Thanks you all for the tips. I knew generally the best photos is to shoot at the right time but that's only possible if I'm travelling for photography. The reason I ask is if I'm travelling with the tour group or some friend who are not photography enthusiast, I might not have the luxury to shoot at the ideal time.
My experience is I arrive at the nice scenery but either is at noon with string backlight( either I'm overexposing the sky or the building. And even with proper expose of the bulding it just has a kind of string cast/shade). Wanting to produce a shoot similar to those travel magazine shoot my with that kind of condition is just too impossible to get close to it.
And for cloudy, there some occasion with it's cloudly and perhaps a bit hazy which can't be noticeable thru the naked eye but by the lens.
HDR, yes, I've tried that and very well agreed with edutilos. It's too unrealistic. no matter how I adjust the setting.
edutilos as for the GND solution is it a better than nothing solution? If it's still I have to get a bunch of GND with different stops.
How 'bout CPL? Would this would help to reduce strong harsh light to the building?
For strong harsh light , not matter how I adjust the exposure the detail just gone and it's like the color of the building get burn/dodge.
Would CPL would reduce the reflection from the harsh sunlight and thus retain some detail?
In this case even using a GND to recude the stop won't help ,right?