Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

We have had the most efficient, easy experiences with embassies here in Hong Kong, making our visa and passport transactions quick and seamless.  We got our Myanmar visa in 3 hours.  It would have taken us upward to a week to get it done in Bangkok.  I called up around 10:00 am this morning, and the first surprise, a human answered the phone.  We let them know we'd be in around 11:00, and sure enough, there were only a few people there, and after their 12:00-1:30 lunch break, they produced our new visa's at 1:30.  We scheduled an appointment with the US Embassy via web to have additional visa pages added to our passports, as we're down to our last two blank pages, and have too many countries requiring visas yet to pass through.  The US Embassy processed our transaction, in person, in less than one hour.  Trying to get any of this done in Bangkok would have required us waiting in queues well before the embassies opened, in the hot, sticky weather, with hundreds of others waiting for services as well... and would be lucky if we got in to see someone that same day, let alone having our transactions processed within the day!  We should have planned to stay in Hong Kong a little while longer and finished up business for visas with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia embassies as well.

We experienced even more ease of use on the MTR system this evening - we were going to visit another friend of mine from NCR-Australia, now with EMC in Hong Kong.  We met our friend at the Tai Koo Shing station, and enjoyed a beautiful ride through the national park land and green hills of Hong Kong Island, winding our way back to Stanley, to their home.  It's a beautiful area, home to many expats.  There's a super active lifestyle out in that area, with kilometers of running trails through the hills, and beautiful waterways for boating.  It feels a bit like Sydney, and probably why our Australian friends have chosen this beautiful area to live.  The restaurant scene is equally as lovely, reminding us a bit of La Jolla at home, restaurants dot the waterfront, and we had an amazing dinner out on the ocean view deck.  After nearly 10 years, it was so nice to catch up with our friends on the years past, and the expat life they had been living first in Singapore and now Hong Kong.