China

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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China / Travel — Comments Off on Hong Kong Day 1
24
Jul 08

Hong Kong Day 1

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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…

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China / Travel — 1 Comment
24
Jul 08

Yangshuo to Shenzhen to Hong Kong

Wednesday, July 23rd to Thursday, July 24th We set out from our hotel (baggage getting increasingly heavy and weather increasingly sweat-inducing) to our pre-appointed bus meeting spot. Upon arrival, Jeannette inquired about the bus at the hotel lobby we had arrived at and they did not know what she was talking about. The hotel graciously called the CITS agent and figured out that we should be waiting across the street from this hotel on the side of the road (by now we should have known), not in the lobby as instructed. The bus arrived soon thereafter and we were swooped up and on our way.

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. Continue reading →

China / Travel — Comments Off on Yangshuo
23
Jul 08

Yangshuo

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Wednesday, July 23rd Finally, a day of our vacation when we can actually relax and sleep in a bit. We got out the door by about 11am and headed to a nice little cafe called Kelly’s for brunch. Yangshuo is a pretty touristy little place, maybe at a different time we would have enjoyed it less, but right now a little English and a nice western brunch were welcomed treats.

We rented bikes from our hotel and had an experience that fondly recalled biking through Chianti or Martha’s Vineyard hills. It was beautiful and we were quickly in the countryside and surrounded by the steep narrow mountains. This terrain is perfect for a scenic ride, the land between the peaks is completely flat, so you get all the beauty up close with no extra effort required. We rode about 15 km on our rickety old bikes. Continue reading →

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