Day 15 - Hong Kong

see all photos »

No Dim Sum again! I am starting to worry that the family is wearing out.

We woke up at 9 AM, wowywawa. We were supposed to be on the 10 AM bus. Amy and I BOTH were ready by 09:50. Amy’s mom decided that we needed to have breakfast. We ran to a breakfast café down the street. I had noodle soup with egg and pork. We finished quickly.

Big buddhy

Half way through the meal, Uncle Nelson got Grandma on a head start to the bus stop. It was a good half hour or so walk. We all met up and were on the bus no later than 11:30. The bus ride was very long. Over the highways and bridges, past the airport, and over a mountain on a one lane road. We passed two prisons and the Hong Kong water reservoir.

Big Buddha
see all photos »

And hour or more after getting on the bus we got off in front of “the Big Buddha”. Other than the middle aged American and UK tourists, the Buddha was pretty much the fattest guy there at around 60 feet high and 40 feet across (est.).

We climbed the 255 steps to the Buddha himself. Walked around and took some photos. I tried out the new 1.4 50 mm lens a lot.

We walked down and searched for the family for a while. After finding them in 3 different places we walked over to the souvenir village. We stopped and looked and the gondola down to the city near the airport and admired how often it breaks down and leaves people stranded hanging in a pod from a cable for hours.

see all photos »

Back on the bus. We rode the bus down to a little village on the ocean. We walked around a bit. It just smelled like rotting flesh, burning leaves, and mud that is made with fish blood. We ate a fairly good meal.

Half way through the meal, the owner came up to me with a second plastic stool and asked me to stand up. When I stood up, I noticed that my existing stool rose by about 3 inches. I guess that the stools are made for 100 pound Chinese. The legs had started slowly working their way from centre. I was about to be on the ground. He stacked the new stool on my existing one. Stacked together they stood a better chance against my 84.5 KG.

see all photos »

We walked through the village after lunch. I took a lot of photos, sort of 3^rd world village looking photos. A lot of photos of the garbage washed up on the beaches. The water pollution is extreme. Look at the photos and think; this is just the stuff that floats.

We walked back to the centre of the village and got on a boat. The boat went out onto the water looking for Dolphins. We didn’t find any, so he took us around the river in the middle of the village. This is China’s answer to Venice.

see all photos »

From there we headed back into the village and had liquid tofu with black sesame sauce. It is a dessert, a pretty good one.

Now back to the bus. We wandered and several directions in several groups to end up at the bus. We hopped on and slept all the way back to a main station. The train to Home. We ate at home. I played Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for several hours, I have to stop the Nukes from the being launched at all the major cities in the motherland.

Tried to get onto the families internet. It is Chinese DSL, in Chinese, so I can’t figure out what’s going on with it, but I can’t get an IP and it is not static. Who knows.