This is the view at night from the Lobby Lounge at the Intercontinental Hotel in Hong Kong.

You can sit there and watch the nightly laser light show against the buildings on the Hong Kong side, across the water.

Yes, it is divine (and their gin and tonic is none too shabby, either.)

It is my hands-down pick for “Scenic at Night” and my contribution to Highlights, a new feature on the location-based checkin service Gowalla.

Like Facebook Places and Foursquare, Gowalla lets you check in to venues such as restaurants, shops or museums, find places like House of Pies using your smartphone’s GPS, and leave comments, photos and tips.

From their Gowalla blog post announcing Highlights….

“Highlights are like little rewards you can give to places that are important to your life. Some are quite straightforward and practical like Best Cup (of Coffee). Some are a bit more esoteric or inspirational like My Happy Place and Scenic-At-Night. Regardless, they’re all fun. We’ve launched the feature with 18 unique Highlights and more will be added—hopefully inspired by your suggestions!”

Now that I’ve had a chance to see Shanghai, I have to admit that it’s pretty amazing at night, too, but compact Hong Kong harbor still wins my sentiments.

What’s your favorite scene at night?

Here at the Perceptive Travel Blog, the beginning of each new month means just one thing – access to the latest edition of the Perceptive Travel webzine.

Guaranteed to stimulate the wanderlust that we all suffer from, each new edition of Perceptive Travel webzine opens up new experiences and destinations for us to explore.

And the September edition is no exception.

Michael Buckley heads to South Korea in search of  monks taking flying leaps, all in the name of Buddhism. These monks, based at Golgulsa Temple, are practitioners of Sunmudo, a form of Zen Buddhism that mixes yoga, meditation, and martial art moves.

 Carla Seidi looks at the importance of Chickens and Tea in Aberbaijin. Turns out that these two products are possibly even more important than paper money when it comes to status and community relationships.

Meanwhile, Chris Epting takes a trip down memory lane, visiting his hometown and the home of the writer John Cheever, who in the role of mentor, first encouraged Chris to follow his dreams by ‘writing a journal’. 

Plus, as usual, there’ world music reveiws and travel book reviews to check out.

As for this month’s prize giveaway, it’s a  Alpental Fleece Jacket from ExOfficio. Entering the giveaway contest is as easy was subscribing to the Perceptive Travel newsletter or by checking out the Perceptive Travel facebook page.

Happy reading!

Liz just wrote about the view from the Langham, Melbourne, where I also stayed this past Spring.  It reminded me of something that happened to me on that visit.

I am in no way a morning person, but my body never quite accommodated to Australian time. I was routinely up before sunrise. One morning, I threw back the curtains on the day to admire the skyline and…what was this? In the gray pre-dawn sky, I observed three gray flying objects — apparently bearing down on the city.

Occasionally they changed color, flaring orange. I rubbed my eyes, blinked a few times.

The flying objects were still there. Was I dreaming? I going crazy? Was Melbourne under some sort of attack? I got my camera, perhaps to document the end of this lovely city, but more sensibly to use the zoom lens as makeshift binoculars.

Aha, hot air balloons.

I hadn’t planned on going to Melbourne, Australia.

But the abrupt end to my ‘around the world’ trip resulted in having to return home to a cold and wet New Zealand a couple of weeks earlier than planned. And cold and wet was something I wasn’t quite ready for.

So when friends, who were heading to Melbourne, Australia for a few days,  suggested I join them, I jumped at the chance. Surely, I thought, it would be warmer in Australia.

Sadly, I was wrong.

Turned out that Melbourne was just as cold and wet as Christchurch. In fact, it might have even been colder, thanks to a wind that felt like it had blown through from the Antarctica.

Not willing to let a little thing like rain and icy winds stop us from sightseeing, we soldiered on, adding layer after layer of clothing to keep out the cold.

We walked the streets, wandered through the huge open air Queen Street Market, and examined Federation Square‘s fascinating architectural designs.

In the end we had to give up.

Tired of cold noses and wet feet, we headed back to The Langham hotel for warmth, hot tea …and dry shoes.

We arrived too late to partake in The Langham’s Chocolate Indulgence Afternoon Tea.  But that was okay, because we got something just a good -  a room with a view.

Located on the nineteenth floor, the room had a bird’s eye view of the Yarra River that flows through the center of Melbourne. 

On this side of the river you can just make out the Southbank Promenade. Sparsely populated during the winter months, it becomes alive in summertime, with locals and visitors alike strolling around and checking out the area’s upmarket shops, restaurants, cafes, food courts and  five-star hotels.

Across the river to the right is the award winning Melbourne Aquarium with it’s 360 degree Oceanarium housing giant sharks and stingrays .

Directly across the river are numerous well worn train tracks that allow commuters, and the occasional tourist, to get into and out of the city with ease.

A little more to the left, just out of sight, is the Flinders Street Train Station. Built in 1910, it’s not only Australia’s oldest train station, it’s also the busiest suburban railway station in the Southern Hemisphere.

Throughout the evening, sipping first hot tea and later wine, we sat and watched the flow of the traffic, the trains, and the river.

Sometimes having a ‘room with a view’ is really all you need.

The Falls Road runs west out of the center of Belfast, up in to the hills that ring this part of the city. It is a road whose name resonates through the Troubles, that term which is describes, accurately, the harder parts of contemporary Irish life and recent history: the divisions over politics and religion which have at times turned bloody and bitter, and at times, still do.

There are murals on the walls of buildings along The Falls. Some express solidarity with oppressed people across the world, some offer hopes of peace, others honor those who have died in the Troubles. One such man was Bobby Sands. On a mural honoring him is a line from his writings: “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”

A Presbyterian Church, a headquarters for a branch of a loyalist Orange Lodge, a small Irish language school: the building that is now Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich has had a varied history. It is in the Falls Road, not far from that mural of Bobby Sands.

You’ll hear laughter if you stop in at An Chultúrlann.

It is a warm and welcoming place, with a tourist point to help you find out about Belfast, and a bookstore with a wide ranging selection of Irish language material as well as English language works on the history of Ireland. There’s a friendly cafe where, at the weekends, you will find traditional music sessions. There is an art gallery, a theater troupe is based on the top floor, and classes in Irish language, art, and other subjects are on offer.

The building is named for two men, Robert Shipboy McAdam, a nineteenth century Presbyterian businessman, and Tomás Ó Fiaich, a twentieth century scholar, who was from the Catholic tradition. Both of them contributed to respect for and continuation of Irish language and heritage. Cultúrlann is meant to be, and is, a friendly place where neighbors from all traditions are welcome to drop in, and where travelers find welcome as well, to talk, to laugh, to learn some words in Irish or brush up knowledge, to meet a new friend, to share a cup of tea.

There’s an Irish language choir which rehearses every week, and you’ll be welcome to sit in if you’d like. There’s also a intimate jewel box of a performance space, where that theater troupe performs plays and where top international artists such as Cathie Ryan and Mairéad Ni Mhaonaigh sometimes offer their music, in English and in Irish.

When Cathie Ryan gave a concert there, she asked her audience to sing with her on the song So Here’s to You, a song of leavetaking and hope for reunion. She told of an idea she’d learned while traveling in the southwestern part of the United States. “The Native American people there have the belief that when you sing in a place, you leave your echo there,” she said. “ So you all have left an echo here tonight. Thank you.”

An echo, perhaps, of peace. There is another mural along The Falls Road not far from An Chultúrlann, this one a painting of a man playing a fiddle, and his grandchildren listening. The words on this wall say ceol gan teorainn. Music without borders.