How to quit your job and travel around the world

Left: View of Lamma Island.



Below: Catherine and Amber, post cure, at the Lamma Amber Shop (44 Main Street, Yung Shue Wan, Lamma Island, 2982-0891).


Amber blow is the best hangover cure. You want it pure, freshly ground and preferably milky colored from the Baltic Sea. And if you're in Hong Kong, you can find this treatment on Lamma island - about 20 minutes by ferry southwest from Central. Lamma is something of the city's Santa Cruz - laid back, lots of bicycles and plenty of seafood cafes and open sea view bars. And of course, home to the city's kookiest amber shop.

Yesterday, working with a creeper of a hangover, I knew I had to do something - maybe the salt air from the ferry ride to the island could cure me. But then walking down the main pedestrian throughfare in Lamma I heard "Hey Ms. Tao girl. I read your tattoo. You come here, you love Amber!" Enter Amber, the eponymous shopkeeper and a Lamma native of Manchurian descent, who runs the one and only Baltic Amber wholesale store in Hong Kong with her German husband os 16 years, Udo. Tiny and assinuated, this woman spent the next hour evangelizing to me the mysteries of the sunshine colored stone.

Gathering her chi, she said to me, in her deepest most conspiratorial tone. "Do you know why amber is so special?" Because it's pretty? I ventured. "Because," she paused, eyes rolling back slightly into her head, sweat dripping off her forehead. "It is ALIVE!" She shouted and whooped, and waved her arms around. "Love me!" she demanded. "I teach you everything about amber!" And so it went for the afternoon. We rubbed many pieces of amber to inhale the fragant pine scents, each one different. Amber is formed from pine resin that is 35 to 40 million years old. Inside the mineral stone is something called succinite, which contains succinic acid - a powerful anti-oxidant. It is claimed that it can help everything from arthritis and asthma to anxiety and insomnia. And it cleanses your system, let's say from too much alcohol consumption.

You can rub it on places on your body where your chi is "blocked", you can inhale the fumes caused by rubbing it with your fingers (both these things happen when you use amber prayer beads, which is what Buddhist monks often use) or better yet, you can inhale the ground substance sending the anti-oxidants straight through your respitory system into the brain. I decided to buy a small stone for $20 to see for myself. In order to string it on a rope, Amber the shopkeeper pulled out a small drill, ordered me to close a nostril and started shoving the freshly ground substance up my nose. Drill and snort, drill and snort. She was frantic for me to understand how magical and powerful this substance was. "Love me! Love amber!" she exhorted as she drilled and I snorted. At some point another young guy came in to pay for his own amber piece and she drilled him up a freshy. "Good karma for you to share!"

With the drilling over, she threaded my amber stone and set it on me, blessing me the whole while. "You sleep like a baby tonight," she promised. My hangover was gone. My head felt clear and my respiratory system clean. And last night I did indeed sleep like a baby.

Ok, for the past week I've been really fortunate to be staying at two of the best hotels in Hong Kong - the InterContinental and Peninsula (if you're wondering which is better, it's the IC, by a long shot. ) Anyway, it got me thinking about a question I originally posed before I left for this journey, which is something along the lines of what makes people happy (and gives them inner peace). Does staying in a $900/night suite with a harbor view of Hong Kong make you happy? (The answer? It doesn't hurt.

I've also been giving a lot of thought to just the general question of why I had to quit my job and do this trip. Universally I have had so much wonderful support from friends, family and strangers alike. Some days I've felt down and tired from stimulus overload or exhausted from culture-shock. Some days have been mind-blowing in their exhiliration. I've felt guilty about not doing more "sight seeing". I've felt smug that I got "more local" than others. I've felt satisfied from giving, felt sad I couldn't give more. I've felt connected and disconnected. Basically, what I want to say is that I have felt a lot of things, but most importantly I've felt really happy.

I didn't ask people the question explicitly or record their answers for the first months I traveled in Asia but as I head to India on Monday I want to pick the question back up and record answers. This is where you come in too! What makes you happy and why? I would like to get as many responses as possible so definitely email me and tell your friends to do that too. I'm getting a small video recorder to get taped interviews in the last month of travel.

Before I tell you about the glory of Chung King - say it! Chung King! - I need to respond to some allegations that have popped up some other blogs about a recent column of mine. Here's a sampling of the responses...

let's talk about what the fuck this woman was thinking when she wrote this...I wish I could simply backhand this woman into next Tuesday.

(But she read it, and then blogged about it and basically had an opinion, which is frankly all I care about. And all the newspaper biz cares about.)

I read your article in yesterday's Metro. You're obviously a little shit whore encouraging other women to imitate you. Go to hell with the rest of
the smug little lefty fucks who put out this rag.

(Lefty Fucks meet Crap-ass Right. Nice to meet you.)

It all started last week when I sent Dorothy (for Metro Dating) a very *very* tongue in cheek article about having sex while backpacking. It was meant to be a humorous joke essay on the subject. But after being published all over Boston, New York and Philly it really got the prude patrol's panties in a wad. Ok, the edit took out the most scathing/funny elements and made it more serious sounding - but nevertheless it was never meant to be a serious piece. I got a lot of critcism that one night stands are for whores, that hotels cost more than $10 and that I am being culturally insensitive to suggest that local youth "do it" outside. As for the last two allegations, obviously those letter writers have NOT been to Southeast Asia. Hotels cost about $5 and local youth do it outside because their whole famliy lives in a one room house. As for the first accusation - who are anyone of us to judge another's behaviour? I am losing my mind, or wasn't the success of "Sex in the City" based on the very premise that women were as sexually liberated as men? One of the most popular shows in recent TV history? Anyway, I don't advocate random one-night stands at all and for the record I didn't "report" this story, but lighten up people. It's not Pulitzer material and I know that.



And back to Hong Kong - yesterday cruised up, down and all around Nathan Road in Kowloon and checked out the seamy underbelly of the Chung King Mansion, a warren of shops and (US $10!!!!!) guest houses.

Mmmmm....dim sum at its best! Goose webbing in abalone sauce.



Fortune teller at a temple.


Skyline in Central.



Presidential Suite at the InterContinental - quite possible the most amazing "hotel" suite I have ever seen, complete with a closed circuit camera system for security, 3 bedrooms, including a Japanese toilet in the master bath that rinses and air blows your bum, two crystal tiled swimming pools (one hot, one cold) and private gym and gourmet kitchen, 12 person dining room and private library. All I could think was Charles and Camilla do it in places like this.



View across harbour to Hong Kong Island from the top of the InterContinental.

Last night as I was sitting in the hotel lobby bar of the InterContinental nursing a sakitini and watching the light show (from precisely 8 to 8:18 p.m.) of all the waterfront skyscrapers, it occured to me that Hong Kong looks like one big circuit board. Being here feels like being a willing participant in some large scale video game - up a moving walkway, jump, down a tiny alley, jump, speed across the bay, jump, zoom back through a tunnel. Fuel pellets look like dim sum pork buns. BladeRunner meets Tron meets Britain circa 1917. Anyway, I am thoroughly enjoying it especially since I have the great fortune to be here on luxury junket through my friend Robin. The InterContinental is populated with a batch of oil millionaires from Russia with the most amazing body shapes (huge massive bellies slung over little bathing suits) who float in the pool. The rooms have 72" flatscreen televisions and iPod docking stations with Bose stereo speakers. There is a scale in the bathroom and robes and slippers. Everyone who works here wears secret earbuds so they can be in two places at once.

I met with my friend Kat on Saturday, who I used to work with at AP, and she works here now. We went over to Mong Kok for a look after eating dim sum at Times Square. After buying some cheap sunglasses (definitely helps to be a with Chinese friend) we continued to a big temple where we had our fortunes read. Our fortune reader told me that I have a "nose for money" and should place 6 fresh flowers on the East Side on my home in 2006 if I want to find a husband. She then told my friend Kat she was strong like a turtle would be marry at 28. It was pretty funny.

Last evening we checked out an amazing nouveau Indian restaurant in Central called Veda and then popped into Lan Kwai Fong for a drink. Lan Kwai Fong is packed with bars spilling out into the streets - very scene, pickup, after work type bars.