I flew into Hong Kong for an 8-day holiday on the 5th of October. On the morning of the 6th of October, barely 5 minutes after wishing my fiancé Happy Birthday, I saw on TV breaking news on the death of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple. The impact on Hong Kong news media was immediate and although I spent the entire day in Disneyland, I heard that the media, both print and TV had a field day.

The newly opened Apple Store at IFC is Hong Kong’s only official store. It is barely a month old and is now transformed into a part shrine to Steve Jobs. It’s pretty easy to understand the sentiment the people of Hong Kong have for Apple’s iconic innovator. Take a look around at the passengers in the always packed mass transit systems, and you are bound to find iDevices around you.

The iconic image of the Apple logo with Steve Jobs’ silhouette replacing the usual “bite” was created by a 19 year old Hong Kong student. It has now taken its place as THE ultimate tribute to the man, and at the same time has become a great source of pride for the people here.

I went over to the IFC today, to see for myself the shrine that came about. The atmosphere was one not unlike a celebrity’s funeral. There were post-it notes stuck to one side of the store, and even a wreath of flowers. Even before I managed to find the Apple Store, I over heard people asking where is “ping guo”? That’s Apple in Cantonese, the local dialect.

I snapped the following collage of photos, higher res ones to follow after I’m back from my holiday

It’s been a rather crazy first day at Hong Kong for us, having landed at HKIA 15 minutes ahead of schedule and then proceeding straight to the discount stores at Citygate. Wednesday was a public holiday for both China and Hong Kong, so in addition to the extra discounts on offer for branded goods such as luxury brand Coach and numerous clothing labels, there were plenty of nouveau rich mainland Chinese to gawk at.

Having spent a number of hours at City gate, we only made a move to our hotel in Wan Chai in the afternoon. Located on Hong Kong island itself, the hotel was a 10 minute walk from the MTR station exit, bags and all. Oddly though I found that the pace that Hongkies go about doing their stuff is not much different from Malaysians. I thought they would have much more in common with Singaporeans.

Anyways, another interesting note is that air-conditioning is crazy cold EVERYWHERE. I can go on a walkabout without breaking a sweat and this is quite different in Malaysia or Singapore.

We headed out to the Wan Chai ferry terminal to catch the boat to Tsim Tsa Tsui. From there we managed to get really nice shots of Central’s cityscape. Like everything else in Hong Kong at night, it was bright, colorful and full of neon.

Walking was the order of the night at Tsim Tsa Tsui. Arena of Stars was located nearby the ferry terminal. Basically it’s a tourist trap with these “professional” photogs setting up stalls and charging an exorbitant price for taking photos of you with a stunning backdrop of Central at night.

We had dinner in the area, basically it was roast goose and fried rice before heading to Mongkok. Here’s where things get even crazier. Argyle Street was playing host to street performers and folks selling anything from broadband plans, tablets and even writing what I assume to be protest notes on the STREET.

Street food was available in abundance here, having tried Stinky Tofu and fried pig intestines dipped in soy sauce! We headed back to Wan Chai via the MTR after that and we are going to have a busy Day 2. We are heading to Disneyland!

A number of my trips overseas suffered from the lack of Internet connectivity, making it difficult to check for local interests whenever it comes to travel apps that require Internet connection, especially those that have maps. Well, I’ll be heading to Hong Kong tomorrow (lol, indie game developers over there, here’s your chance for a meet-up), and I’ll be bringing several apps with me that will hopefully ease the pain.

First up is Lonely Planet Hong Kong. At USD 5.99 (click here), it’s a bit pricy but beats lugging a thick paperback book around. This e-book app contains plenty of information (as expected from a high-priced travel book) and features an offline map. OK, the second map is a little more interesting. In preparation for the Hong Kong trip, I took the liberty of marking down places of interest on a map I created on Google Maps.

To view these places offline I use My Maps by Ruths R & D (USD 1.99, here) . Basically what it does is it downloads the places onto a map hosted on the iDevice. You can then download the map tiles (courtesy of OpenStreetMap). The download of tiles can be an intensive one, depending on the area and the zoom level that you require, so I really recommend that you do so before your trip. I’m doing it now while I’m sitting here at the dining table typing this post out.

Last but not least, is the MTR Mobile app, which is basically a guide to Hong Kong’s train system. It’s the only free app in the list (check it out here), but it contains a journey planner and station information. Fortunately for me, I’ll be grabbing one of those maps (being able to read maps is a blessing on this kind of trip), so I wouldn’t be draining juice from the iPhone just by relying on these apps.

What else do you think I should be loading up on the iPhone?

Day 3 in Saigon and what happened here was even crazier than the stomach churning desert safari I had in Dubai 4 years ago. Earlier today I went for a half day trip to he CuChi tunnels located about 75 kilometers from Saigon.

These tunnels are a complex series of tunnels utilized by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war against American soldiers. So while the Americans were busy trying to bomb these Viets back to the stone age, they hid underground, striking at American ground troops when the opportunity presented itself.I crawled through 100 meters of the tunnels which were especially restored and enlarged for foreign tourists. Those with claustrophobia or heart conditions or are simply too fat shouldn’t be attempting this.

Now a tourist spot, the CuChi tunnel is also THE place in Vietnam where you can get to fire weapons used during the war. This of course takes place above ground and I spent USD 14 on 10 AK47 bullets. The rush while firing the gun was exhilarating. This was tempered by a visit to the War Remnants Museum back in Saigon. This was a sobering reminder on the horrible aftermath of war. The effects of the fighting, the landmines and especially chemical warfare in the form of Agent Orange are available here for all to see in addition to the military hardware left by the Americans.

People in the Mekong delta region are really crazy about their afternoon (after lunch) siesta and hammocks. You can see for yourself on the 3 hour bus ride to the region; there are plenty of road side stops that serve the famous Vietnamese coffee and at the same time provide hammocks and long backed metal frame chairs for people to take a nap on.

It was my first time in a decade or so since I last sat in a hammock, and true enough I nearly fell in my first new attempt to sit on one yesterday afternoon. That took place in a small restaurant on one of the numerous islands in the Mekong delta. I found out that lying down on a hammock and reading Lonely Planet off the iPhone is really relaxing, decadent even, when done in a busy place like KL (like that’s gonna happen).

In any case the trip to the Mekong delta involved visiting the Cai Be floating market which unlike the one in Bangkok, Thailand, stuff are sold wholesale. We visited several cottage industries and saw the preparation of the region’s sweets and snacks.

I’ll bd going out of town from Saigon as well today, to visit the Cuchi Tunnels. These tunnels are apparently not for the claustrophobic and were used by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war. There’s a firing range there as well, hopefully I get to fire a few rounds off an AK47.

Saigon is such a crazy place. While not as dirty as Jakarta, the motorcycles are like huge swarms of bees choking the roads. Crossing a street is may, to a first time visitor, feel like committing suicide but once you get used to it, it’s like Moses parting the Red Sea. Traffic actually make way for you and their cacophony of honks is generally to inform you that they are there and they see you!

While access to Facebook is non-existent, think it got banned here or something, I’m pretty impressed at the Internet speed I’m getting and the prevalence of WiFi hotspots. It’s pretty easy to stay “connected” to the ‘Net if you have a need for it.

The Lonely Planet guide on the iPhone has been quite a help. However some of the information wasn’t up to date or just missing. It didn’t even have the Central Post Office on the map and the GPS functionality breaks the offline maps every once in a while. It’s best to use the app in conjunction with the hotel map.

I’m heading off to the Mekong Delta region today, so stay tuned for updates.

I’ll be off to Saigon (a.k.a Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam) for the next four days for a holiday . Given the apparent prevalence of WiFi hotspots over there, I probably get the opportunity to blog. In the mean time, the iPhone version of Lonely Planet’s Ho Chi Minh City guide will serve as a guide. I bought it for USD 5.99 and it features offline maps with GPS integration! Pretty cool huh?

I’m over at what is known as the “Big Durian“, a.k.a Jakarta, Indonesia for several days due to work reasons. And it’s a totally different beast from Kuala Lumpur, being a smorgasbord of smells (mostly unpleasant, the air polluted), traffic (perpetual gridlock) and people (it’s just so heavily populated). However, Indonesians are very nice people and furthermore the food here has been great!

But it also looks like I’ve missed out quite a bit on what’s been happening online and in the world of sports. I missed the launch of iOS 4.0 and while there is WiFi, slow Internet speeds have prevented me from downloading both the new version of iTunes and the iOS 4.0 update itself. The hotel TV doesn’t seem to be showing World Cup matches and now I just rely on BBC’s online site for reports when I wake up in the morning.

One thing I noticed is that iPhones are not really the smartphone of choice with Indonesians, instead they go for the Blackberry. I’ve lost count on the number of times I’ve seen Blackberry ads and the number of users using the phone or clones that look like the phone. If there’s one thing I really like about those odd-shaped phones, it’s the physical QWERTY keyboard.

I leave you with what I had for lunch yesterday, Ayam Tulang Lunak. It’s basically chicken cooked within a pressure cooker until the bones are soft to the point of being edible. It’s really quite nice and the chicken is served with rice and other condiments that you can usually find with Ayam Penyet: long beans, slices of cabbage, fried beancurd, tempeh and really hot chilli sauce.

Last night, my girlfriend and I went over to i-City over at Shah Alam. It’s actually located pretty near my place and we were really curious to visit the place at night, since you can see a whole bunch of plastic trees from the Klang toll gate on the Federal Highway. Here’s why you should drop by i-City at night, and it’s worth the traffic jam getting into the place..the trees are equipped with LED bulbs and when they light up at night, the sight is really beautiful. Check out the pictures below

The place is still a work in progress. I wish they planted more real trees though as the park would be pretty barren if you were to take away the plastic trees. The sheer amount of LED trees has left me wondering how much is their monthly electricity bill. Don’t forget to watch the video below as well:

I finally gotten Mount Kinabalu out of my system, the painful way, within the short span of two days. My group started on the Mesilau trail on Sunday, putting up a night at Laban Rata before tackling the summit on Monday morning at 2.45 a.m.

I found out for myself that I hyperventilate when I exert myself at over 3000 meters above sea level, but despite that I managed to make it to 200 meters of the peak, stopping at the 8.5 km marker of the summit trail. By this time, the sun was already up and if there’s one good thing to highlight about this trip is that the weather was excellent! There was no rain at all!

This makes up for the disappointment in 2008 where we made a u-turn half way up the summit attempt due to heavy rain, which turned the entire mountain like a giant waterfall. Like in 2008, we took the Timpohon route down and it still maintained it’s knee killing properties with the big steps and crazy amount of gravel.

In any case, I’ve enough of climbing mountains and will be sticking to running on tarmac instead.