We got to the airport in time for a leisurely beer and were able to watch some of a soccer match in the bar.

We will post from Taipei if we get service and if we have time between our flights – our connection may be speedy.

Our flight from Taipei to Seattle is also China Airlines, flight #22.

And we’re now in our seats!

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Saturday, July 26, 2008 Today we decided to hit China’s other SAR (Special Administrative Region), Macau. China has two of these SARs and uses the statement “One country, two systems.” to describe the governing principle. It works quite well for everybody involved and we got more stamps in our passport… But that was about the highlight of our Macau time. We didn’t like it so much – not our style maybe? It was SUPER tourist filled in a bad way. WAY too crowed in the old Portuguese parts of town we could have enjoyed. Too many people, shoulder-to-shoulder, in blazing, over-the-top-heat, all WITH umbrellas at our eyeball height, all withOUT any sense of self awareness or unilateral direction. They cut you off then walk *backwards* into your eyeballs with an umbrella prong. They are nuts. We are not into casinos so those were of no use to us. The heat was heavy you couldn’t force even a slight breeze no matter how you fanned your guidebook. It was not our favorite day. We did finally find a yummy “cake shop” that sold tasty lunch rolls after searching for an hour or so for suitable food in a not great for eating (we found out) part of town. The one other place we found was so ridiculously scuzzy and dirty! And needlessly so! There was a store selling toilets, of all things, next door that was spotless! But here is the list of fun things we saw on Macau that we will soon post pictures of: the odd Fisherman’s Wharf, a huge statue of Kun Iam, Hotel Lisboa, the new Grand Lisboa, the finest Portuguese building on Macau – Leal Senado, Senado Square, Sao Domingos, the remaining facade of the grand Sao Paulo, the ramparts of Fortaleza do Monte, the classical (and gorgeous) Chinese garden Jardim Lou Lim Ieoc, the botanical gardens of Guia Hill (where we rode the cable cars up to the top), the Guia fortress (and chapel and lighthouse), and of course a myriad of city views from different hills and many random buildings. We know many people have loved Macau. We do not belittle your fondness for your Macau. We may have missed something, gone at a wrong time, or it may just not be for us.

Pictures and more follow the jump.

After taking the hour long ferry back to Kowloon we reset at the hotel (luckily enough catching the city light show again), had a few pre-party drinks in the room then headed out to LKF to hit Ebeneezer’s one last time for Doner kabobs and samosas and then to go to the bars there. We got a great spot at Lost and spent our whole night there. We had great fun, then headed home to catch some shut eye before our last day in Hong Kong tomorrow. We are sad to leave, but ready to get back to real life.

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Friday, July 25th, 2008 Today, the camera was full. Josh spent some time this morning transferring photos and Jeannette brought back coffee and pastries. Then we headed via subway to Lantau Island to see the world’s largest Buddha. Well, the largest seated, bronze Buddha. But it was HUGE! And the day was hot. We got to take a cable car up to the monastery where the Buddha sits. It afforded some pretty sweet views. But the Buddha itself was definitely the highlight. After the cable car ride back down and subway ride back to Hong Kong Central, we went to a Chinese noodle shop Josh had visited before and had super yummy noodles and sandwiches. We did a little school clothes shopping for Josh at Shanghai Tang‘s sale then headed for jaunt on a double decker trolley out to the Wan Chai neighborhood and back. Then we rushed to the Star Ferry to get back to Kowloon and the Y for one of our Tsingtaos we stuffed into the minibar fridge and the skyline night city light show. It was spectacular from our harbor view windows.

Tomorrow… we’ll see what the day holds.

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Pictures after the jump.

Thursday, July 24th After we checked into the YMCA, it was still too early to get into our room, so we left our weighty luggage behind and headed out for coffee, pastries, and skyline viewings from the Harbor. After about an hour or so we headed back to the Y and got to see our awesome room! You would not believe how nice our room is. No joke. Our room is sweet and our view is incredible. If you are so inclined, you should google it. We are at the YMCA Hong Kong, Salisbury. We have a Harbor View Room.  Incredible.

Pictures and our very long day exploring Hong Kong and introducing the city to Jeannette after the jump…

We gathered our wits and dusted our sleepiness from our brains and headed out right away to check out Hong Kong Central. We took the Star Ferry over and walked and walked. Josh picked up right where he left off in Central. We had lunch in SoHo under the Mid-Levels escalators in a pub called The Wheel. We then walked down Hollywood Road, went to Man Mo Temple (which had amazing incense clouds and sunlight), looked at antiques and street markets, saw the Western Market (Jeannette found this eerily similar in historic importance yet touristy cliche to Faneuil Hall Market Place) and then rode the Mid-Level escalators up a ways before walking to Long Kwai Fong (LKF) on our way to the Victoria Peak tram.

We rode the tram up the steep hill climb to the amazing views of Hong Kong at the top of Victoria Peak. The weather was beautiful and clear. It even garnered front page news in the local newspapers for “picturesque” weather perfect enough for the postcards. Josh was happy because the weather last time wasn’t as clear. We stuck around until sunset so we could see the skyline light up with night time city lights. It was beautiful. We rode the tram back down and then headed back to LKF to the Hong Kong Brew House for some light pub grub and Hong Kong Brew. No Hong Kong Brew House pint glasses for sale, unfortunately, though. Then we headed down to Ebeneezer‘s, Josh’s Hong Kong place for falafal and lamb shwarma, which is just what we ordered – to go. We hopped the Star Ferry back to Kowloon, stopped by 7-11 for some Tsingtaos, and headed to the Y to eat in our awesome pad and catch the light show that started at 11pm…. that really started at 8pm. So we missed it. Josh had it in is head from last visit that it was 11pm. But we have 2 more nights to catch the citywide skyline spectacle, so we are not worried.

We ate, then we sleep.

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The bus to Shenzhen is an 11-hour journey through the night, to conveniently and cheaply get us to the Chinese border with Hong Kong. After boarding and getting situated, it became clear that the “sleeper” bus would prohibit most sleep. Each passenger is given a bed that is affixed in a semi-reclined position with the footwell of the passenger behind you under your back. Accordingly, your footwell is a tiny, enclosed space for your lower legs, encasing them in a rigid, plastic tube up to about your knees. If you are any taller than the very tallest Chinese person, in this case approximately 5′-6″, you could not possibly fit into these beds. Josh could not even get his legs inside of the footwell compartment and thus was a tangled mess of protruding and gangly limbs. In addition, we had a few too many “precious” pieces of luggage we didn’t want below the bus, making all of this more difficult. The best description we could come up with for the bed compartment was something like the experience of chaperoning a young child onto an amusement park ride in the kiddie-land section. You squeeze yourself into a very awkward position to fit into a very hard and unforgiving container that you will then be jostled in and bruised for approximately 1.5 minutes, only in this case that lasts for approximately 11 hours.

Unfortunately, being picked up en route alongside the road and being foreigners and not speaking Mandarin (thus not complaining), we were given the beds directly over the rear wheels. This position afforded us the very best opportunity to experience every bump and bang along the road. Jeannette described it as each set of wheels going down a different set of stair cases asynchronously. Additionally, the bus driver could not seem to find a steady tempo and would accelerate and then brake shockingly hard down windy mountain roads. Whenever the bus would brake hard, you would be compacted into your leg compartment (even if you didn’t fit into it). At times, Josh thought that the bus driver was driving recklessly to hurt him personally. This was probably because J+J didn’t know to take their shoes off and put them in a red bag upon entering the bus and seemed suitable punishment. Anyhow, it was quite like a roller coaster (driven by the devil himself on a chronically long journey over a painfully hard and bumpy track through a fiery hell in a tortured and misshaped cage).

Aside from that we arrived in Shenzhen fine. Josh unfolded himself carefully and was pleasantly surprised he could still walk. We took a cab from the terminus of our sleeper bus ride to another bus and train station at the Chinese/Hong Kong border.

A picture of our short time in Shenzhen (Josh has been here before though, too):

The border crossing was straightforward and we walked across the border and through the variety of checkpoints without incident. We then caught a commuter train from the very Northernmost point of Hong Kong to our hotel on the harbour looking across at Hong Kong island. We are all settled into our final stop and glad to be here.

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I can’t tell which mapping program is better so I have included two maps.

We are headed in a counter-clockwise direction, beginning in the upper right (i.e., Northeast) corner in Beijing.  Since the green and red push pins are not labeled with the appropriate city names and do not tell us “geographically hindered” people what cities they are “tacking”, here’s the list in chronological order:  Beijing, Datong, Pingyao, Xi’an, Guilin, Yangshuo, Shenzhen and ending in Hong Kong.

Map #1

Map #2

Here is the first map zoomed in a bit differently.  The map of the states beneath it is set at the exact same scale just so you can get an idea of how far we will be traveling.