I seldom spend money for food when traveling, but I'd been wanting to rid of that habit of holding back in trying out local cuisines of places I go to, since its also a part of the over-all travel experience. That is why, one of the things I was looking forward on my trip to Hong Kong last month was to satisfy my tongue's desire to commit mass gluttony.

Since I've taken my traveling desire to a few notches higher the past couple of years, I've learned to adjust myself when it comes to choosing a place to stay. Gone are the days when I look for comfort first, rather I ask for the price first and then whatever convenience a place of accommodation presents are only considered as bonus. I've stayed in hostels wherein the bed bugs and the giant rats becomes your friend at the end of the night. Walls made of thin plywood you could hear headboards banging next room, caused by two lovers indulging in you know what. Mostly these are the 500 pesos and below types of hostel rooms. Going to Kota Kinabalu, a few friends who have been there have already told me that it is a different case there, because there are a lot of cheap hostels that are well taken care of and offers the kind of comfort a traveler needs when he/she is on the road.

Tai O is a small fishing village in an island of the same name located on the western part of Lantau—the biggest island in Hong Kong. After my trip to the Tian Tan Buddha and the Po Lin Monastery in the Ngong Ping plateau, I boarded a bus to Tai O. I reckoned I could do simple life observance in a setting contrasting the hustling and blistering high wire activity that in Hong Kong.

A couple of years ago, I walked around the city of Manila armed with my Fish Eye II film camera. I remember buying it a few weeks prior and what better way to use it for the first time than taking a few snapshots of a city I've both learned to love and rant about. I took the LRT at Monumento and got off at Carriedo station then walked my way towards the historic Quiapo church and the Plaza Miranda.

The Venetian Macao is one of the usual suspects one would encounter when visiting Macau. My wham-bam thank you miss trip to Macau lasted only 10 hours so I've no choice but to explore the usual places and I didn't regretted dropping by the Venetian only because the place was really amazing. Constructed at an astounding $2.4 billion encompassing 980,000 square meters and designed after its sister hotel in Las Vegas but bigger, it now holds the distinction of being the largest casino in the world, 5th largest building in the world and the largest in Asia for any stand alone building structure. 

Hippie super mom, hardcore backpacker and fellow Pinoy Travel Blogger, Gay Emami of Pinay Travel Junkie nominated me to take part in the My 7 Links Project. It is a stirring effort from the people from Tripbase and worldwide travel bloggers "in a joint endeavor to share lessons learned and create a bank of long but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to see the light of day again."

My travel blog is a little bit over three years old that started off slowly and then snowballed in the last couple of years as my passion for traveling grew and the intention to share it to others prevailed upon me. That said, this is a nice way of revisiting past travel experiences that were serenaded by reggae songs in the midst of varying cases of feeling the blues.

High rise skyscrapers abound in this small territory that produces massive economic activity. Many of the world's largest corporation have set up their Asian operations in Hong Kong and the end result was an unending rows of towering buildings that covers the already cloudy skies and lights up the sky once the sun goes down towards the other part of the Earth.

When I first saw the movie "Police Story" starring Jackie Chan as a kid I was first introduced to a double-decker bus which got me excited at the possibility of seeing one in the streets of Manila. Years gone by and no 'double-decker' bus still plies the streets of Manila but my taste for Hong Kong action films has evolved since then. Soon I was renting VHS tapes of other Jackie Chan movies, especially the ones with Samo Hung and Yuen Biao and I discovered pioneering action directors such as John Woo (pre-Hollywood days), Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam and pretty soon I was looking at the world in slow motion, with doves flying in the background and imagining gunfights happening as if it was a ballet performance.

I first heard about Macau when I was a kid from my late father who was a casino junkie. He love mentioning it as the mecca of gambling in Asia and it was every gambler's dream to risk their luck (and money) here at least once in their dice-rolling life. He wasn't able to fulfill that goal as he succumbed to lung cancer in the late 90's. Gone are the wealth he achieved as a young businessman, no thanks to local casinos in the Philippines.