November 25 and 26 --Star Ferry, Victoria Peak, Big Buddha, and no Macau, not in that order!

November 25

Bond goes biking up north of Kowloon.  Reports back that it was delightful.

When the 3 of us meet up again in the afternoon, we take the Star Ferry across with the intent to go up to Victoria Peak by tram.  We start our "urban hike" (as Bond called it) and follow the signs, but it seems we were destined to be made fools of by pieces of metal and poles.  We ended up having to traverse backwards much of the altitude we had gained by going straight up!  When we finally reached the tram stop, it was absolutely ridiculous to try to go up at that point in time.  There were lines, monster out lines.  It was impossible to sort out where the end of any of them were.  Were these lines ticket buyer lines?  Tickets purchased lines?  Were they all going to Madame Toussaud's?

We gave up and decided to go to a vegetarian restaurant that was at 51 Garden street.  Should have been just a little ways up this ridiculous hill.  We were going up and up that hill for what seems like forever, and no restaurant.  When we were traipsing to and fro looking for a continuation of the street as if it magically split off from the map, we were reduced to asking parking garage attendants, no luck, hotel concierge, minimally better.  We were about to call it a night, and start back down the hill toward the tram.  When we see 51 Garden street on the side of a building, we walked right by that!  We had gone into a supermarket and exited further up the hill and never bothered to look to our left!

We find the restaurant, which is still no easy thing, and it is absolutely vacant, not a sole in it to dine. We are shown a table and start to wonder if this is going to be a good idea!  They had a vegetarian hotpot, but only if you made a reservation...which we did not!  The food was very good.  Different and delicious.

Feeling sated, we head down the hill and decide to go up to Victoria Peak because there is no line.  Up we go, and it is so fabulous, the tram right it great, the view is excellent.  You can't beat it, except it was cold and windy, but not raining!

November 26

We 3 headed over to the Macau ferry terminal to try to catch a boat over.  It was a kind of crappy day, over cast, a little chilly, just generally not good for sight-seeing.  When we got to the terminal, we figured out that we had limited choices as to which boat we took over.  We could get tickets on the 1:30 boat, but that would leave little time to explore the island, so we opted to push Macau to Sunday.

We then decided to go to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha.  We took the metro almost to the airport and then opted to get a cable car up to the monestery.  It was really cool!  Literally and figuratively.  It was very overcast, you couldn't see very far in front or below your cabin.  Cars coming toward us on the reverse journey just appeared out of the mist like a mythical creature.  After disembarking from the cable car, we had to walk up to the monestery.  That wasn't so bad, until you get to the stairs,which seemed to go upward for ever.  Once on the top, again the weather took its toll.  The cloud cover was so low that you could not see the entire Buddha!  The wind was fierce and it was very misty as well.

The trip back down is shared in our little cabin with 3 other people, all of whom are cold and underdressed.  One of the guys was wearing shorts!

 As you can see, you can't really see the top of the Buddha, no matter how I adjust the distance!  The wind was also just ripping around at this point, so we hustled down the stairs and back to the cable car.

 This is just the 2 or 3 levels of stairs as you approach the Buddha.  That's Bon'd in the pink jacket, and Bill in front of her in the black jacket with a red stripe on the sleeve.

 Cable car views.  This is the return trip and Bond looking a bit disappointed or cold...not sure which!

Hong Kong - Bond Arrives

We woke up our usual crack of noon.  We took the ferry over with the idea that we would hit this company that processed visas for travel to India, as that was our next potential stop.  We found the place, went to the appropriate floor and found a large room separated into several smaller clusters of chairs and people.  There was a sign that directed us to a particular desk to obtain a number to submit our visa forms.  On our side of the desk, at which no one sat, was a young man talking on his mobile.  We were quite confused as to where to get the number.  Were we in the correct place, was there another place that we couldn't see?  Finally, a woman came over and printed out a number for us and directed us to sit and wait until our number was called.  As we waited, Bill decided to explore some of the other desks and areas hoping to find out if our visas would be processed in an the short amount of time we could wait in HK.

Our number was called and it turns out that the visa would take 3 - 5 business days, but wait that is for HK residents, oh, she told us, non-residents takes 7 -10 business days.  We decided on the spot that India would not happen this trip.  This is where we went looking for a book on Cairo and Egypt.  We went to a mall, where else, and had lunch in a Pain Quotidian.  It was so strange to see the place all decorated up for Christmas with the temperature in the 60 - 70 F range!

Supposedly there was a book store in the mall, and we went off to find it.  When we did, it was a teeny, tiny shop with no travel books.  There was a sister store in the Prince bldg a short distance away, so we set off for that one.

Finding our way through the high rises that make up Central HK was not as easy as one would like, given that the city is built on a hill and you can't really see where you want to go.  We wove in and out of the buildings looking for something that would give us a clue as to what street we were on!
We found the Prince bldg and the book store.  Success, we got the book on Egypt, Lonely Planet, natch!

On our way around the city we ran into a Festival, Fusan and Hong Kong Festival.  There were lion dances and several booths trying to sell Fusan as a holiday destination or a business destination. 

This was serendipity as we found no information announcing it, nor any information afterwards.  Bond's flight was supposed to land at 4 pm or so, so we hustled back to the hotel to await her arrival and subsequent Thanksgiving dinner in Hong Kong.

We ended up heading to Hau Fook street to find something to eat.  The three of us settled on a Congee place and had pretty tasty Thanksgiving Congee.

Our forward plans were to 1) Macau, 2) Bond's outdoor activity, 3) Go up Victoria Peak, 4) Night Market. 

After having dinner, we hit the night market and decided to walk up to it.  It's not far.  The market was a series of stalls that were selling the same things.  Selfie sticks, YUGE watches, bling for your cell phone, t-shirts, etc.

We walked back to the hotel and said our good nights.  Bond opted to take the morning to rent a bike up north of Kowloon and ride around for a couple of hours, that let Bill and I sleep in as we are wont open do.

Hong Kong, day 2

We made plans with the British couple to meet them for dinner at 6 pm at a Vietnamese place near their hotel.  That was the one thing we had to accomplish today!

We went looking for a bookstore on Kowloon that might have some guide books.  We saw a few, India and Egypt as well as others.  We decided to take the metro over to Central and walk to the meeting place.

We continued wandering over to the chosen restaurant and had a devil of time finding it.  It seems it changed names!  We went next door and had a couple of adult beverages before we grabbed a table in the Vietnamese place to wait for them.  The plans were left, if it works out we will meet at _____.  Obviously, it didn't work out for them.  We ate there, and it was very good.

We walked down to the Star Ferry, which at night, is one of the best views of fantastic Hong Kong Harbor.

 Chrismas decorations up on the Kowloon side!

 Hong Kong Eye Ferris Wheel

 Fabulous Hong Kong Harbor all lit up in neon or LED's.  It's always such a wonderful sight.

Hong Kong

We left Guilin to head toward Hong Kong.  Our flight was delayed at take off and we had to make a plane switch in Xiamen.  The flight to Xiamen gave us approximately a 2 hr window, but that was now being eaten into, big time.  The biggest problem was that we could not check our luggage through, we had to collect it and then check in for the HK flight.  This too, ate time from us.  There were about 6 people who were on the same flight from Xiamen to Hong Kong.  We found each other by eavesdropping on conversations with the boarding gate in Guilin and again in baggage claim.

Directly after exiting baggage, we sprinted after a Xiamen Airline employee picking up a Manila passenger to escort him through the process and very sweetly agreed to allow us to tag along and use the back doors to check in.

We made it with about 15 minutes to spare.  The flight to Hong Kong was delayed for a bit because of weather.  We finally took off and were in HK airport in what seemed like a nano-second.  (In real time it was about 2 hours).  One British couple told us about the train directly into the city.  We stopped at currency exchange, then purchased our Octopus card and hit the train.  It was soooo civilized.  Every seat back had a USB port, there was working wifi.  SSSSSSWWWWWWEEEEETTTT.  The train made 3 stops, Kowloon was the 2nd.  After exiting the train, we found the taxi queue and in a moment were in a cab heading to Hotel Benito.

This was a really nice little hotel.  It was in Tsim Sha Tsui, essentially downtown Kowloon, a hop skip and a jump from either the metro or Star ferry to Hong Kong Island.  It is certainly more ethnic Chinese, not too many westerners and has a huge spate of restaurants and amenities.  Many shopping malls which contain restaurants either in the basement or on the top 2 floors.  We check in and were given a room that smelled a bit damp.  I kept it as I was not sure what the other rooms would be like.  The hallway was always about 50degrees F with the AC roaring.  The room was maintained considerably warmer.  The windows were not able to be opened, but the view across the street was for Tom Lee's Music.  A huge billboard with many smiling children stared back into our room.

We were hungry and saw a sign for an Indian restos and went up one flight.  The place was deserted, which gave us trepidation.  There was a 3-piece band, keyboard, singer, and tabla players.  There was a party of 5 or 6 Indian fellows there who were competing with each other to sing with the band.  They were shy at first, and then really got rolling.  The singer was encouraging them to get up and sing loudly.  It was very entertaining.  The food was quite good and we asked the waiter if there was a band every night, and he said yet.  We then queried if the place was always this quiet.  He answered, it doesn't get really going until 10 or 11 pm.

We went to bed with happy bellies and so pleased to be in HK.

Longji Rice Terraces

This was a great trip.  The trip up to the terraces which are perched on the side of mountains was, at times, harrowing and beautiful.  The driver was very skillful and I felt completely confident in his abilities.  We made 2 other stops to pick up a pair of Dutch women and a pair of Italian women.

One of the Italian women was a professional photographer and she took excellent shots of some of the long-hair women after the show.

As with most organized tourist trips there will be a small component of the human zoo included.  The Long-Hair Show was ours.  We pull into this village and there is a suspension bridge over the river below which some assholes in front of us thought would be fun to make the bridge go side to side.  The only thing between you and your maker was a single rope "railing".  The show was supposed to illustrate their way of life, and I guess it did to some degree.  The singing, was with most indigenous Asian people, consisted of high pitched wailing, thought tuneful,, but at a tonal level that made the dogs uncomfortable.

Then there was the showing off of the long hair.  Apparently, women in the village only cut their hair twice in their lifetimes.  At puberty and at death. The hair from their early ceremony is kept and used to augment the hair styles that by their very shapes indicate certain aspects of the woman's status.  One style for unwed, another for married, a third for married with children.

There was a dancing portion as well as a portion where men are invited up from the audience to take part in a marriage ceremony.  Apparently, the affectionate goodbye is a pinch on the butt!

Lunch was had in the village and it was really quite tasty.  Then back on the bus to head to the top of the mountain.

We opted to take the cable car both ways, allowing us 1.5 hours up at the top overlooking the terraces.  The pictures tell the story.  Locally, these terraces are also known as the Dragon's Backbone.

 

Return to Guilin

We arranged for a taxi to take us back to Guilin because I wanted out of dodge as quickly as possible.  We waited in a restaurant for our driver for over an hour listening to a 1 minute snippet of "Let it Go" from Frozen over and over again non-stop.

Our driver finally showed up and we were off.  The road was terrible a rutted-potholed-oil-pan-ripping mess.  We humptied over the ruts and would come across a finished piece of the highway and drive on it for a while, then back to the teeth-shattering mess but on the wrong side of the road.  Repeat every 2 km!  Though Yangshuo and Guilin are only 50-60 km apart, the road trip took over an hour.

We checked back into our beloved Zhang Inn and had a room with a bay window over looking the street.

We wandered about again and ended up having dinner at "The Irish Pub", which turned out to be very good Chinese food!  The beer didn't hurt either!

We set up a trip to the "Dragon's Backbone" otherwise known as Longji Rice Terraces for the next morning.

I couldn't wait for that!

Yangshuo, Yangschmo

Yangshuo was not my favorite local in China.  In fact, I hated it.  It was crowded, tout filled, and screamed money-sucking-black-hole to me.  Not that it was overly expensive, quite the contrary, but it was geared for tourists and shameless about vacuuming their wallets dry.

(It was the only place that I saw a rat in my entire journey thus far, that includes all of the reset of China, Hong Kong, Cairo, and Luxor).

The hotel room was written about earlier, the food was much more substandard than the rest of China.  From what we were able to learn from Nic at DMZ bar was that the Yangshuo of old has been taken over by capitalism.  Meaning, that the Chinese renters of commercial space from 20 years ago have become owners of the buildings and have leased them out to others while moving out into the country side into large McMansions.  The new renters don't give a rat's ass about the structure and subsequently allow it to disintegrate into mold-filled hovels.  There were a few western owner/leasors who were concerned about the state of things, but even then, my gut feeling was that behind the good humor and cheer that was espoused, there was a hint of can't wait until I have saved enough to get the hell out and live an easier life.

For restauranteurs life is particularly difficult.  It seems that the way to deal with dirty dishes is to box them up in blue plastic crates and leave them at the curb where they eventually get picked up and washed and returned to the restaurant.  Could explain the rats, as I could see many of the boxes were "rat chewed" thru.

I have to admit that the bike ride out into the country side was a high light.  Once we got passed the tunnel of death and away from the huge trucks.  We took a wrong turn and ended up leaving the road too quickly and should have continued to ride straight along the town road before turning off.  The tunnel of death was exactly that.  A 2 lane road, (narrow at that) with a narrow sidewalk on each side which for infrequent bike riders seemed to be only the width of the under inflated tires on the bike.  One slip off of that sidewalk and your head was under the wheel of a truck, no kidding!

We both needed to relax after that.  We had no idea that it would be like that...

 Dubbed "Pink Thunder" by Bill.  We went looking to rent bikes in town and were told they had to Junkers like these.  We saw a woman on the road side renting bikes and she had these two and was shocked that we would rent them - 20 yuan each!

I was happy to go to Yangwhuo as it made Bill happy to revisit a place of fond memories from 1991.  He did agree that it was not the idyllic place that he experienced.  You can never go home again!