Daily Archives: July 25, 2008

China / Travel — 1 Comment
25
Jul 08

Hong Kong Day 2

Giant Buddha


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.

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China / Travel — Comments Off on Firang crossings
25
Jul 08

Firang crossings

We have had multiple firang (fuh-rung, Hindi word for foreigner, see http://en.wikipedia.org/Firang — thanks Ninad!) crossings with a few different people on our journey. What we mean by this is that we met a fellow journey person (or peoples) on one leg of our trip, only to have our seemingly unrelated paths cross again further along in a later city. This is the way of the firang. We are all seeing the same sites in a similar order.

1. Not so much astonishing as we were still in Beijing, but we saw Josh’s classmate when we began our holiday.

2. A couple we met in Datong on our tour of the Hanging Temple and Yungang Caves were on our flight to Guilin (and Josh also had seen the man while we were in Xi’an but we didn’t stop).

3. A couple of Japanese girls who were on the Datong tours with us, were on the morning bus we ended up on (after the wrong ticket train experience) to Taiyuan. And then after that we also ended up on the same bus to Pingyao.

4. We saw a German couple we first met on our black market ticket bus from Pingyao at the Terracotta Army Pit 2, and then again back in Xi’an city center.

5. This also may not count quite as much, but the family at our lunch table on our Li river cruise was on our flight to Guilin, but we didn’t interact on the flight.

6. Our last day in Yangshuo we ran into the two french girls who had been a part of our black market bus experience from Pingyao. Both of whom sat seatless in the aisle at various times with Josh.

7. We rode the Star Ferry between Kowloon and Hong Kong Central with a family who had been on our Li River cruise (they were memorable due to the daughter’s headgear and reluctance to be a part of her father’s constant picture taking while wearing it).

This is the way of the firang …

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