We’re taking next week off to have a staycation in our adopted, troubled home city of Hong Kong. Things have been rough here for months and have been getting worse lately. We want to see if it’s still possible to have a good time in Hong Kong despite the challenges it’s facing. A few weeks ago we’d have said you could avoid the upheaval and just get on with life. Now we’re not so sure. We’ll write, as always, completely honestly about the situation as we find it.

This is usually a great time of year in Hong Kong, with the high summer temperatures and humidity fading, and thunderstorms becoming less frequent. It’s a time when many go hiking in the wonderful country parks.

Because of our staycation there won’t be a newsletter next week, but we’ll be back on October 26.

There has been a lull in promoting the book Sue has ghostwritten as the businessman she wrote for has been travelling. He was back in Hong Kong last week and gave a talk on The Valueholder: The End of the Employee at the HQ of Santander bank. An audience of around 70 people were gripped, as was Sue and she knew what he’d be saying since it’s all from the book. The Q&A after, so often an embarrassing silence at public talks, lasted 50 minutes as hands shot up for advice and career pointers. Sue was pleased for him, and dead chuffed. It’s an inspiring book, and he’s an inspiring speaker. She's hoping the project will gently get back on track now.

This week Sue revisited her story about a woman who has preserved two kilometres of caves packed with art treasures in China’s Gobi Desert. Fan Jinshi came to Hong Kong to receive a US$2.5 million award for her lifetime’s work, arriving in a city riven with protests. But that didn’t explain the tight security at the awards ceremony. All became clear when Sue later learned that the guest speaker at the banquet afterwards was HK chief executive Carrie Lam, a longtime friend of Ms Jinshi and the target of much of the city’s anger. READ MORE

Our series on iconic movie locations continues with a look at Lone Pine, the backdrop for nearly 500 films and TV series. We were fascinated by this small town in California. We'd never been before, but the landscape looked familiar because we'd seen it on screen so many times. Lone Pine is currently hosting its annual film festival, with screenings, a parade, celebrity appearances, a cowboy church service and a closing campfire. Wish we were there! READ MORE

We made one of our trailer videos to promote this post on social media. WATCH

If you missed any of the earlier pieces on movie locations, catch up here:

Movie Fans' California – Alcatraz READ MORE

Feeling the Heat in Death Valley READ MORE

This Place is for The Birds READ MORE

The Skift travel site has published a thorough explainer about Saudi Arabia's tourism drive. We had a spell in Saudi and our take is that this initative is a non-starter. Grandiose aims such as becoming "a top-five destination in the world with 100 million international visitors by 2030" seem ridiculous given the country has no expertise or experience in non-pilgrim tourism. It only started issuing tourist visas at the end of last month. On top of that, it's a joyless, unfriendly and unwelcoming place, though we met some great people there. The evening before the weekend we'd look at each other and wonder what we were going to do for the next 48 hours. What no one did was go into town at Friday lunchtime, as if you did you risked witnessing a public beheading. We met someone who had observed an execution for Amnesty International 20 years before and was still traumatised. That's the truth about Saudi Arabia, whatever they say in the glossy brochures.

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