted on our Diamond Princess stop in Taipei . To begin, I went back to a 20November2008 posting reporting on a project I had in 1988 working with the Taiwanese government. One final anecdote is that  PICHTR , exactly 20 years ago, worked with  ITRI  to produce an $80 million multiple product  OTEC  study for Taiwan, led by Paul Yuen and my engineering team (same group as mentioned above). In our small way, then, we like to think we stimulated some interest in what could someday be the most important renewable energy resource for Hawaii and World. Maybe The  Blue Revolution  (see Chapter 4 of  SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth)  has  finally started. Plus, I made visits to their second largest city,...