35 kilograms

That's what I weighed when I started high school. If you're American and don't speak metric, here's a conversion site for you: http://manuelsweb.com/kg_lbs.htm.

Thanks for reading.

This is nice

Combination of some good/great tricks. Plus good music. Plus Edinburgh, a very nice town.

Youth in Asia

I love it when I come up with the perfect title immediately. Had I done this post a year from now, I'm not sure I would've been able to qualify as youth, but then again last night the waitress at my restaurant guessed that I was 15 years old and a son to my work colleague.

So I'm in Hong Kong, the land of literally named buildings. For example:

Central Building
Commercial Building
Newish Building
Greenish Building
Adjoining Building

Some of the districts are also helpfully, if not creatively, named. For example the central district is called:

Central District

Some of the restaurants have practical names as well:

Vegetarian Restaurant
Quite Good Chinese Restaurant

Loving it here. Lots of energy in this city. Good old Honkers.

Sling a pore

I ate the following:

Fish pâté with maggots.

On purpose.

My little pony

Went to Hydra over Easter, which is one of the Greek Isles. They don't have cars there -- only donkeys. That makes two donkey-only islands I've been to. The other was Lamu, off the coast of Kenya.

Donkeys huh. Pretty cool. A great form of transportation if you're interested in going slower than walking.

Tomorrow I'm heading to Singapore. They have cars there, but no gum. A similar concept.

I'm turning into a hotel snob

I started this week in Athens and will end it in Singapore. In between I'll pop in on Frankfurt for some kraut.

The impact of all this traveling, apart from a giant carbon footprint, is that I'm developing some travel habits that would've annoyed and/or confused the old me.

My colleagues at work would be most surprised to hear that I've recently been showing up to the airport with plenty of time to spare. For me, a more interesting shift has been my preferences for accommodation.

Until recently, I didn't really care where I slept, especially when traveling on my own dime. I've stayed in some dodgy hotels and some dodgier hostels, but paying a lot to sleep somewhere never made much sense to me. I think it was my stay at Berns in Stockholm last Fall that started to change my thinking. This is the best hotel I've ever stayed at -- great location, great design, great restaurant/club/bar, and if you plan ahead, it's not really that much more expensive than any other hotel/hostel in Stockholm (and I've checked out a few, including one in an old wooden ship*).

I stayed at another good one in Athens this morning, Fresh Hotel, and last time I was in Amsterdam I was recommended Lloyd Hotel, which was also excellent. The Glasshouse in Edinburgh is fantastic and so is the Hoxton Hotel here in London, which I recently booked a room at for £1.

So now I'm a complete snob.

In case you're interested, here are some good sources for boutique/design hotels worldwide.

www.tablethotels.com
www.mrandmrssmith.com
http://unlike.net
www.blackbookmag.com
www.designhotels.com

And of course Guardian Travel and New York Times Travel can also be useful references.

If anyone has a good hotel suggestion for any of the following cities, I'd be interested in hearing from you: Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Belgrade.

*The ship was called af Chapman. Not Diversity.