China – Days 13+14: December 2014
Again, sorry for the late post, but time got away from us (and we’ve been busy since we got home, as you can imagine!).
Our last day in Guangzhou was pretty relaxing. We woke up and took our time getting ready in the morning then had our last big buffet breakfast of the trip. We didn’t have to meet up with our guide until 4:30 pm so we took the morning to explore Liuhuahu Park, the other park near our hotel. The park was not quite as big, but had a great playground. Chinese parks and playgrounds are awesome. Part of it is probably because so many people use them for their daily activity. At this particular park, we saw large groups of people walking, playing with kids, exercising, etc., but park exercise in China is much more fun and interesting thank park exercise in the US. In the states, when you see people exercising in the park they are usually jogging or playing tennis. In China, they are doing choreographed dance routines or playing on adult-sized playground equipment (see pictures ).
Anyway, we played in the park for most of the morning, then went to an Australian-owned restaurant across the street from our hotel for lunch (mainly because they serve breakfast all day and omlettes for lunch are awesome). Even though the restaurant is owned by an Australian chain, obviously the people working were Chinese so our lunch orders were slightly lost in translation. Our food was exactly as ordered, but Leslie tried to order 2 Coke Zeros to drink, but we were brought Coke floats made with Coke Zero and were forced to “suffer†through eating ice cream with our lunch. Neither of us has had an ice cream float in probably 15 years and had forgotten how delicious they could be.
After lunch we went back to the hotel so Han could take a nap and we could finish packing for the trip home. The hotel was nice enough to give us a late checkout, so we didn’t have to be out of our room until 4 and we were able to nap on schedule. We met our guide at 4:30 and she gave us Han’s passport with his US Visa (which she had apparently only been able to pick up half an hour before we were meeting to leave). We took a cab to the train station, which was pretty chaotic. Getting into Hong Kong from the rest of China requires going through immigration since Hong Kong operates as sort of a city-state separate from China so getting on the train required producing our passports and having our temperature taken (both China and Hong Kong are obsessed with taking your temperature before you are allowed to enter; we don’t want to know what happens to people who have a fever).
Anyway, once we finally got on the train, it took about 2 hours to get to Hong Kong. Han did a really great job on the train ride, playing with his stacking cups, eating snacks, and being cute in general. When we arrived in Hong Kong, they took our temperature again as we were going through immigration (it is just an automatic scanner thing that you walk through, but someone came up and did a manual temperature-taking of Han) and had to produce our passports again so that we could get through immigration. Once we finally had our bags, we met our new guide (we were exhausted at this point and I can’t remember her name) and rode about 30 minutes to our hotel (which was attached to the airport). Apparently, it is the largest hotel in Hong Kong with over 1,000 rooms. It was a really nice hotel, but we didn’t really have time to enjoy it. We went straight to our room and went to bed because it was almost 9 pm by this point.
A few words about Hong Kong, it is really bright and shiny (as in there are neon signs everywhere), the traffic is terrible (as in lots of it), and they drive on the left side of the road (a throwback to when it was a British territory). We didn’t really get to see any of the city except what we drove through on the way to the hotel, but we will definitely spend a little more time there the next time we go to China.
When we woke up, we didn’t have to be at the airport until about 9, so Jeff took Han to the “Kiddie Land†hotel playground while Leslie packed everything to leave for the airport. We checked out of the hotel and made our way to the airport. After checking in we tried to get something to eat. We were able to get food for Han and then tried to find a table, which was next to impossible. The food area of the Hong Kong airport was packed. After walking around for a few minutes, we finally saw 3 tables that were empty, when we tried to sit at one of them and man came up and yelled at us that he was saving all three tables and we could not sit there. Leslie was more than a little annoyed and was kind of in the mood to fight him for it, but a couple was leaving another table and we managed to get a seat. That little incident in Hong Kong kind of exemplified the difference between Hong Kong and China proper. Anywhere else in China, people would have seen us with a kid and offered us their seat; it is just how they operate. In Hong Kong it seems to be every man for himself, if this is any indication. Anyway, after eating we found a playground at the airport and Jeff and Han played while Leslie guarded the luggage and charged her phone.
The flight to San Fransisco was about 12 hours. Han slept for about 2 of them. The flight was pretty uneventful and Han really did a great job, but it was really exhausting trying to entertain him for the flight. When we got to the US, we went through customs and immigration and Han officially became a US citizen. We didn’t have seat assignments for our flight from San Fransisco to St. Louis, which panicked Leslie a bit, but it all ended up working out and we made it on to the plane. Han was throwing a screaming fit in the San Francisco airport, which is pretty rare for him, but it was definitely due to the lack of sleep. We had a bag of Dum Dums that we were saving to calm him down as needed on the flight. We had already gone through a bunch by that point and he was upset that he couldn’t have more. Luckily kept him relatively quiet until we were able to get on to the plane and then after a short delay he fell asleep and slept for almost the entire flight to St. Louis.
Technically, by this point, we were 24 hours+ into Christmas Day due to time zones, so we’ll stop the Day 13+14 recap here and we’ll post info / pictures of our “homecoming†next time.
See pictures and videos below or in our China: Days 13+14 SmugMug gallery.
[smugmug url=”http://hinyard-lash.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=46584352_66M4jM&format=rss200″ imagecount=”200″ start=”1″ num=”200″ thumbsize=”Th” link=”lightbox” captions=”false” sort=”false” window=”false” smugmug=”false” size=”L”]