Happy New Year

From Nathan Road, Hong Kong, one block from the harbor, as close as I could get.   

  For most of you, this should be your first real New Year’s greeting!

Dragon Back Ridge

Today we hiked along Dragon Back Ridge, rated the top urban hike in Asia according to our tour guide, Barden. Indeed, it was a beautiful hike along a ridge with wonderful views of ocean on both sides. 

 It only took 45 minutes or so to get to the trailhead from our hostel. The ridge is about 1000 feet above sea level, but the bus leaves you about half that way up, so it wasn’t a hard climb to the top of the ridge. As you can see, the weather was fabulous, our best day since we’ve been in Hong Kong, about 70 degrees with a strong sun and a cool breeze. Once reaching the ridge, we hiked about an hour with many view points.  

  There were many other people hiking on this glorious day, but the trail didn’t feel too crowded. 

 About an hour and a half into the hike, we came off the ridge and continued on a gentle grade. We stopped for lunch on the trail and then continued down to Big Wave Beach. I didn’t think the waves were so big, but the surfers seemed to be enjoying themselves. Dylan and Ella had a good time too, playing in the sand not surfing. 

 After some time playing on the beach, we returned to the hostel to relax and clean up. The kids are now trying to fall asleep despite all the noise outside. Tsim Sha Tsui, our neighborhood, is one of the premier sites for watching the New Year’s fireworks over the harbor. Loud and busy at the best of times, it is packed and crazy tonight. If I’m still awake in a couple of hours, the kids have given me permission to go out and watch. We’ll see. If I do, it will be my first New Year’s awake at midnight in years.

Today is not only New Year’s Eve but also Halfway Day, halfway through our trip to China. We’ve been here 4 months and 4 days and we have the same to go. It’s amazing to think that we’ve been gone for so long. Of course, we’ve seen tons of things and places, so we must have had the time to do so, but at the same time the months have flown by. It will be interesting to see if time moves as quickly in the second half. From Hong Kong, we intend to head next for Hainan Island, a touch of Southeast Asia in China. Then we will turn north back to Nanning to arrange visas for Vietnam, a part of the real Southeast Asia.

A Bike Ride in Hong Kong

Today, Barden took us on a long bike ride along the edge of the New Territories of Hong Kong. The New Territories are the northernmost part of Hong Kong that lie north of Kowloon Peninsula and south of Shenzhen. They are “new” in that the British got the 99 year lease for them in 1898, almost 60 years after obtaining Hong Kong and Kowloon after the First Opium War. 

Our ride was between two stations on the East Railway. We started at Tai Wai station and quickly found a bike rental store with kids bikes. Properly outfitted, we started along a long and beautiful bike path, first following the bank of the Shing Mun River and then the edge of Tolo Harbor. 

 Except for a small part along the highway, the bike path was gorgeous with many view points and regular public facilities. This ride really showed how “livable” Hong Kong is, with beautiful natural activities right next to the huge urban area. This would have been an easy excursion for a family, and in fact we saw more than a few. 

We thoroughly enjoyed the ride. A few times we passed small exercise areas/playgrounds which we had to sample. About halfway, we stopped for a picnic lunch along the water. We ended the ride at Tai Po Waterfront Park where the kids also got to play for a while on the structures. Around 3 pm we returned the bikes at a different stop (another great thing about this ride was that we didn’t need to loop back to the start) and took the subway back to the hostel.

But only for a few minutes. The next excitement was going to The Force Awakens, the new Star Wars movie. I figured this would be our best chance to see it in English. The kids have seen episodes 4-6 on the iPad (the original three movies for those of you who don’t know), but this was their first Star Wars experience in a theater and they weren’t disappointed. They loved the show, and time will tell whether either will have nightmares from the scary parts. The movie was in a theater in a large highrise mall. It was most confusing. We had to take two levels of escalators to the UG2 floor where we could get elevators to the 8th floor. (The first floor above UG2 was floor number 1!?!) Our theater was on the 10th floor but the elevator didn’t stop there. We had to take two more escalators from floor 8 to floor 10. Bizarre. Strange enough that they had to have women at the elevators on UG2 to help customers find their way to wherever they we going as different elevators stopped at different, seemingly random collection of floors.

After the movie, we went for a late dinner at the Very Good Seafood Restaurant. The meal was quite good, and it was fun to watch the enormous crabs in the brightly lit tanks wondering whether someone might be eating them tonight. But really the best part was the restaurant’s name.

Tomorrow we plan to go on a Hong Kong hike, followed by New Years Eve, of course.

Victoria Peak

We were going to go biking today, but Ella felt too tired this morning and won the coin flip, so we took the Star Ferry once more across the harbor and went to climb Victoria Peak. It was sunny this morning, and we had great views of the city across the harbor, with the mountains clearly visible behind the skyline.

We started up Victoria Peak by ascending an impressive series of first moving walkways and then escalators, rising up to the fancier neighborhoods above downtown. These escalators run down the hill for the morning commute, until 10 am. Then they switch directions and run uphill for the rest of the day. The escalators are covered by roofs but otherwise open to the air. 

We stopped briefly to see Barden’s old neighborhood, including the sight of his childhood building. The original building has unfortunately been replaced with a highrise. I guess that Barden’s birthplace didn’t receive the same treatment as Sun Yat-Sen’s Hong Kong abode.

From here, we caught a cab up the long, windy roads almost to the summit of Victoria Peak. We stopped for the kids to play in a small park and playground. I think it was the first time they got to play with kids who speak English in some time, and they could have stayed there for hours. From the park, we walked to a view point at the summit. The view was to the south, pretty but not of the city. 

 We went down to a spot where we could buy a small lunch and then walked along a path that winds around Victoria Peak among the thick, tropical vegetation. We eventually came to a small clearing with spectacular views of the city, the harbor, and Kowloon beyond. 

 

It took a surprisingly long time to get down Victoria Peak by bus, so after the short subway ride under the harbor, we didn’t arrive back at the guesthouse until 4:30. I went out for a run while Barden “babysat.” (Really, the kids just watched movies.) We all went out for a delicious hotpot dinner. Even Ella, who has been suspicious of hotpots ever since Chongqing, enjoyed it and gorged herself on the freshly cooked chicken.  

 It was a long but fun-filled day. Tomorrow, we will try the bike ride.

Disneyland – Hong Kong

Today, Barden gave the kids their birthday present, a day at Hong Kong Disneyland. Ella was so thrilled when she found out last night reading an iMessage from Barden to me. We were hoping to keep the secret a little longer, but oh well. 

Hong Kong Disneyland is not on the scale of Disneyworld in Orlando, but has most of the important sights and rides, starting of course with Main Street leading to Cinderella’s castle. 

 Main Street has all the shops that it does in all Disneyplaces.

We first went to Fantasyland to ride on the carousel 

 and then on the flying Dumbo elephants. 

 Dylan was then intent on trying Space Mountain, but Ella was not interested in a roller coaster ride. So Dylan and I did the ride, which Dylan loved, while Ella and Barden went on their own. To be honest, I can’t remember where. We joined up and had a picnic lunch catered by Barden. I just supplied the all-important goldfish, one of Ella’s favorite snacks at home. (We are still looking for Cheese Its.) 

We then went to Toy Storyland, where Dylan and Barden went on the crazy parachute drop 

 while Ella and I went on the more tame Slinky mini-roller coaster. Next, we all did the Big Grizzly Mine Car roller coaster, even Ella who ended up loving it. When we went on, I didn’t realize that it was such a big roller coaster. To skip the line, we went on as single riders. This meant that we didn’t have to wait long but we couldn’t all go together. I was riding with a Filipino father. Once I realized how “scary” it was, I wondered about Ella, but I needn’t have worried, she came out with a smile on her face. Though she didn’t want to do it again.

We all went to Tarzan’s Tree Fort, and then Ella and I stayed to watch the big parade while Dylan and Barden went back to Space Mountain. In the end, Dylan went on that ride four times. We ended with a Meet Stitch animated movie that interacted live with the audience.

By six, we were all exhausted and hungry. We tried to buy souvenirs but the checkout line was 30 minutes, so I told Ella she would have an IOU on a stuffed Stitch. She was not happy about this but did recover later.

It was interesting being at such an international Disney. Of course, the whole concept is based on Americana, but most of the visitors in Hong Kong are Mainland Chinese and Hong Kongers, with a significant dash of South Asians, Filipinos and Mideasterners. There are westerners as well. In fact, it is the hodgepodge that makes it so interesting, all with mouse ears and eating cotton candy. Ah, America, what we bring to the world!

Hong Kong Island

This morning we finally met up with Barden, who I have to say seems to be doing very well with his jet lag. He brought gifts from home: poppy bagels from Kupel’s, my laptop for some movie gathering, and some new movies for our hard drive, Harry Potter movies that Barden owns and a bunch of movie presents from Steve Sherry and family. After the kids got to show Barden their hovering minions, we walked from the Chung King Mansion to the Kowloon waterfront, giving the kids their first view of the harbor and Hong Kong Island across it. 

We took the Star Ferry across the water 

  and went to Admiralty to meet Barden’s mom, Mary, for delicious dim sum. 

 After lunch, we went on what turned out to be a fool’s errand looking for more movie DVDs to add to the collection on our hard drive. It turns out that Hong Kong no longer produces and sells cheap DVDs. The all must download instead. We did finally find a laser pointer for Dylan, something that he has wanted since he saw them in Yangshuo, but we eventually gave up the chase for movies and returned to our guest house. The kids wanted to watch the next Harry Potter movie (number 3), and Barden needed to go meet up again with his mom for some family time. We finished up the movie and went to Pizza Hut for dinner. I think by the end of this trip, I will have eaten enough pizza to last a lifetime. Who would have thought that a long trip to China would involve so much pizza!

Hong Kong

It’s a different world in Hong Kong: tons of people, many foreigners, including westerners and lots of south Asians, bright lights and canyon-like avenues. And everyone waits for the walk lights before crossing the street – must be an old British custom.

This morning we slept late in celebration of the twins birthday and then FaceTimed with grandpa (grandma isn’t feeling well) before heading downstairs for breakfast. The kids continued to play with their hovering minions in every free moment, whether waiting for breakfast to come or waiting for the others to finish eating. By the time we were ready to leave it was 11 o’clock. 

Even though we were in Shenzhen at the edge of Hong Kong, it took a surprisingly long time to get to our new Hong Kong guesthouse, about 3 hours. First, we took the subway to Futian Checkpoint where we followed the signs for Hong Kong. It took about 15 minutes in line to get through Mainland China passport control. Then we walk across the Sham Chun River into the Hong Kong Special Administration Zone, and line up for over 20 minutes in the throng of Mainlanders waiting to get through Hong Kong border formalities. Then we had to wait in another line to get subway tickets for Hong Kong’s East Rail to Hung Hom where we changed for the subway to Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon.

Tsim Sha Tsui is the area of Kowloon directly across the harbor from downtown Hong Kong on Hong Kong Island. Tsim Sha Tsui has a promenade with great views of the city and a few museums. Nathan Street heads away from the harbor and is lined with glitzy hotels and stores alternating with cheap eats. Fast food take away next to fancy watch stores, five star hotels next to Chung King Mansion where we are staying. Chung King Mansion is a large 18 floor building taking up most of the city block. The first floor is lined with money exchange booths and cut rate small shops. The entrance is mobbed with South Asian Indians hawking guest houses and watches. Once we braved this opening gauntlet, and passed the many exchange booths (with the best rates!), we found the two elevators for Block A. The Mansion is broken up into these separate Blocks, like separate towers of the same connected building. Of the two elevators, one goes to even floors and one goes to odd floors. The elevators themselves are tiny, crowded with me, the kids, and three other people. The first time we went up, a man took in a small wheeled trolley and Dylan promptly knocked over this plastic jug of milk tea onto the floor. We escaped the mess onto the 12th floor where there are three different guest houses as well as some private units. If I had to guess, the Chung Kong Mansion must host 40-50 different guest houses in all. Ours, the New Peking Guest House (not to be confused with the Peking Guest House on the same floor) has clean tiny rooms with stainless steel framed beds and tables. Our main room is about 10 ft by 6 ft with a small attached bathroom. With the steel framed beds, at least, we can store our bags and things below them to save room. It’s cozy, for sure.

Once we checked in, we went out for a late lunch, and the kids came back to play with their minions in the entrance area outside the guest house near the elevators, where the guest house dries their linens. It is a decent enough space for the minions to hover. Later I went for a run along the promenade while the kids watched movies until it was time for the birthday dinner. Where would any self-respecting nine-year-old want to celebrate their birthday in Hong Kong? McDonalds, of course. Nuggets and fries followed by a surprisingly good chocolate torte from the McD Cafe and a soft ice cream. Now they are in the small beds, which I pushed together, having trouble falling asleep. The street noise is not insignificant, though last night they fell asleep with rock music thumping from the club across the street. Go figure.

Tomorrow we will celebrate their birthday with Barden. Always out for particulars, Dylan noted that they don’t really turn nine until 10:30 pm, their birth time. Well, 10:30 pm Missouri time won’t happen until 11 am tomorrow morning in Hong Kong. So, we can consider tomorrow as the second day of their birthday!

In Shenzhen

If you don’t like tales about trains, then you might as well skip this post. We’ve been on trains since Jianshui, and this is how it went.

The short version is that everything went according to plan, including the parts for which I had no plan. Yeah for speaking minimal Chinese and for helpful Chinese people.

The longer version is this: We left the Jianshui hostel with instructions to walk about 15 minutes to the north gate to find the 919 bus to the train station. I didn’t know where the train station was because Applemaps didn’t show a train station or a train line near Jianshui. Applemaps has trouble keeping up with the advances in China, sometimes showing roads that aren’t finished and sometimes not having the latest. Although . . . this isn’t a new train line. Hmm. Anyway, the 919 had no problems finding the station, and better yet, we were still able to buy tickets for the noon train. It turned out that this was a train coming from the Vietnam border for Kunming. 

The ride to Kunming was a smooth one with plenty of space on the train for us to spread out. And it was nice to arrive at a familiar train station. We even knew how to exit the platform without leaving the station. When we arrived the first time, we had to exit to the street and go all the way around and through security again just to buy onward tickets to Lijiang. This time, we ended up inside the security zone and were able to easily check two of our bags so we could go for a walk in the city for a couple of hours. The kids were definitely testy on the walk. Where is there a playground? When are we going to eat dinner? Where are we going to eat dinner? Is there a bathroom around? Well, we did find a playground, we did find a bathroom in a mall (The Shalom Mall, in fact), we did find a Bank of China to resupply the funds, and we did make it back for Dico’s (fast food) before retrieving our bags and going into the station just in time to board the train.

This sleeper train was quite full. And boy was I glad that we weren’t going to the final destination: Shanghai in a mere 41 hours. We just had the next 13 hours, most of it asleep. I was glad that we ate before getting on; we didn’t need to eat instant noodles and boiled eggs, our usual train meal. Instead, the kids played, did some journal work, and I read until past 9:30. They were snuggled in bed with doggies for lights out at 10, when the conductor puts out the main lights. In no time it was 7 am, time to get up and pack away the doggies. Right on time, as usual for the trains here, we arrived in Nanning.

I quickly found out that Nanning’s subway indeed is not finished yet, but there was a bus to the high-speed train station, Nanning East. On the way to the local 7 bus, we stocked up for breakfast and lunch on the train: bananas, boiled eggs, a sausage for Dylan, and yes instant noodle soups. The 7 bus took almost 45 minutes to get to the north train station which is so far out of town that there aren’t any real buildings for half a mile. They are really planning ahead for the station and obvious expect the city to expand considerably. Right now it is a colossal building in dirt fields. But nice inside. We ate our breakfast, got some hash browns at McDonalds to supplement the usual fare, read a bit, and even were able to recharge my phone and the hard drive on the convenient outlets.

The high-speed train from Nanning East to Shenzhen North was our first G train, the faster of the high-speed lines. The train car was exactly like the D traons, which is quite nice, and most of the time the speed topped off at 200-250 km/hr. From Guangdong to Shenzhen, though, the train cruised at 300 km/hr, about 180 mph. Not bad.

Shenzhen is right by Hong Kong, and in the news for the recent landslide of a man-made mountain of excavation waste. From our Editperspective, Shenzhen is a very modern city, almost everything is under 35 years old, for that is when Deng declared Shenzhen home to a Special Economic Zone. I didn’t know exactly where our hostel was, but I did know the subway stop. The North Station has two lines with separate entrances, but a helpful bystander, in English no less, helped us choose the quickest line. It turns out that either would get us there, and in both cases we had to switch lines. As in Beijing and Shanghai, the subway announces all stops in Chinese and English, and all signs and the automatic ticket machines work in English, too. So, it was easy to find our way to the right subway stop. Finding the hostel was a little more difficult. It is in a strange complex, the OCT-LOFT, a set of austere Communist warehouses refurbished as modern art galleries, fancy restaurants, and nightclubs. And a youth hostel. Our room is just fine, the beds only twin size, the bathroom huge with great water pressure, and a lovely balcony, but there are no “real” restaurants nearby. We had a lovely penne carbonara and a pizza with Gorgonzola and mozzarella, but we were still hungry afterwards. We went on a longish walk to buy some dessert at a convenient store and snacked on leftover train food back in the room.

Tomorrow is the big day, Dylan and Ella’s ninth birthday. They got their first present today when at Nanning East I bought then each a hovering minion helicopter. They have infrared lights so they fly up when they hit the ground or if you put your hand underneath it as it lowers to the ground. They were great to play with in the huge indoor stadium that is the train station. I hope they work as well outside with obstacles. In any case, we will send them home with Barden. I love the concept of new toys only for a limited time. Then, you get them again later. A gift that gives twice.

The Swallow’s Cavern

Today we took a day trip from Jianshui to the Swallow’s Cavern, a large limestone cave with a river running through it. We started out in the so-called “dry cave,” which looks out above the river and into the “wet cave.” 

We then crossed the river on a suspension bridge and started a mile trek along pathways along the side of the river. There was a climber from the Li minority demonstrating how barefoot climbers would scale the cavern to collect swallow nests. Hokey but cool looking.

There were also many beautiful formations along the way, some illuminated by colored lights. 

    
 We ended in an enormous cave with a restaurant and many shops. Can’t say the Chinese don’t know how to “civilize” nature. After a snack of fried potatoes, we got into one of the dragon bots for the ride back to the mouth of the cave. You may have noticed that there were no Swallow’s in our pictures of the Swallow’s Cavern. That is because the swallows are only there in the spring and summer. I guess we will have to come back to see the thousands of birds that would have made this cool cave incredible.

Tomorrow we start our multi-stage journey to Hong Kong. We will start with a 3-4 hour train journey to Kunming where we will catch a sleeper train to Nanning. The next morning we will catch a high-speed train from Nanning to Shenzhen which is right beside Hong Kong. We won’t go to Hong Kong until the 26th. My main point is that the blog posts may get spotty over the next days.

Jianshui

Jianshui is a beautiful old city with elaborate gates, scores of traditional buildings, and some ornate temples and palaces. It is not, however, on the normal foreigner tourist trail. There is no Bank of China here, and more importantly no western food. We arrived yesterday after our long bus trip from Jinghong. Happily, the trip did not take 12 hours as advertised, only 9 1/2, so we arrived at about sunset, 7 pm, early enough for us to check into our hostel and get some noodle soup for dinner. The hostel is quite pleasant, but they do not have heaters or electric mattresses in the rooms, and it is much colder than in Jinghong, getting into the 40s at night. I did borrow a hairdryer to finish drying our clothes that hadn’t dried in Jinghong, but we also use the dryer to warm up our beds and even the room a little. They did give us extra blankets, though, so in bed we are warm enough.

Today we got up late and went to scrounge for food. We found a big supermarket where we bought some bananas, yoghurt, and bread and had a picnic in the Confucius park. The sun was warm today, the it got close to 70 during the day despite the cold night. The kids played briefly in a playground nearby before we went into the Confucian Temple.

The Jianshui Confucian Temple is the third largest Confucian temple in China and was modeled after the one is Confucius’ hometown, Qufu. It has a large lake within  

with its own island and lots of fish to feed. There were several chapels and the all-important statues of the Sage. 

 After the temple, we went to visit the Zhu Family Garden. The Zhus were a wealthy merchant family during the Qing Dynasty and put much effort into their extensive home/palace and formal gardens. The kids had a great time play acting in the formal rooms  

 and in the garden.  

    
Our third destination of the day was the Shuanglongqiao, the Twin Dragon Bridge, one of the ten oldest bridges in China with 17 arches spanning the Lu River.    

  

It was nice to be a tourist seeing city sites after so much time off, but we are a little out of practice. The kids were exhausted from all the walking around, as was I. After movie time/daddy run, we went to a local restaurant known for its duck which was delicious, though we ordered way too much food. Now we are back in our cold hostel room, huddling under the blankets.