Beijing Day 3 - the real adventure

The third day was our last full day in Beijing, and we were bound and determined to see the Great Wall of China this day.  We woke at a more reasonable time than Day 2 and headed for the bus station.  And this is where the fun really began.

We had researched quite a bit about the Great Wall.  We learned some interesting facts, or rather, mythbusters, you could say.  Like, the Great Wall isn't actually a single, long wall running through China but rather a series of walls built at different times by different rulers in various areas to help protect their empires.  Oh, and apparently you cannot see it from space, which I had always heard.  But we also learned some useful information as well, or so we thought.  We figured out which subway station/bus terminal we needed to go to, the bus route we needed to take, etc.  We learned that there are a few areas of the wall you can visit near Beijing.  The different sections vary from quite a lot of restoration, complete with handrails, to virtually no restoration at all.  Some were closer to the city and some were pretty far out.  There are tours you can take that range from a little more than half a day to overnight camping trips or even some at a section that has a hotel you can stay at!  We've been doing our own thing in cities all over the world, so we decided why change that now?  We had such a short amount of time in Beijing that we couldn't devote an entire day to the Wall.  So we settled on something in the middle.  Mutianyu Great Wall is located about 70 km northeast of Beijing.  It's somewhat restored and frequented by tourists, but it's supposedly not as crowded as some of the other sections without being quite as far out of the city as others.

So as I said, we made it to the bus station that morning.  Of course, in keeping with my Adams blood, we were running, ahem, a little late.  And we got off the subway just a few minutes before the bus was supposed to leave.  This bus only ran once an hour, so we ran through the subway station, transferred to the connecting line, and rushed into the bus terminal.  We frantically searched the signs, looking for our bus number.  We couldn't find it, so we tried the information booth.  They pointed us outside, but we couldn't find it out there either.  And to make things more complicated, as soon as we entered the terminal, people started approaching us, asking if we needed a ride to the Great Wall.  One lady followed us for probably 15 minutes.  I'm not really one to take a ride from strangers, and we had done our homework, so we told them all thanks, but no thanks.  We quickly realized we weren't going to make the bus this hour but decided to at least find the particular stop we needed before heading anywhere else.  We looked and looked, asked information again, asked a police officer, pretty much anyone who we thought might possibly speak English.  We never did find it.

We finally gave up on the bus and tried a couple of cab drivers, but no one seemed to understand where we wanted to go.  Or they wanted to charge us an astronomical amount.  Then Blake remembered that during our research we had found another bus route that went to an international convention center, where you could take a minibus to the same section of the Great Wall as our original bus route.  That bus proved much easier to find.  Blake showed the name of the convention center bus stop (in Chinese, of course) to the bus driver, who nodded and motioned for us to pay.  We boarded the bus and were on our way!

The hardest thing about buses is figuring out where to get off.  Sometimes you can't see the signs quickly enough to know if a stop is yours or not.  In some places, the buses don't stop at all the stops, only if there are people waiting at the bus stop or if someone on the bus signals the driver before the stop.  Fortunately we had a seat at the very front of the bus, and Blake kept showing our stop to the driver to remind him which stop we wanted.  After about 45 minutes, at which point we were completely out of the city, a man had come to stand at the front of the bus near our seats.  He was wearing the same uniform as the driver and was having a conversation with him.  He noticed Blake showing the name of the stop to the driver, and in somewhat decent English asked to see it.  Blake showed him, and he said that he knew where that was and would tell us where to get off the bus.

Not much later, we came to another stop, and the man told us this was our stop.  I was a little confused because I couldn't see anything that looked like a conference center, but he assured us that this was where we needed to be.  So we got off the bus and started looking around.  He then proceeded to tell us that there is no conference center anymore, but his car was parked right at this bus stop and he would be glad to drive us to the Mutianyu Great Wall himself.  Oh man, was I angry!  Angry at the websites that still list this bus route as a way to get to the Wall.  Angry at the driver who let us get on the bus in the first place.  And angry at this man for telling us to get off this bus in the middle of nowhere so he could charge us for a ride to the Wall.  IF his intentions were as innocent as that!  He kept saying, "You can trust me."  And I kept telling him that I didn't know him so no, I couldn't!  But I'm not sure he really understood me.  Because while his English was infinitely better than my Chinese, which, let's face it, is completely nonexistent (I don't think "ni hao" really counts), it really wasn't very good.

Blake called our hotel and asked them for some translation help.  The hotel talked to the man for a couple minutes and then explained that the convention center is no longer in use and the bus stop we were looking for has not been used for 3 or 4 years. They said that the man was offering to drive us but that they suggested a taxi.  They said a taxi from that area should run about 120 CNY.  However, we were on a little street in a little bitty town located somewhere north of Beijing.  We were standing by a bus stop with a route that we knew nothing about except that it was supposed to take us to a minibus to the Great Wall, which obviously it didn't.  We didn't know how long it would be until another bus came, and we had no idea if the bus would take us back into the city or even further out.  And this whole time we'd been standing on the street trying to communicate with the man, who told us his name was Peter, and talking to the hotel, we hadn't seen a single cab.  Knowing how difficult (and by difficult, I mean impossible) it was to catch a cab at a major tourist attraction actually in Beijing, where the hotel assured us it should be very easy, we didn't find that scenario likely.  So it seemed we didn't have much more of a choice than to hope Peter was honest.

Peter said he would take us to Mutianyu Great Wall for 70 CNY, and I kept thinking that if we could just get to the Wall, we could find the bus stop there and take it back to the city.  So finally we agreed to go with Peter.  Often when we go to Buddhist temples and other religious sites, I find myself praying for the people there.  It's sad to me to see people who so obviously want to find the right way but are practicing a religion without the true hope of Christ.  But I have to selfishly admit that rarely have I prayed as hard as I did in the back seat of Peter's car.  I was truly afraid that we had made some terrible mistake and our story was going to turn into some horror film about American tourists in China being sold into white slavery or something worse.  I think Blake probably lost the feeling in his right hand, I was gripping it so hard as we made our way through little towns and open spaces on back roads through the China countryside.  I think it was probably a beautiful little drive, but I was too nervous to notice.

After about 30 minutes or so, we started passing signs that said Mutianyu on them, and Peter seemed to be following them.  But when we finally arrived, unharmed and unsold, at the Great Wall, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and prayed another prayer of thanks.  And I think Blake even got the feeling back in his fingers after a few minutes.  Peter then told us he would wait on us to go up to the Wall and walk around the area and then drive us back to the bus stop for barely more than double his original fee.  We had seen the prices of tours to the Wall, and with the cheap bus fares, this guy was more than a deal.  And at least now we knew he was honest.  So we agreed on a time to meet and headed up to the Wall itself.

You could climb up the mountain to the Wall, but we opted to take the more scenic (and admittedly lazier) way up with the chair lift. It offered some really beautiful views of the surrounding mountain range and the Wall.  And then we arrived at the top.  And it really was amazing to be there and see it.  One of the new Seven Wonders of the World.  It was just awesome!

While we didn't walk the entire section of Mutianyu, there appeared to be steps on all of the ascents and descents.  However, some portions of the steps were extremely steep and many were well worn.  And regardless of the difficulty, you were going to do a lot of walking.  So someone PLEASE explain to me why anyone would wear these shoes to walk the Great Wall of China?  Seriously?  I'm just saying.

For the trip down the mountain from the Wall, we took the slide.  Yes, that's right, I said slide.  You rode these little carts where you could speed up or slow down just by pushing or pulling on a handle between your legs.  And it was so much fun!

 When we got down from the Wall, we spent some time browsing stands that I think were run by people from a nearby village.  They had all kinds of souvenirs, and our new buddy Peter told us fair prices for some of the most common items.  Blake found an "I climbed the Great Wall" t-shirt, and we got a few other small mementos.  There was a Subway (sandwiches) at the end of a row of the stands and a little coffee shop that also had a few Chinese dishes.  We ordered one sub and some sweet and sour chicken, which really turned out to be more like orange chicken.  It wasn't as good as our favorite Chinese take-out place near our old house in Baton Rouge, but it was pretty good.  We even used the chopsticks!

Once we were finished, Peter drove us back to the bus stop.  He explained that some buses were express and took only about an hour to get back into the city, while the regular buses took around 3 hours.  Of course, we couldn't tell which was which, so even after we had paid him, he stayed to show us which bus was the right one.  And it was at this point that he decided to give us his business card.  And show us pictures he had on his phone with other Westerners he had taken to the wall.  Apparently, he does this as a side business.  And Blake and I were thinking, why didn't you just tell us this earlier!?!

But he really was a nice guy, and when the express bus showed up full, he tried taking us to another bus station where we might be able to get seats on an express bus.  That bus station had a really long line, so he took us to yet another bus station.  He probably spent another 15 - 20 minutes of his time taking us to a station that was closer to the city in its route so that we wouldn't have to stand for as long on the way back.  And he didn't charge us anymore money.  I would highly recommend finding someone like Peter ahead of time if you ever plan to go to Beijing to see the Great Wall.

Because of our great adventure getting out to the Great Wall, it was much later than we had hoped it would be by the time we made it back to Beijing.  We realized we'd never make it into the Forbidden City before it closed for the day.  But we went by there anyway just to see what we could and to see Tiananmen Square.

From Tiananmen Square we headed to Wangfujing Street, a famous shopping street in Beijing.  But we were really looking for Wangfujing Church, a Catholic church which was built in the 1600's, rebuilt in 1904, and restored in 1980.  After walking for forever (or what felt like forever after climbing the Great Wall, standing on the hour-long bus ride back, and walking around Tiananmen), we were about to give up.  Because after all, it's not like we could trust any of our directions anymore after the Great Wall debacle.  But we decided to try one more apparent clearing between the taller, more modern buildings that seemed to dominate the street, and a good thing too because there it was.  It was a beautiful church and reminded me of all the cathedrals we saw in Europe, which I'm sure was the designer's intent in 1904.

On our way back up the street, we went into a lively market on a side street.  It was packed with people, souvenirs, and interesting food choices, like random things on sticks and wriggling octopus tentacles in bowls.  Yeah, look closely at the sticks.  Unfortunately, as awesome as our camera is, it does not take moving pictures like those in Harry Potter's Daily Prophet.  So you can't see that those scorpions are still alive, moving and squirming on their sticks.  Ewww.  Not that I would consider eating a still one either, but really?  At least the seahorses appeared to be dead.

We had one more stop on our list that night - Temple of Heaven.  We had purposefully held this one until last because it stays open until 10pm and we thought the buildings would be really beautiful lit up at night.  So around 7 or so we made our way to the subway stop we had noted from our internet research.  Ha.  When we got off the subway, of course there was no indication which direction we should go.  So we picked left.  We walked a while and then came upon what looked like a temple gate.  A closed temple gate.  There was a sign on the front in Chinese only.  We couldn't believe we had missed it!  At this point, my feet were aching horribly, and I was past frustrated.  But the more I looked at that gate and the small wall connected to it, the more I thought it really didn't look like a big enough area to house all of the Temple of Heaven complex, which is supposed to comprise upwards of two and a half square kilometers.  So we pulled the map back out and looked at it, and lo and behold, this wasn't even the stinking Temple of Heaven!  The information we'd gotten was wrong again!  We searched the maps we had with us and discovered that we'd only been a few subway stops away when we were back at Wangfujing Street.

There was really nothing else to do but go back in the direction we'd come from to the correct subway stop.  We got off at the stop this time with (you guessed it) no idea which way to go.  We looked left and right but really couldn't see anything to give us a clue.  The west gate was supposed to be just off the subway stop, but the street was mostly deserted.  There were no other tourists to lead the way.  It looked like almost nothing to the right, so we went left again.  We walked.  And we walked.  And we walked.  The wall was curved, so you couldn't tell what was coming.  We kept thinking at any second, we'd round the curve and find the gate.  We were so tired and frustrated but determined not to miss something else. We finally arrived at an opening only to find the gates still open but all the lights off.  There were locals just inside the grounds, dancing and clapping to music.  We consulted our map again and determined that we must have walked all the way to the north gate and chose what looked like the shortest path that would lead us back to the west gate (and the subway stop).  It was pretty spooky wandering through the grounds with hardly any light.  All of the buildings were closed, and we really couldn't see much.  I was disappointed to miss so much of such an interesting site, but it was hard to be concerned with much more than my aching feet.  So sorry for the awful pictures.  We really tried.  The night sky was pretty beautiful over the ancient buildings, though, once you got past the spooky part.

So, in conclusion of our Beijing trip, let me just say that you most definitely cannot believe everything you read on the Internet!  Although, truthfully, of all the cities across the world that we've been to, Beijing is the only one where we've had this many (or really even this kind of) problems.  And at the end of the day, seeing the Great Wall was so amazing, it was worth it.

Beijing Day 2

We were dead-set on getting up early and getting out to the Great Wall on Saturday morning.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  So we switched days and headed for the Summer Palace.  We took the subway from the hotel and headed for the correct stop.  When we got off the subway, signs pointed us to the exit that would lead to the Summer Palace.  But once we exited the station, there was no indication which direction to go or how far to walk.  Fortunately, there were enough tourist-looking people coming from one particular direction, so we made a gamble and before too long found ourselves at the West gate.

The Summer Palace is set on almost 3 square km, though admittedly most of that is occupied by Kunming Lake.  But don't let that fool you.  It takes A LOT of walking to cover this place.  And we didn't even have time to see everything.

But the coolest part was the Tower of Buddhist Incense.  It was really like a mini-complex within the greater complex.  Courtyards within courtyards, with a tall tower in the center.  It was pretty impressive and offered some amazing views of the lake and other surrounding areas.

It was a pretty warm day, and there were many ladies selling water just outside of the outer gates.  But one little lady was smarter than the rest.  She had frozen her bottles, so even though she had been sitting outside in the hot sun with them for hours, the core was still frozen.  Ahhh!  It was great!  And only 2 CNY (about 30 cents).

From the Summer Palace we made our way to the Beijing Zoo.  There were signs directing us to the proper exit, but again, once we exited the building, there was no indication which direction to go.  We looked right and left and couldn't see anything that looked like a zoo in either direction.  We picked right.  Wrong.  We walked 10, maybe 15 minutes in that direction before we gave up and turned around.  We finally made it back past the subway stop and made it a little further down the street.  Where we found the ticket booths... right in front of a different subway station.  Thank you, city of Beijing, for your oh-so-informative signs.  Having them in English isn't really that useful if they lead you the wrong way.

The zoo was huge and had pretty grounds, I thought, but unfortunately there weren't that many animals, especially considering the size of the zoo.  You had to walk quite a distance between each section of animals, and their individual habitats were not very impressive, often overgrown and unkempt.  I'll just say it wasn't Blake's favorite zoo in the world.  And while the admission was cheap, you had to pay again to see certain animals once you were already inside the zoo, which I haven't seen before.  But it wasn't that expensive, so it wasn't so bad.  Although we did pass on the aquarium section in the back that cost over 3 times the zoo entrance fee.  Hope it wasn't good!  But of course they had pandas, which we always enjoy.  And I really just like getting to see zoos in other countries.

The most frustrating part was actually leaving the zoo.  It took so long to walk around the zoo that we finally made it out shortly before closing time.  And unfortunately, so did many other people.  There was a subway stop right in front of the zoo, but the line was outrageous!  So, with cabs being as cheap as they are in Beijing, we decided we'd just hail a taxi.  A few other people had the same idea, and several of us stood at the edge of the road for quite a while waiting for a cab.  A few passed, but they all had charges already.  We finally gave up catching one on our own and called the hotel to ask them to contact a cab company for us.  The hotel informed us that you can't call cabs in Beijing, you can only hail them on the street.  Is this usual?  Do you know of other cities like this?  I mean, I guess Baton Rouge isn't really a fair comparison, but I know you can call a cab company and have them send a cab to you.  And we have been to quite a few cities around the world over the last year or so, and we've always been able to call a cab company.  Oh well...  Anyway, so we completely gave up the taxi idea at that point.  The hotel did graciously offer to send the hotel van for about $40, but we opted for the 60 cent option of braving the subway.  And eventually we did make it back to our hotel safe and sound.  And we slept well that night!

Beijing, Day 1

So I'm obviously extremely behind on my blog posts, seeing that I haven't quite finished covering Hong Kong, which was our first trip.  And since we've been to seven other places since then, I thought maybe I should change my plan.  We just got back to Yeosu today from our Beijing trip, so I'm going to go ahead and start those posts.  Then as I have time (ha!), I'll go back and hit the previous trips.

Let me start by saying that the Great Wall was awesome!  I mean absolutely, once-in-a-lifetime kind of incredible.  But that being said, Beijing was by far the most frustrating city we've visited.  Ok, well, maybe it wasn't that much more frustrating than Kuala Lumpur (but I guess you don't know about that, huh?), but we were there longer so it seemed like it.

We arrived at the Beijing Airport, went through immigration (long lines), got our baggage, went through customs, and made our way to the airport train that goes into town.  One thing I've got to give Beijing is that it's cheap.  It was less than $4 each for the train tickets from the airport, when some cities have been as much as $35.  Anyway, first off, we get on the train and don't get seats.  In pretty much every airport we've ever been to (and ridden the train from), if the train goes all the way to the airport, that's the end of the line.  So usually, the train comes in, everyone on it gets off, and you have your pick of seats.  Oh, and there's usually a place to set your luggage.  Because after all, it's the stinking airport train.  Not so in good old Beijing.  Almost no one got off the train, and thus there were no seats.  Additionally, there was nowhere to put our luggage, so we had to stand in front of the door area for the entire ride into town.

Upon arriving in Beijing, we navigated our way to another line in the subway system and made our way to the stop that was closest to our hotel, armed of course with printed directions we had found before leaving for the trip.  When we got off the subway, we had a little trouble figuring out which direction to go, and unlike all of the other large cities in Asia we've visited over the past few months, no one around seemed to speak English.  So we looked at our map and made our best guess, heading off in the direction we thought the hotel should be.

We made our way to a marked intersection to determine if we were in fact going the right way according to the map, but of course none of those streets were on our map.  And we couldn't actually find the street names that were on the map.  There was a little guard shack on the corner with a policeman inside, so we showed him our sheet, with the map in both English and Chinese on it.  He spoke a little broken English (much better than our non-existent Chinese, of course) but didn't seem to know where the hotel was.

At this point a man riding a bike which appeared to be pulling a modern-day rickshaw pulled up and looked at the map.  He tried to speak to Blake, but seeing that he spoke almost no English at all, we couldn't really understand him.  While this was going on, the policeman had grabbed a fellow officer who chimed in.  He spoke to the rickshaw guy in Chinese for a while, and then finally told us to ride with him because he knew where it was.  They kept pointing back across the major street we had just crossed, back towards the subway station we had just left.

So we jumped in the back of the rickshaw, precariously balancing ourselves and our bags, and the guy took off.  He went down the street we were on, away from the main street they'd been pointing at.  He took a left onto the next through street, attempting to loop back around to a better spot to cross the main road behind us, and there was our hotel.  Maybe a block and a half from the corner we had spent a good fifteen, puzzled minutes on, debating the location of the hotel 2 minutes away.  We had to practically yell at him to get him to stop in front of the hotel because he was obviously taking us somewhere entirely different.  He then proceeded to tell us we owed him 20 CNY for this block-and-a-half ride.  Now, granted, 20 CNY is barely more than $3, but a cab has a minimum fare of 10 CNY and the meter most certainly would not have moved from 10 CNY by this point (a nice, air-conditioned cab, with a trunk, where we wouldn't have had to balance our 50lb suitcase on our laps).  Not to mention, if he hadn't accidentally passed by our hotel, who knows where we would have ended up!  So we gave him 6 CNY and sent him on his way to try to swindle some other unsuspecting Americans.

We checked into our hotel, which only just opened in March. It was a Crowne Plaza and a very good price, especially considering the quality.  Did I mention Beijing is cheap?  Anyway, I know Crowne Plaza's are not normally that fantastic - nice, but nothing to write home about - but this one was really nice.  I'd say about on par with some of the Intercontinentals I've stayed at.  Brand new, clean guest rooms with marble and granite bathrooms; plush carpet; soft, comfy bathrobes (my favorite) and slippers; pristine, white down comforters (also my favorite); and free wireless Internet.  And, as part of their current opening special, free buffet breakfast.

Anyway, with the train being as slow as it was, and our trek to the hotel as time consuming as it was, by the time we got checked in and got our stuff settled, most of the major historic attractions were already closed.  But we had written down a couple of noteworthy shopping/market streets, so we hit the subway again (which was actually pretty close now that we knew where we were) and headed to Qianmen Street, which conveniently was located off the Qianmen Station.  We didn't have much information about this place, mind you, so we weren't really expecting much.  This, by the way, is the best way NOT to be disappointed in Beijing.

Qianmen Street did actually turn out to be a neat little spot.  We knew about the street with shops, but we weren't aware that this location was actually important for other reasons.  When we stepped out of the subway, again simply guessing which way to go, we found two large buildings to the north. They looked fairly ancient, at least to our Amercian, barely-more-than-two-centuries'-history eyes.  We walked around looking for some sort of sign or information in English, but we were quickly learning those kinds of accommodations are not nearly as common in Beijing as other places in the world.  Of course, if you know me, my motto is to take pictures now and figure out what the heck it is later.  So now I know that they were part of the old city gate, built in the early 1400's, and used by the military as recently as 1980.  It's actually pretty interesting.  And I was pretty excited that it wasn't built in the 80's, like the "ancient-looking" temple we found in Seoul that time...  Anyway, if you're interested, here's a wiki-link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianmen

Once I'd satisfied myself with picture-taking, we continued to wander around looking for the shopping street. With luck to which we should not have grown accustomed, we somehow managed to stumble onto it fairly easily.  We bought our first bottled water (do NOT drink the tap water in China) and were pleased to find it only ran 3 CNY (less than 50 cents), even at this popular tourist (albeity mainly Chinese) attraction.  This shopping street was very quaint and much more interesting than most that we've seen throughout Asia.  Because instead of being a ritzy, too-rich-for-my-wallet, window-shopping-only designer avenue, Qianmen Street was mostly Chinese shops.  It reminded me of the shops surrounding Yuyuan Garden in Shanghai.  Sure, there were a few Western shops dotted here and there, with a Starbucks at one end and McDonald's at the other, but you got the feel that this place had been here long before McDonald's started serving those billion burgers (or whatever number they're at these days), even if it has obviously been reconstructed and reopened in recent years.

And it gave us a new experience as well - we saw the first kid pee in the street there.  Yes, you read that right - you don't need to blink and rub your eyes or clean your glasses.  Many of the toddlers in Beijing run around with slits in their pants, only pausing to pop a squat whenever they feel the urge.  I think this little girl's parents were aiming for the drain nearby, but she missed by quite a bit and the downward slope of the street at this point didn't really help to contain her puddle.  I guess parents of boys just have all the luck.

Anyway, by the time we made it all the way down the street and back, it was getting fairly late, and we were pretty hungry.  Neither of us were really up to trying any of the restaurants with the whole-roasted ducks hanging in the windows (see the pics from my Hong Kong post) or the "interesting" noodle dish smells wafting into the street (not to mention, the urine running down the road didn't exactly up the appeal), so we headed back to our hotel.

Let me tell you about Hopfenstube.  On the bottom floor of our hotel, near the connected entrance to a shopping mall, is a German restaurant and microbrewery.  The restaurant, I believe, was independently opened about a year ago but is now run by the newly-opened Crown Plaza hotel.  Their hops and their brewmaster hail from Germany, and the copper kettles and stainless steel firmenters used to brew their own First Carl lager, amber, wheat, and dark beers are proudly displayed strategically amidst restaurant seating.  And their potato soup was delicious!  Actually, all of the food was pretty good (we ate there repeatedly), and Blake really enjoyed the beer, which he sampled each night of our trip (though as usual the wheat was his favorite).  But that potato soup...  Wow.  It was just the right amount of creamy, just the right amount of bacon, and reminded me of the soup we had at the restaurant in our little hotel in Innsbruck, Austria, which was truly one of the best meals we had in Europe.

Anyway, it really hit the spot, and we hit the sack somewhat early, preparing for a long day coming, trucking around the huge city of Beijing.  Although, truthfully, we had no idea...

Hong Kong... still

Ok, so I left you at the Night Market (like 3 months ago... sorry!).  From there we headed to the Avenue of Stars.  Think Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Of course, we'd never really heard of any of these stars because they were from the old kung fu movies they made in Hong Kong.  But it was right on the water, and it was a nice spot from which to watch the Symphony of Lights.

They perform the Symphony of Lights every night at 8:00pm.  They combine the lights on dozens of buildings, on both sides of the harbour, with music for an entertaining, free show.  Hundreds of people gather along the water's edge to catch this demonstration.

We passed the clock tower on the way back to the Star Ferry, and it was beautiful lit up at night.

We made our way back across Victoria Harbour on the ferry and headed straight to The Peak.  The Peak has a tram that takes you up a steep hill.  So steep, in fact, that while you are riding up the slope, it appears that the buildings you pass are leaning at an almost 45 degree angle.  It was an interesting sensation.

Once you reached the top, there were a couple restaurants and a shopping mall that had shops and a few more places to eat.  We chose the ever classy Bubba Gump Shrimp.  It wasn't Louisiana cooking, but it was still pretty good.

But the building served a more important purpose than housing some shops.  You could go to a viewing deck on the top, which afforded some absolutely stunning views of Hong Kong.  I wish these pictures could really show you what we saw.  It was awesome.

And then, finally, we went back to our hotel and got some well deserved sleep!  Seriously, the last two posts and this one were all one day.  Whew!  It makes me tired just remembering it.

What time is it?

Do you remember your VCR?  Mom, Dad, I know you do because I'm pretty sure it's still hooked up in the den.  Ok, but everybody else - do you remember it?  Do you remember how every time the power went out you had to figure out how to set that stupid clock again?  I'm pretty sure I just left mine blinking for the first half of my college career, or until whenever I finally got my own DVD player.  Man, did I just age myself again?  I've got to stop doing that.

Anyway, so here we are in Korea, in certainly the most technologically advanced home I've ever lived in.  We have remotes for the air conditioners and our master bedroom lights, an intercom system that can control the lights, allow us to see and speak to guests downstairs or outside our the apartment door, call other apartments, etc.  We have digital temperature controls for the under-floor heating system.  A button by the door that can turn shut off all the lights in the apartment on our way out the door.  A built-in radio in the kitchen, that I think can answer the intercom.  Here, I'll show you what I mean...

  Oh yeah, did I mention you can use the intercom in the bathroom?

 

Yeah, that's a touch screen on the main control panel.

 

Did you notice anything similar in each of those shots?  I guess I should say, did you see something different in all of those shots?  I took all of those pictures within a couple minutes of each other, and none of the times are even close. And even if I had the instruction manuals for all of them, which I don't, I couldn't read them.  So don't ask me what time it is.  'Cuz I don't know.

My Awesome Husband (and four (five, really) awesome years)

We got back to Korea last week from our business trips to the US.  Our first trip back to the US since we moved here 6 months ago.  Oh, and it was wonderful...  But I digress.

Anyway, it was a long trip "home," leaving BR Monday morning and not arriving back to our apartment in Yeosu until about 8pm on Wednesday night.  Needless to say, between the travel, complete lack of sleep while in the US, and jet lag, we were exhausted on Thursday, which was our fourth anniversary.  Fortunately, we had expected this, so we went ahead and celebrated with a nice dinner on our trip in Thailand in March.  And we had decided not to do gifts because it's just so hard over here in Korea.

And yet, regardless of how tired we were (or what we had agreed), Blake had a really sweet surprise for me when we woke up that morning...

I know it may not seem like much to you, but let me give you the back story.  My grandmother has this book.  For as long as I can remember, she's had this book in her house in Meridian, Mississippi.  And as a kid, every time we would go to visit my grandmother, I would find this book in her house (probably wherever I had left it the last time we were there) and read it.  I don't know what it is about this book that caught my attention (ok, maybe I do - I mean, it is about chocolate...), but I've just always loved it.

And to be honest, I can hardly even remember telling Blake about it.  But I think it must have been the first Thanksgiving that we took him with us to Meridian.  We weren't even married yet.  Actually, we weren't even engaged yet.  That was about 4-1/2 years ago.  And I'm sure I stumbled across it at some point while we were at Grandmaw Denise's house and told him about it.  I've always wanted my own copy, but for some reason that I can't really comprehend, it must not have been a very popular book because I never could find it anywhere.  And its copyright is from the year I was born, so it's not like its old, right?  You know what, don't answer that.

Anyway, apparently Blake remembered my telling him about it.  And at some point since we moved over here, he contacted my family and got the name of the book and author from them.  He hunted down this book on the Internet and had it delivered to my parents' house so that he could pick it up while we were home.  And I don't really have any idea how much it cost, though it can't have been that much, but that's not really the point.  This is one of the greatest presents he's ever given me.  It ranks right up there with my calendar from Valentine's Day last year that he created on one of those photo product websites with pictures of the two of us.  And I know it's not the engineer stereotype to be romantic, and I know he thinks that he's incapable of it, but I think he does a pretty darn good job.

And you know, it was our best anniversary so far.  Because even though we're completely on the other side of the world, there's not a single Western-style fine dining restaurant within a 2-hour drive that we know about, and we didn't really have a good way to buy each other expensive presents, we're over here doing this together.  And that's what really matters.

And it's a good thing, too.  Because not too long after we got home from work that day, we passed out around 7, without even eating dinner, and slept straight through till getting up at 6:30 the next morning.

Our first romp in Asia, Part III

Ok, so last time I left you at 1881 Heritage.  From there we walked from the harbour area to the Mong Kok area, in search of several of Hong Kong's famous markets.  Here are some of the shops we passed in Kowloon.

Our first goal was the Flower Market.  And we found a great Christmas shop on the way.

Real live noble fir Christmas trees!!!! How awesome is that?!?  Pretty expensive,

though.  The conversion rate here is about 8 HKD to $1, so that tree on the left

is about $165.  But the price list on the right shows it pays to pre-order!



And then we found the Flower Market, which was really cool.  And so cheap!  Wish they had this at home.







They had almost everything you could think of - from roses and lilies to poinsettias and Christmas trees.  Orchids, small cacti, tomato plants, cotton bulbs!  And a whole lot of flowers that we didn't have a clue what they were.



And right smack in the middle of all the flower shops, there was this shop...

Too bad Ryan and Anna Colleen weren't with us.

After the Flower Market, we made our way to the Bird Market, which was also really interesting.  Some shops were a little sad, with so many little birds crammed into a cage, so I tried to keep the really sad pictures to a minimum.





There were so many kinds of birds here!

And bird supplies...

 And bird feed...   LIVE bird feed. 



When we left the Bird Market, we were headed for the Goldfish Market, but we actually found the Ladies Market along the way, which was also on our list of places to see.  The Ladies Market sells all kinds of clothes, bags, jewelry, scarves, etc.  It reminded me of the market stalls in Florence, though without all the leather goods.  But it was difficult to peruse all of the stalls because of the sheer mass of people!  And they don't have the personal space bubbles that we Westerners are used to.





We actually did buy a booksack in this market.  My booksack had broken on a work trip to Seoul a couple weeks prior, and the booksacks in Korea were all so expensive - around $100 or more!  I think we paid equivalently less than $14 for the one we got in Hong Kong, thanks to Blake's persistent haggling.

We left the Ladies Market, heading again for the Goldfish Market, although we decided that it should really be called the Turtle Market because there were much more turtles than goldfish.

And I think that this was our favorite market because it was also semi-connected with an entire area of pet shops.  And I love pet shops!  They had so many adorable animals.  Of course, I wanted to take most of them home with us.  But Blake wouldn't let me.  Stupid customs laws...

I mean, how could you not want to take these guys home?

There were some cute cute animals, though.

Those puppies on the left look just like Izzy!  (not your fish, Mom and Dad, but the dog we used to have)

And then, you know, some with faces only a mother cat could love...

But I think this guy was our favorite!  He had such a fun personality.  While all his boring display buddies slept, he was pouncing, stalking, and playing.  We stood and watched him for quite a while.



So then we realized it was almost time for the Jade Market to close, so we hoofed it across Mong Kok to the metro to make it to the market before it closed.



 We found a bakery with some interesting cakes, like this Mahjong one below.

And then we stumbled on this neat little park with little old men actually playing Mahjong.

Then we finally made it to the Jade Market, just in time.  Some vendors were closing down their stalls already.  But we managed to haggle for a couple of jade bracelets, some gifts for people, and a set of orange jade bracelet, ring, and necklace.  Blake really is getting good at this.  Josh Bozeman, you would love it!

 Unfortunately, we didn't have enough cash on us to get the set, but the woman who worked the stall said there was an ATM nearby.  So she handed us the bag of jade and then proceeded to lead us to the ATM, which by the way, was not nearby at all and we never would have found it without her.  But we got our jade and she got her money, and actually the ATM was near the Night Market, which was our next stop anyway.  The Night Market is also called the Men's Market because it has more guy-things like electronics.  Here we got some really neat things, like a really awesome silk hanging with Chinese characters embroidered on it and a couple small hand-painted prints.

Ok, well, that's enough for today.  Although, believe it or not, we actually still did several more things that night in Hong Kong!  I'll cover those in the next post...