Well, I've been back in Huangshi from all the exciting travels for some time now, but I was soaking up the last few days of rest and relaxation before getting back to the blog! I took 3 days to catch up on sleep and reuniting with friends here, then it was back to work. It was wonderful to go back to teaching since I missed my students so much during the break, but it didn't leave me much time for the blogosphere! I felt the pressure, since Camille updated her blog days ago, so here goes part 1 of my vacation stories.......
Beginning with a 17 hour train ride from Huangshi to Shenzhen, China. Thats right, 17 looonngg hours! Its really not that bad if you have a sleeper car, you just wake up and you're there. There Camille and I are on our top bunks ready for bed! There are 3 beds stacked on top of each other in each little section. Trust me, theres not a whole lot of room up there!
Our friend Dawn met us in ShenZhen when we got off the train and helped us cross the border into Hong Kong. You can literally walk across the border from China to Hong Kong! After crossing over and checking in to our slightly sketchy hostel (by slightly I mean incredibly sketchy) Camille, Aaron, and I set out to find some dinner and stumbled across Outback Steakhouse right next to our hostel! We were beyond excited and indulged in delicious cheeseburgers and french fries! Hong Kong is a huge city and very westernized so it gave us a chance to have some of the comforts of America we have been missing here such as Starbucks and Mexican food! I think I had starbucks every single day we were there!
After dinner, we went to Victoria Harbor and took a ferry ride. This is a picture of Camille and Aaron in front of the Symphony of Lights. It is a laser show at the harbor that takes place every single night. The lasers are on the top of several skyscrapers and play along with music.
Then we walked to the Avenue of Stars, similar to the Walk of Stars in Hollywood, that has the handprints of several famous Chinese and Hong Kong stars. The only names I recognized were Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Unfortunately, it rained pretty much every day we were there which explains the rain coats and umbrellas in all the pictures.
The next day, we took a cable car ride to another island of Hong Kong called Lantau, to a small village called Ngong Ping. Here is a picture of the cable car rides and the beautiful mountainous scenery in the background. And a picture of the three of us inside our cable car!
Made it to the village. You can see the giant buddha that this island is famous for in the background.
Just being silly.
A special Chinese cable car.
They had lots of fun little touristy gift shops that we played around in. Heres Aaron trying to look Chinese.
Taken before we walked up to see the Giant Buddha. It really is giant! It is a 112 feet tall and weighs over 250 tons! There were 200 steps to get to the top! Then there were about 20 more statues like the ones below on the right surrounding the Buddha!
The island is also well known for its monastery and temple. You could purchase incense of all sizes here (part of how many Buddhists worship) even these giant ones that were as tall as me!
In the village, they had a place where we could dress up in authentic Chinese clothes and take pictures, so of course we HAD to do it!
That night, since it was raining yet again, we decided to go to a mall and eat ice cream and watch a movie...something so normal for life in America yet not an option here in Huangshi! Cam and I were a wee bit excited as you can see in the picture in the theater. This is the one and only movie we will probably get to see in theaters while we live in China and it was awesome! We saw the second Sherlock Holmes. If you haven't seen it, we thought it was really good ;)
The next day, we were very excited to see some of our friends, fellow teachers from Wuhan, who we haven't gotten to see in over 2 months. They happened to be in Hong Kong at the same time as us over the break. We decided to go up to The Peak together, the location at the top of one of the mountains where you can look out and see all of downtown Hong. Unfortunately, since it was still raining, we didn't have the most amazing view. There was also a candy store at the top of the peak that all kinds of yummy candy including kinds that I haven't seen in years but loved as a child! Again, we got a little excited about suckers and ring pops!
Rainy/cloudy view from the top of the Peak.
The last day we had to leave for the airport to head to Thailand at 7ish a.m. But first we headed to a sports bar down the road to watch the first half of the Saints game at 5:30 in the morning. We hadn't brought any of our Saints gear with us, but we did have these Louisiana State Police t-shrirts, courtesy of Camille's awesome dad!
The screen at the pub. Unfortunately we were pretty much the only Saints fans there, the rest were all 49ers fans. We found out later at the airport that we lost. It just wasn't a great week for Louisiana football.
Well thats the end of Hong Kong. We definitely felt spoiled by all of the western food and shopping and had a great time! Next up on the blog: Bangkok, Thailand!
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