Family Travels Part 1: Hong Kong

Many of you probably already know about the ridiculosity that was our first night in Hong Kong, but for those of you who don't, here's the short version: The hotel company booked us a room not simply in the wrong hotel, but in the hotel in the wrong province. A good three hour plane flight away. So seeing the fam was great, but finally getting into bed at 3:something in the morning after all of us having been up for many many hours...was good too.

One of the first things we did on our first day in Hong Kong was take a cable car up one the little mountains to the observation area to take a look at the city. The cable car ride was pretty awesome, and comparable to a ride at disney world. We did occasionally believe the car was going to give up and roll backwards down the hill. That thing was steep.

The view was totally worth it, by the way.

At the top of the mountain, a poor man was being filmed for a movie whilst wearing a full suit. The weather was at least in the 90s, so they kept having to pat his forehead down. I am amazed he did not get heatstroke.  

And, um...yeah.

We took the cable car back down, and Rachel took videos. I really just like this picture. I have no real reason for posting it.

 

People. They were waiting for the cable car. It was like Times Square on New Years Eve, only fewer flashing lights. 

Then more stuff happened. I will now switch to captions, just for the sheer pleasure of messing with you.

A view from the ferry ride back to our island.

Rachel kindly takes a moment to point out our location on the map.

Food. Also, exhaustion.

Strange display of some sort. Not sure what it was for. There were animals riding in teacups/coffee-bean-bag-balloons.

The next day we went to see the giant Buddha. It was cool. Half that coolness was the gondola ride up to it. It went up the mountain, across the water,  over another mountain, over a ways, and then to the Buddha. The ride took about half an hour.

Cuteness.

 And there you can see the Buddha. It's still really far away. It's just super-freaking-huge.

There was a cow. Just...wandering. I couldn't resist.

Many stairs away, the Buddha waits serenely for all the huffing, puffing tourists to make it up the hill. 

Duuuude.

In other news, the hike up to the Buddha also awarded us a wonderful view of the surrounding hills and ocean. 

There was cotton candy. 'nuff said. 

I am still dreaming of this.

 Later, back in the main area of Hong Kong, we saw a temple. It was nicely lit up for the evening.

Also, we went to a market. 

And saw the pretty view of the opposite shoreline at night. It was pretty awesome. 

A/N. Also, Beer.

Ok. Here's the deal: my vpn failed me for over a month, and by that time I was well into the begining of classes and stuff, so the blog just never got updated. So Here's what I'm going to do. I'll post a bunch of pictures of what I've been up to since then, and I'll post them all really soon, but that means no long descriptions, because if I put up nice long stories for everything, I'll never get my midterms done. Which would kind of suck. Really.

So here's the fist one: Qingdao (青岛), which was the two day over-night trip at the end of the Summer semester. We saw a brewery, lots of beer, ate food, lots of beer, climbed a mountain, lots of beer, there was a beach, lots of beer, a night club with a trampoline floor, and lots of beer. If I was in any way inclined to actually like beer, I may have enjoyed the trip just a little bit more. It was pretty fun anyway, though. Even if the entire city does smell like beer.

Qingdao brewery. Bet you guesses as much from the GIANT PACK OF BEER on the roof. No? Well, you have only yourself to blame.

A beer fountain. Fitting.

I don't know if this was meant to read "Careful! Staircase." or "Careful Staircase" but my conclusion is the same in any case. Was this sign put up in response to something? Do many people have problems with the stairs?

Not entirely sure why they had to warn people not to eat this...seems pretty self-explanatory to me.

Shiny beer-making stuff.

The brewery had a drunk room. Just in case anyone interested enough in beer to come see the factory and get free samples didn't know what being drunk was like. The tv screen on the wall is showing us crazy people inside obviously incapable of standing up.

I swear the camera is not tilted.

The night market sells puppies

It also sells loads of chuar (串).

And small turtles.

Some of the apartment buildings had the best paint jobs ever.

Still not entirely sure what the floating thing is above that building. We never could find it during the day.        Therefore, obviously aliens.

There is a reason that five out of the nine people you can see are asleep. That reason being basic college student stupidity, but still. There's a reason.

Crickets

Walking back from class one afternoon, we happened upon a cricket man. It was very exciting. The crickets--which might actually have been cicadas--were sold individually in small, round, woven boxes. The whole pile of cricket containers, looking uncomfortably like a hive, was mounted on the back of his bicycle.

Charlie Brown

On my way back from the supermarket, I discovered an amazing cafe that I really have to go to sometime soon. They're apparently all over Asia, and they're called The Charlie Brown Cafe. Since I didn't have time to go in, I only have pictures of the outside for now, though I have been told that the inside is just as fantastic.

Shopping Trip: Welcome to Carrefour

There isn't much behind this post. My roommate and I went to the supermarket--it's big, almost like a Walmart or Target, and it has a lot of imported food. Really, it has a lot of food in general. So, of course, we found some pretty hilarious and strange things to take pictures of. Starting with the gum.

I, myself, don't really understand the concept of doublemint gum that's flower or cucumber flavored, but I guess, compared to some of the other products, it's not too weird.

Next we found the chips.

All I can say is Hot & Spicy Hot Pot Flavor and Hot & Sour Fish Soup Flavor are not nearly as strange as the blueberry flavor we found later. I don't know why Chinese people feel inclined to eat blueberry flavored potato chips, or any of the other weird flavors for that matter. I tend to just stick with the normal flavors. Like American Flavor (plain), or Texas Barbecue, or Italian Red Meat. Not sure what that last one is, but it tastes like barbecue, and we bought it by accident.

While shopping for peanut butter and honey to make sandwiches, I came across some other odd products in the honey section.

I figured "Purity Honey" was just a bad translation of "pure honey". However, the "Honey Product for Ladies" actually seemed to be a direct translation. Which is why I bought a different brand.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

As you may have guessed from the title, our return trip from Chengde to Beijing went quite a bit less smoothly than the rest of the weekend had. First of all, we had train tickets but no seats. Because in China, trains do "standing room only". And boy do they mean it.

The first hour or so of the trip wasn't too bad. We hung out in the really narrow aisles and played Uno, though we had to get up every few minutes for people to walk through. The aisles were so narrow that an airplane food cart wouldn't have fit through them.

The next leg of the trip, after a considerable amount of people had boarded, and not many had gotten off, was a little less comfortable. Comparatively, at least.

This is what the car looked like during the relatively empty times:

and this is what it looked like when we were not as lucky...

Buddha and the Temple of Awesome

The second day in Chengde we had a few hours before we had to catch our train, so we went to the Puning Temple Scenic Area. It's really a big Buddhist temple with a variety of different small temples and buildings, and the largest wooden Buddha in the world. Or in China. I'm not really sure which. Probably the world. Anyway, one of the other cool things about this temple complex is that it was built to to show some of China's diversity. The first section is Han style, but the second section is actually Tibetan style. Of course, from the front gate the Han section is the more visible of the two. But if you look up the hill, you can see the white of the Tibetan buildings.

Most of the small temples had statues of the Buddha inside of them that were pretty recognizable,

along with some statues of his disciples, which were less recognizable--at least to me.

There were also these prayer-wheel-things everywhere.

You're supposed to spin them while you pray so you'll have good luck for years to come.

Since none of us could think of a good reason not to spin a pole for good luck, we all tried it.

Then we climbed up to the next set of temples. It was a long set of stairs, but totally worth it.

When we reached the top we saw one really big temple,

a whole bunch of smaller ones,

and a lot of people burning incense. Well, to be fair, they had been doing it in front of most of the temples, but this was where I got the best pictures of it.

First, they lit their incense at torch-like contraptions.

Then they said their prayers, waved their incense and bowed in a couple different directions, and put their incense in the large holders in front of the temple.

When we went inside the temple, we saw possibly one of the most amazing statues ever. It was probably two or three stories high, and made entirely from wood. It had "a thousand" (closer to forty-five) arms, which with an eye in the center of the palm, and about half of which were holding different objects.

The Buddha had two disciples, who were a bit shorter and made of stone. But still pretty cool.

The temple was full of images of the Buddha, including smaller statues, and even the walls were covered in small figurines.

But in the end we did keep going, and when we reached the next level up, there was an amazing view in reward.

There were also swags of chain covered in locks hanging between poles. They had peoples' names on them, and the date when they were hung. They were supposed to "lock in" your love, or luck, or wealth--or whatever else you payed for.

From there we could also see in the back of the temple with the big Buddha.

After taking a peek, we followed the locks even further up the hill, to the top of the temple complex.

And another view! (bet you're getting sick of those)

One our way back down--because going up means coming down at some point--we stopped in a courtyard to rest,

and noticed a woman getting into a traditional Chinese costume.

So we decided to dress up as well. Since there were four girls who wanted to dress up, and only one guy on the trip, he got to be the emperor.

We took a picture outside as well...

which meant that other people could see us, which meant that lots of random people took pictures of us, and some people even took pictures with us.