The Smith's go to China
We started in Hong Kong, where we spent 4 very short days exploring the sights. We started in
Hong Kong Park. We are not people that normally take pictures of plants but we found these lily pads
to be very unusual:
Then we came across a huge pelican, almost as tall as me:
We took a tram up to Victoria Peak, which overlooks Hong Kong Harbour. Here's the view we had:
We found another tourist to take our picture from Victoria Peak. It's not very visible but the harbor
is right behind us:
Here's the front of a typical restaurant in Hong Kong, fortunately, we found alternate places to eat!
We did lots of shopping while there, here's Tom on Nathan Lane, the busiest and biggest shopping
area in Kowloon. All along Nathan Lane, a tourist is constantly asked "copy watch"??? In addition to the
copy shops, there's lots of jewelry stores that sell the real thing.
One night, we had dinner with Tom's Hong Kong agent, Jim Han, and his niece, Evelyn. We were
brought to a restaurant that's frequented by locals, rather than tourists. Part of the meal included
this chicken. You'll notice the chicken's head on the left side of the plate, this is to ensure
customers that it was a very fresh chicken....yuck!
The following day, we went with Jim to a local temple, the Wong Tai Sin. Even though it was Tues mid-morning,
the whole place was very busy. The trick is to buy incense sticks, light them all, bow and say a prayer, and
put 3 sticks in each prayer pot you find. There's probably more to it than that but Jim admitted that he really
wasn't a frequent temple-goer.
Here's a fruit stand in Hong Kong, the fruit on the front right is called a rambutan and tastes
much better than it looks!
Here's a typical junk boat in Aberdeen harbour. We visited Jumbo, the biggest floating restaurant
in all of Asia. We had typical scary stuff to eat there, too.
After the four days in Hong Kong, we flew to Beijing. The first thing we did was visit McDonald's (we
hate to admit it!) and then Tiananmen Square. In this picture, we particularly like the little
kid on the left posing in our picture:
Here's me at the entrance of the Forbidden City:
One of the streets I came across had this set up - bunnies in cages. Didn't want to think what they would
be for - hoped it was for pet reasons and not dinner!
Here's Tom at the Temple of Heaven, where we visited with Jim one day:
Here we are at the Great Wall of China in Badaling. Unfortunately, it was a drizzly, foggy, cloudy day
so the view wasn't quite there but didn't make it any less spectacular!
Here we are at the Fangshan restaurant on our last night. The restaurant is built inside the
emperor's winter palace. The woman behind us is one of the waitresses and she's dressed in traditional
ming dynasty clothes. We didn't catch her shoes but they were definitely a sight to see!
On the way home from Beijing, we stopped in Sydney and saw the NFL exhibition game - San Diego vs. Denver
it was nice to feel like Americans again (even though there was an Australian announcer, go figure).