Thank you? Or Thank you?

I LOVE HONG KONG!! Minus the hotel disasters, I still love HONG KONG!
Wish I could stay here longer though, I must come back!
Today we had congee for breakfast. The congee was so good, I think it’s because I hadn’t eaten in a long time. But it really hit the spot! After breakfast, we went to the Hong Kong convention centre, walked to the ferry depot and took a ferry to Kowloon. Kowloon is pretty incredible too. Very modern, in their buildings, and I love their shopping! We took a nice walk through the “Avenue of Stars” and while looking at the Bruce Lee statue, a massive tropical rainstorm down poured on us. *Side Note: Michelle and Louisa, the Toronto tornado rainstorm still takes the cake.*
A whole crowd of people starting running like Godzilla was chasing behind them. All I could see was a huge cloud chasing us and a whole bunch of girls wearing heels screaming their heads off. Luckily, we found some undercover area and didn’t manage to get very wet.
For lunch, we had some Hong Kong style Dim Sum. Exactly how it is back home, except Dim Sum back home is SOO much better. I’m not too sure if that made since..
After lunch, we hit Kowloon’s shopping district and shopped a little, lost some people, and wasted a good two hours. Yeah, we were all pretty mad at some point in the middle of the day. Since we were all pretty upset of how the day was going, we decided to head back to the hotel and eat some good Shanghainese food. Which leads me to where I am right now, in Matthew’s hotel room typing up this entry.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be better day. I had so many high expectations for Hong Kong, but I still LOVE IT! I think tomorrow, we are going to do some more shopping, meeting up with some relatives and visiting some Peak.
Oh, and guess what I found this afternoon in my hotel room? A crack in the ceiling..just wonderful! But I LOVE HONG KONG!

“Hong Kong” (in a Chinese accent)

Yes!! I’m in Hong Kong! Finally at last!
The flight from Beijing to Hong Kong was full of turbulence, and the flight was delayed by at least 2 hours. The food sucked, and I think I got food poisoning. I thought that I would never make it to Hong Kong but here I am…..
Right after we got off the flight and came out of the tunnel from Kowloon into Hong Kong, my Grandpa got all jumpy and the picture on his face was priceless. He is finally home! He is at old his stomping grounds, and back in the city where he raised his family.
Yes, I’m excited to be here. But for some reason bad things keep on creeping up. When I finally arrived to the hotel, it took us a good half an hour to our room. Once we entered the room, we found out it was a smoking room. We tried to change rooms, but the front desk insisted that the hotel was full.
While stepping out of the hotel for dinner, the humidity really got to me. It was a lot hotter than it was in Beijing. A LOT HOTTER! I could feel myself getting light headed from constantly going from the cold air conditioned buildings to outside where the humidity made you sweat at an instant.
After dinner, I decided to lay my head down for a little bit, but was soon awaken, when I heard a scream coming from my aunt from the washroom. I hurried to see what was the matter, to find the bathtub full of brown water coming from the ceiling. The whole bathroom floor was covered with water, and at that very second, we knew that it was time to change rooms. We called to front desk to see if we could change rooms, but again, they insisted that they would fix the problem and not give us a new room. The cleaning service came to clean up the mess, but still the thought of brown water seeking from the ceiling, while taking a bath, is pretty disturbing. Supposedly, a Japanese tourist from the floor above forgot to turn off his bathtub and decided to take a nap. I swear, things better get better in this hotel.
And, just when things were going down the drain, the hotel doesn’t have free internet. So, sorry about the delay in not updating this blog. But luckily, my cousin Matthew decided that we would split the cost of internet for the time that we spend here in Hong Kong.
Minus all the hotel disaster, Hong Kong is a great city, minus the weather. I really like all the buildings and all the lights. I wish I could spend the rest of my holidays here. I can’t wait to go shopping and take a look at what Hong Kong and Kowloon has to offer!!!
I LOVE HONG KONG!

Let’s Get Down to Business!

Today, I climbed the Great Wall of China. I thought that I would not make it pass one tower, but I ended up climbing up four. The Great Wall is absolutely fantastic. Just to think that its thousands of years old, is incredible. While stopping at the towers to take a break, I got to take a look at where the slaves used to warn soldiers of when enemies were coming to attack. These towers had a weird smell to them. I can’t really explain the smell, but lets just say, it’s worse than the smell you smell when you go down a dirty parking lot stairwell. Yeah, it’s worse than the dried pee smell. But other than that, the view was beautiful, and I’m quite pleased with myself that I climbed that far. Although my knees are killing me now.
After the Great Wall, we went to a bunch of factory tours. At these factory tours, aggressive sales people were always on the attack to sell things to us. We went to an herbal tea factory, a silk factory and a jade factory. Some of us in our group were sucked into buying these purchases, and some of us decided that we would save our money and spend it on something else. Our tour guide Alan, made an approximately $650 US worth of commission from the purchases we made at these factories. We could see the money signs rolling off his eyes!
Alan thought since we spent most of our day on our feet, sent us to get free foot massages. The place we went too was full of massage trainees looking to get some training time on some new patients. Basically, we were their guinea pigs. I decided to soak my feet in what seemed like tea. After I removed my feet from the tea, my feet became extremely itchy for the whole night!
Getting a relaxing treatment was nice, but I was in the mood to do some shopping. Alan took us to a market in a bust part of Beijing to do some bargain hunting at this mall. My aunt who lives in Shanghai decided to help us bargain since she knows fluent mandarin. There was a knock off Dolce and Gabana trench coat that my other aunt wanted. The trench coat was offered to her at 700 Yuen. My aunt talked the salesperson down to selling the coat for 150 Yuen! We all were shocked at how she criticized the quality of the coat, and how she was able to talk down the price by some much. I’ve decided to take her everywhere I shop from now on!
We spent our last night in Beijing at a nice restaurant. Except that they served us this really weird looking beef/meatball dish. I swear it looked like dog food. I decided to try some, and it tasted exactly what it looked like…dog food. Not saying that I’ve tried dog food before. But it was pretty nasty.
Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Hong Kong. I’m kind of excited! Looking forward to hearing some Cantonese, and something that I can understand!
Good-bye Beijing!

Smog City, China

It’s my second day here in Beijing. My blog is blocked and I can’t update, which is seriously getting on my nerves. But I’m leaving for Hong Kong in two days, so hopefully I can posts these entries up!
My first full day was just packed with activities. My family rented our own bus complete with our very own personal tour guide. His name is Alan, and he can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and English. He’s a really nice guy, but he keeps on holding us up, constantly talking on his cell phone.
Anyways, yesterday we visited the Forbidden City. It was extremely humid. I thought I was going to suffer a heat stroke, but thank god I didn’t. The tour gave us free bottled warm water. Although it did keep me hydrated, warm water doesn’t mix well with humid weather. The Forbidden City was nice, but I couldn’t pay much attention as the humidity was really getting to me.
But, oh my goodness, after the Forbidden City, we went to the Summer Palace, just a wonderful place to be. If I had a choice of which one was better, Summer Palace takes the win! Summer Palace was built for the emperor as his summer home. There’s a mad-made lake and a man-made mountain. I took lots of pictures, and we got to ride this dragon boat across the lake. According to Alan, our tour guide, Summer Palace’s lake and mountain took approximately two years to create. Thousands and thousands of workers dug up the lake and piled it together, to make a mountain.
After dinner, we caught a Chinese Cultural show. It was an absolute spectacular. My cousin Matthew was randomly selected to volunteer to take part in an act up on stage. He had to sit inside a huge vase while being twirled by a girl with her feet. It was a hoot, everyone just about died laughing. He wasn’t scared at all, and was happy to take part. Probably one moment he will never forget.
On a negative side, Beijing has the craziest drivers ever. I thought I was going to die a couple of time, while on the tour bus. The driver was always constantly honking at other drivers. But a good bus driver otherwise.
Tomorrow, its time that I climb the Great Wall. Not too sure if I can make it due to the heat, but I’ll see how far my legs can take me!

Up In The Air. Beijing here I come!

So, as I write this, I am flying over somewhere in Siberia. My cousin Matthew is sitting to my left and my cousin Jordan is sitting to my right. I was actually surprised that they served good food on the flight. The in-flight meal was a choice of either beef or chicken with a side of rice. I chose chicken, which was pretty good. A little spicy and a little sweet, but didn’t come with any vegetables. Although, the beef choice came with vegetables with pieces of gai-lan and lo-bak. The meal came with salad, a dinner roll, and some sort of cheese cake, which I must say was pretty darn good. They also served a tuna salad sandwich, which I gave to my cousin, because it was probably the most unappetizing sandwich I have ever seen. It also smelled funny. Hopefully, he doesn’t get sick!
I have a good 4 hours left on this plane ride. My feet are swollen, my thighs and back hurt and I seem to be really tired, but can’t sleep. I tried stretching my legs, and walking around, but it didn’t help much. There is no air conditioning on this plane, which means the atmosphere is very humid and disgustingly sweaty. The movies on the plane are okay. I’m currently paused at the movie “Bride Wars”. Matthew is watching Sherlock Holmes, which he finds very boring. But I think the most awesome feature that the plane provides are cameras filming the outside of the plane.
Oh, and before I forget, just my luck, I already broke my pair of headphones. I think I either stepped on them, while they were in my backpack, or their just really crappy. Also, my hand lotion exploded in my purse. But luckily I put it in a zip lock!
Anyways, I can’t wait to land in Beijing, get something to eat and then hit the sack at the hotel. I’m super tired and I’m pretty sure that I won’t be able to adapt to the jet lag. So, wish me luck!

SOOO SORRY

I'm so sorry for not updating. I am without internet here in China. I'm currently using my cousins paid internet at our hotel in Hong Kong. But I have been updating everyday here in China. So, keep on checking back on when I load all of my entries!
If you're wanting to know, I'm having fun here! Getting use to the lifestyle here in China, it's way different than life back in Vancouver. Missing everyone! I'll update soon again!

One More Night's Sleep

I have one more night's sleep then I'm off bright and early to catch my 1 o'clock flight. I'm packed and ready to go. I still have some jitters in me, not to sure if it's excitement or uncertainty. I know I should look at this trip as a learning experience and go to China with an open and positive mind. I'm just not looking forward to the plane ride. It's so freaking long.
So, tonight, hopefully I'll be getting a good nights rest. I think I've prepared myself as much as possible, minus the knowledge of mandarin and squatting. But hopefully, I'll get help with that (minus the squatting). I'm going to update as much as possible. I'm going to be writing on the plane, and post my post as soon as I get internet.
So, wish me goodluck! I'll be arriving in Beijing at 2ish am Pacific time, 5ish pm China time. So, if you get a phone call late at night, it might be from me, haha! (Just joking, but it might be as soon as I get a calling card!)
Ok, so the next time I'll be writing will be up in the air on an airplane headed for Beijing!
China, here I come!