HKTB is offering five tours, each run by qualified eco-tour guides. The tours will operate under a trial period until the end of June 2018.

ABOUT HKTB’S GREAT OUTDOORS CAMPAIGN

Andrew Clark, HKTB Regional Director – Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific, said the introduction of these new activities will enhance Hong Kong’s tourism product and provide visitors with the opportunity to learn more about Hong Kong’s local geology and ecology.

“The HKTB initiated scheme will provide funding support for local travel operators to assist them in developing new green tour products, whilst also encouraging visitors to explore the enchanting landscapes beyond Hong Kong,” Mr Clark said.

GREEN ECO-FRIENDLY TOURS IN HONG KONG

1
Lai Chi Wo Hiking Tour

Dating back over 400 years, Lai Chi Wo was once among the most affluent villages in the Northeastern New Territories. The houses and the feng shui woods behind the village remain well preserved.

The guided tour leads you to the largest bed of Coastal Heritiera (Heritiera Littoralis) in Hong Kong and the White-flower Derris which forms a ‘natural swing’ along the mangroves. Following the coastline, you will see the impressive reddish landscape caused by 400 million years of rock oxidation. The tour runs for eight hours and starts at HK$1,000 per person including lunch.

——————

2
Geopark Hiking Tour

The long and sinuous coastline at Sai Kung is a natural geological gallery, featuring spectacular landforms and rock formations shaped by volcanic activity 140 million years ago, as well as waves and weathering. The guided tour takes you through magnificent hexagonal columnar joints, a natural tombolo at Sharp Island and an inland water dam wall at High Island Reservoir. The tour runs for eight hours and starts at HK$1,000 per person including lunch.

——————

3
Geopark Boat Tour
Sai Kung Islands

Sai Kung boasts the longest stretch of coastline and the most outlying islands in Hong Kong, with unique scenery and extraordinary rugged profiles. The tour guides you through Hong Kong’s rich geo-diversity which includes magnificent sea stacks, breathtaking tubular rock columns and sea caves, typical coastal terrain, the rare acidic hexagonal volcanic rock columns of High Island, and rhyolite on Sharp Island. The tour runs for three hours and starts at HK$975 per person.

Additional Green Eco-Friendly Tours coming soon in Hong Kong:

1
Lantau South 

Lantau Island is rich in ecological resources. Due to its geographic limitations, Tai O, an area on the island, was much slower to urbanise, and to this day retains a wealth of eco-cultural treasures, including stilt houses, salt field relics and Chinese White Dolphins which live in the waters surrounding the area. Visitors can experience farming at the nearby village of Yi O, where terraced rice paddies can still be found. The tour runs for six hours and starts at HK$450 per person.

——————

2
Rock Academy
Sai Kung Volcanic Rock Region

There is evidence of volcanic activity in Hong Kong dating back 140 million years. In Sai Kung, there is a caldera, which is the result of a volcanic eruption. This guided tour will take you through interesting geological formations to explore aged rocks specimens, minerals, fossils and evidence of tidal influences.

You will get a chance to walk over a naturally occurring 250-metre long tombolo on Sharp Island to reach Kiu Tau, before paying a visit to the Volcano Discovery Centre at Sai Kung Pier and Lions Nature Education Centre in Tsiu Hang. The tour runs for five hours and starts at HK$450 per person.

The post 3 new eco tours in Hong Kong appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

So nice to have pork dumpling noodle soup on the way back to Asia, after three weeks in Africa

So there we were in the pretty crowded lounge of Johannesburg’s O.R. Tambo International Airport, waiting for our flight to be called. After close to three weeks in Africa, living a #Travelife, we were finally heading back to Asia via the Middle East.

I’d been browsing the airport bookstore just before, conscious of the time we needed to board, which was 7 PM.

So I got to the lounge huffing and puffing, with just enough time for a cup of Rooibos tea before the long walk to the departure gate.

Scroll down to read more…

A SUDDEN CANCELLATION

What do you know? We were already at the gate when our flight was canceled due to technical problems.

I’m on a plane almost every week somewhere in the world, living a #Travelife, and I can’t recall the last time I was on a flight that actually got canceled.

Or even seriously delayed. Yes, it’s been a very lucky never-ending #Travelife so far.

A WONDERFUL STAY AT 

THE INTERCONTINENTAL HOTEL

AT JOHANNESBURG’S 

O.R. TAMBO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

So the end result was that we business class passengers got booked into the Intercontinental Hotel in Johannesburg, which is just about the nicest airport hotel I’ve been in, in a long time.

No kidding.

The rooms are great and well-designed, the bathrooms are palatial by airport hotel standards, and you don’t even hear a whisper of an airplane’s engine at any time.

TALK ABOUT PRO-ACTIVE SERVICE

The service at the Intercontinental Johannesburg is very good as well.

I had a complaint about something at midnight, and the next morning I found out that it had been passed on to management by 5 AM.

It’s not just about negatives that they are hands on about, either.

——————-

Click here to subscribe 

to our complimentary e-newsletter

to receive travel updates 

and exclusive offers

——————-

When we ordered room service dinner and breakfast, someone always rang up afterwards to ask if the meal was okay and if there was anything else they could do.

The South African version of eggs benedict at the Hotel Intercontinental Johannesburg

I also had trouble connecting to the Internet and the duty manager put me through immediately to their IT who fixed it in two minutes flat.

Then the duty manager called back to ask me if I had gotten online.

Plus, it was certainly nicer to sleep in a real bed at the Intercontinental instead of in an airplane bed, even if I was going to sleep on a flat bed onboard. The bed linen of the Intercontinental Johannesburg is very nice. 

MISSING OUR CONNECTIONS 

FROM THE MIDDLE EAST

The downside to this delay was that we were set to miss our respective connecting flights back to Asia.

I was supposed to have only a 90-minute wait at the connecting airport, and then our flight was postponed for 12 hours.

From the Middle East, you see, I was on the flight straight to Tokyo Haneda as I wanted to ride the Dreamliner back to Asia instead of a 777, and I was clearly going to have to take the following day’s flight instead, at the rate things were going.

HOW LUCKY CAN I GET?

And just like how everything always works out in a #Travelife, the next morning, after breakfast, the hotel concierge called to tell me she was sending up my new tickets.

I wasn’t going to take the rescheduled flight after all.

Instead, my airline had rebooked me on Cathay Pacific to fly from Johannesburg to Hong Kong and onwards to Tokyo Haneda with a 90-minute wait in Hong Kong.

How lucky was that?

The schedule was way better, I got to eat Chinese noodles and watch the rest of Downtown Abbey before falling asleep somewhere over the Indian Ocean, and then I arrived in Tokyo’s Haneda Airport with enough time to get home and dress up to go out for a fancy dinner.

A nice welcome awaited me at the airport as well, living a #Travelife…

The post A flight cancellation in Johannesburg ends up with a better connection via Hong Kong to Tokyo Haneda. And about a nice stay at the Intercontinental Hotel in Johannesburg Airport. appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

There was once a time when people actually talked to their seatmates on airline flights, perhaps because there was little else to do.

Airlines then didn’t offer the smorgasbord of in-flight entertainment they do today, business class seats were still configured for congeniality rather than privacy, and notebooks—the paper kind—were the standard carry-ons.

Socializing was the other activity travelers looked forward to, as an acceptable way of relieving the long flight’s ennui.

Scroll down to read more…

With the frequency of our flights on a never-ending Travelife, there’s no shortage of amusing stories or encounters in-flight.

In fact, just last month, on the return flight back from South Africa to Hong Kong, an Asian couple had struck up a conversation with us just as we were about to land in Hong Kong.

“You were also on the flight with us two weeks ago from Hong Kong to Johannesburg,” the guy said to us with a smile, as we stood in the aisle fixing hand luggage and all.

We then compared notes on trip itineraries as they’d done almost exactly the same route we’d taken: Johannesburg, safari and Cape Town. However they’d chosen a self-drive safari while we’d flown to the Sabi Sabi Game Reserve for one of these all-inclusive safari holidays.

Read about our amazing safari experience in the current issue of Travelife Magazine. On sale everywhere now.

On our part, we’d not noticed anyone on any flight as we’d both slept most of the way to and from South Africa.

On the way to South Africa, the flight left Hong Kong at midnight and I knew I needed to sleep since we were hitting the ground running as soon as we reached Johannesburg. So as soon as the plane was at cruising altitude, I hit the “flat bed button,” put on my eye mask and went to sleep — waking up just in time for breakfast before landing.

And on the way back to Asia, the flight left Joburg in the afternoon, but we forced ourselves to sleep even at that odd time, since we were landing in Manila and both heading straight for work from the airport, after two weeks away.

Then, just as we were ending our conversation and landing in Hong Kong, the guy said to me: “By the way, you were wearing exactly the same clothes on the way to South Africa.”

I looked at my pretty generic overnight travel outfit, which consisted of a white polo shirt, loose black pants and red ballerina flats, and thought to myself: There were so many flights and so many seats on the airplane, and I was wearing the most nondescript clothes possible. What are the odds of this happening?

Read about other inflight entertainment stories on flights to Paris, London and New York in the next blog entry….

For more stories like this, please pick up the latest issue of TRAVELIFE Magazine at the nearest bookstore.

The post Remembering the real in-flight entertainment on airplanes appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.

56 hours back in Manila and I’m still on South Africa mode, editing photos, writing an article on my safari experience and drinking detoxifying Roobois tea.

I got back on Thursday morning after a marathon trip across the world that began with an early morning wake-up call at 530 AM in Constantia, a suburb just outside Cape Town, on Wednesday, and went on through almost 18 hours of non-stop airplane time to Manila via Johannesburg and Hong Kong.

The Steenberg in Constantia, South Africa

I finally landed in Manila mid-morning on Thursday, and it was straight to the office to get back to work. Thursday evening, though, I cut myself some slack and stayed home instead of attending the usual round of events.

It certainly wasn’t jetlag as Manila is ahead of South Africa by about six hours in terms of time; but by Thursday night I just couldn’t keep awake.

On Friday afternoon and evening, I had three rounds of champagne in between work and all kinds of stuff. At this rate, I almost imagined I was still in South Africa as I was having champagne over there at almost this same pace.

Friday afternoon, I dropped by a friend’s perfectly planned children’s birthday party, at a salon in Legazpi Village, to say hello to everyone. I call the hostess “Martha Stewart” because all her parties are picture-perfect and also perfect in every single detail.

This was where I got my first glass of champagne — they served Thai food and sushi with champagne for the adults — and then I refilled my glass and ended up bringing it back to my office.

My office is just about a block away, you see, so I decided to bring my glass to the office so that I could do my first round of magazine pagination with champagne in hand.

My staff teased me: “Ma’am, don’t we get one of those for pagination, too?”

Maybe next time pagination rolls around, I’ll open a bottle for everyone. So anyway, yesterday, I turned my favorite music up on loud and worked the pagination board with a glass of champagne in hand.

It was a very nice way to end a Friday workday, in a week that wasn’t really a work week but an almost perfect and much needed holiday in South Africa.

Then I returned to the birthday party to say goodbye to everyone, since it was just a block away, and this was how I got my second round of champagne. It was nice to just hang around, so I dilly-dallied for as long as I could, and then I had to rush back home at around 7 pm to prepare dinner for two friends coming over to talk about travel.

Okay, I didn’t make dinner this time as it was physically impossible to do so. But I made sure I was back a few minutes before they were meant to arrive so that I could oversee the last-minute touches.

I served only simple comfort food last night: beef salpicao with steak fried rice, spicy longganisa, a pasta and a salad.

The sand dunes of Morocco

The two guys didn’t know each other but I thought they would click since they both love traveling, so I invited them both anyway.

One guy had just returned from Morocco and Switzerland, and the other guy had just returned from hiking up the mountains of Peru on a five-day trek to Macchu Picchu. And of course I’d just been back from amazing South Africa a mere 36 hours before.

Table Mountain at sunset

I was just thinking about it tonight as someone had asked me about my best trip this year; but this trip to South Africa is probably my favorite Travelife for 2012. Then my trip around the Czech Republic in June, with two of my oldest friends, would come in second. Both trips were full of laughter and good memories.

So we had lots to talk about and it was really fun. Especially as one of the guys had brought a nice bottle of champagne. My third round.

Dinner at Kasbah at the Fort

Then tonight, I hosted a dinner for 40 people at the restaurant Kasbah in the Fort, which has excellent Moroccan/ Middle Eastern food. I’d invited about 12 ambassadors and their spouses, and a couple of prominent newspaper columnists for a pre-holiday dinner.

The Ambassador of South Africa attended tonight’s dinner as well, and talking with her about all the places I went to and the experiences I had over the past two weeks made me remember South Africa in vivid color all over again.

She asked me: “What was your best memory of the trip?”

I was at a loss to answer for several minutes. Every day had been simply wonderful, and each place and experience had been unique. But perhaps because I was just then writing up my safari experience, I ended up replying: “A bonfire dinner at Sabi Sabi’s Selati Lodge, and a really fun lunch at Bush Lodge.”

Dinner at Sabi Sabi’s Selati Lodge in South Africa

Everyone loved the food at Kasbah, by the way, and I think we all had a nice time just having a relaxing meal sans formalities.

So as you can see, I’m back in Manila, and it’s still a never-ending, and never-endingly eventful Travelife.

The post 56 hours back in Manila from South Africa appeared first on TRAVELIFE Magazine.