[Recapping our trip, 204 days in]

After such a great visit with Emma in Ho Chi Minh, we took a short flight on Friday, November 25 to Hong Kong. Our visit to Hong Kong had the special honor of being the last planned Pride celebration of all our year of travel, and we were looking forward to it. Take a look at Charley’s pictures from the event if you’d like. They are, as always, fantastic.

Even with Pride festivities to attend, its important to remember the things you love, like beer. 😉

Hong Kong Pride was such a wonderful experience.

讓同志合法擁有自己的寶寶: Something about gay couples having their own children.

From Hong Kong, we headed east to Manila on Monday, November 28. We spent a week there mostly relaxing and catching up on writing this blog, not taking too many pictures of the city or seeing too many tourist destinations. Manila’s Binondo district is notable as the oldest Chinatown in the world, so we made sure to stop by for a meal, and I snapped a picture of a bakery that claims to be the inventor of my favorite Chinese dessert, the egg tart. (There was also a bakery called Ho Land that we made sure to visit because, well, it was called Ho Land.)

Hello there! Charley found this new friend at a small trinket shop in a Manila mall.

Rizal Park, Manila, Philippines

These “pineapple cakes” are a staple in any Asian household, and this place in Manila made them WONDERFULLY. Also, it’s called HO-LAND.

If you truly created the egg tart, then THANK YOU!!

I also rode in a motorcycle taxi sidecar for the first time, which was a lot more claustrophobic than I expected. When the front is papered over, you can’t see where you’re going and you feel like you’re inside a cardboard box as cars and traffic whirl around you!