Our Daughter's Visit

01/18/2015   We were so excited to have Leanna fly in on the 18^th, the same non-stop flight we took from San Francisco.  We were still staying at Raffles at that point and I think she liked it.  She had her own room with black out curtains and a TV to help with the adjustment in time change, and her own luxury bathroom.  The shower alone was the size of some people’s entire guest bathroom.  She is young and made the switch from night to day look easy.

 

01/19/2015   We paid extra for an additional buffet breakfast so we all could eat together.  After that we took turns each morning.  We started the tour with a trip to Tianfu Square and the giant Mao statue.  As soon as we popped up out of the subway, people started asking to have their picture taken with Leanna.  Instant celebrity!  Next was the Wenshu Buddhist monastery, a step back in time to an older China.   Inside the complex are temples, monks, gardens, etc.  You don’t notice or feel the big modern city around you.  We walked around the nearby alleys with their stalls and snacks and saw a little old lady doing a cute dance.  Even though Leanna is several inches shorter than us, she was at least a head taller than a lot of the older people living here.

Leanna and Mao

Daddy and Daughter at Wenshu Monastery

Mommy and Daughter with the Pandas

We continued on to the Lotus market, a humongous mass of shops and sellers clustered near the railway station.  You can see every means of transporting goods there – amazing what you can pile up on one person on a bike.  It is an assault on the ears and the eyes, but has to be experienced.  Next the place where the woman sells DVD’s out of her apartment.  I think Leanna was getting a little leery of us taking her to sketchy places.  A home cooked meal of pork roast and mashed potatoes helped.  That night we watched a DVD she suggested called “The Imitation Game” about the man who broke the Enigma code in WWII.  Very interesting.

01/20/2015   Today we just repeated the schedule we took Steve and Betty Ann on.  We think Leanna enjoyed seeing all the pandas up close and personal.  But since it has been three trips there for us in just a few months, it became “seen one panda, seen them all”.  She did not appreciate the game of chicken we had to play to cross the busy highway to get to and from IKEA.   I do think she was truly impressed with the size and scope of the Global center, which is saying a lot considering she lives in NYC.  We walked all around the indoor water park, now closed and drained for the season.  It is an entire resort all by itself.  Peter’s Tex Mex for dinner then back to the high rise to put a tired Leanna to bed. 

01/21/2015   Today is Bethany’s 35^th birthday (our oldest daughter).  We love her dearly and can’t imagine our family without her.  She has a kind heart and does so much for others.  We took Leanna to the antique market in the morning, thinking she might like the jewelry but she wasn’t really into the ethnic looking stuff.  She did find a little seated Buddha statue.  The Sichuan museum is nearby so we looked at a few displays of old crockery and new embroidery and silk brocade handiwork.  Lunch consisted of fresh fruit and cookies bought at a grocery store and eaten in a park.  The weather here (and the unusual lower levels of pollution) was a welcome change for Leanna.

In the afternoon we toured the Qing Yang Taoist (also known as the Green Ram/goat) temple complex.  We stopped by Wal-Mart on the way home.  Leanna loved seeing the weird things sold in the meat side.  She also got potato chips and Oreos in unusual flavors to take back home and share with her roommates.  She braved another DVD hunt with us and we watched “Into the Woods” that night.  She fell asleep in the middle of it somewhere.

01/22/2015   And it came to pass - It was our last night in the surreal world of the high rise as the Mitchell’s would be returning tonight.  We packed up everything thing, left our suitcases in the apartment, and requested the maid service to come while we were out for the day.  Jin Li Street is a reproduced “old” street strictly for tourists, but well done with moon bridges over streams, small shops and even an “opera” house.  After some shopping we treated Leanna to lunch ("really, really" good food) and a show – a little Sichuan Opera.  People were having their ears cleaned at the tables while we waited for the show to begin.  The Opera is really like Chinese vaudeville with several short acts of music, dancing, and comedy.  It ends with the face changing thing that is always impressive.

Leanna at Jin Li Street

Some people are so small

Mmmmm - Chinese Dishes

We came back to Raffles, drug all our suitcases to the bus stop, squeezed on the bus, and arrived at our true abode.  You will just have to ask Leanna what she really thought of the place, especially compared to her few days at the high rise.  For dinner we treated her to fish flavored fried eggplant at our favorite hole in the wall restaurant around the corner.  She watched some of our Sherlock DVD’s and slept on our couch.

 

01/23/2015   Last minute laundry before our big trip.  School is out here but we took Leanna to the nearby old campus anyway just to see what it was like.  I think we ate something for lunch there.  Probably just Clyde ate something and Leanna and Anne had ice cream on a stick.  It’s usually jam packed with students, a sight to see in itself, but most have gone home for the break.  In the afternoon we took her to the “icky market”, a must see for travelers.  Along with fruits and veggies, frogs, turtles and eels, there are recently demised animals in all stages of gore.  We took her on a last look of the city going all the way around the city on a bus on an elevated lane.  Too bad this was a smoggy day so you couldn't really see much.

 

1/24/2015   Leanna finished up the Sherlock series as we repacked for Hong Kong.  We took a taxi van to the airport and arrived at the HK airport that evening.  The airport is on an island.  We had to get some HK dollars out of our ATM (7.7 to $1 USD) and purchase train tickets.  We eventually ended up on Hong Kong island, (there are many that make up “HK”), then took the Star ferry across the harbor to our hotel.  They wouldn’t let us put three adults in a room so Leanna got her own room.  We ate at a very crowded McDonalds that night and did a little walking around.  Anne bought a much needed, nicer camera than the one we've been using for years.  We were so surprised at how many non-Asians we saw.  We are used to being the only ones and getting stared at, but now we were staring at them ourselves, just hadn't seen that in a while.  It was a diverse mix of languages as well.

1/25/2015   Sunday.  Steve and Betty Ann Curtis were also in HK by now and we met up with them to catch the subway to church.  We went to the chapel on the Kowloon (mainline) side, right across the street from the temple.  The service was in Cantonese so we only stayed for Sacrament meeting.  We changed our clothes there and someone recommended we take a one hour hike (with steps) up the nearby Lion Rock Hill.  It turned out to be a very hot day and a very steep climb – I don’t think the Chinese believe in switchbacks – it was stair steps all the way.  At some point Leanna and Anne gave up and went back down.  Clyde kept going and reached the point where the signs advised turning back.  We met up up at a lovely park near the bottom where we should have just gone in the first place.  From there we could see how high the peak really was.

View from the path to Lion Rock

Hong Kong Temple

Victoria Harbor from Kawloon

On the way back we stopped at the Ladies/Night Markets that were right out of every crazy Asian themed movie you've ever seen.  Jammed packed stalls with little room to pass by other tourists, everyone yelling and bargaining.   Shop owners were asking “copy watch?”, “copy purse?” meaning they were selling name brand knock-offs.  Leanna is much better at the bargaining thing than we are.  (Must be that NY attitude.)   We ate dinner at a dump of a place right in the middle of it called “Little India” and it actually tasted pretty good.  We next claimed spots on the promenade an hour early and caught the “spectacular light show” across the harbor.  The buildings on the HK side are lit up in sync with some music and a few lasers go off on the tops at the end of the 13 minutes.  It was OK but I think they should leave the word “spectacular” off the travel brochures. 

Hong Kong across the harbor

The Bib Bus Tour

The back side of Hong Kong Island

01/26/2015   After breakfast at McD’s we took the Star Ferry across to HK and paid for a Big Bus tour.  There are cheaper ways to do this yourself, but it was Leanna’s last day and we needed to get the broad exposure.   There are two lines, one for the route into the country side and the other for the city spots, hop on hop off, so we just signed up for both.  HK Island is like NYC on one side and Hawaii on the other.  We road on the open top of a double decker bus and it was a pretty wild and winding affair.  Complementary headphones commentary told us what we were looking at and a little history.  The back side has beautiful, uncrowded beaches and high-end resorts.  We got off at Stanley, a little sea side town with a quiet market.  Anne was able to buy some clothes here that actually fit her.  We walked to a little beach and took some pretty pictures of Leanna on the rocks.

Part of the Big Bus tour included a boat ride in the harbor on a sampan.  We saw living arrangements from fancy yachts to simple house boats.  We also went past a floating restaurant.  

Floating Restaurant

Back on the bus we continued the tour to the city side.  We hopped off at the Peak Tram station and got in a really long line to go up Victoria’s Peak.  The Peak Tram has been hauling people up the steep incline for over a century.  For the people who live up top, this is how they commute to and from work.  It was like some slow railroad thrill ride as you are pulled up at an unnatural angle.  It ends at the Peak Tower, a sort of mall at the top.  We walked around the top and saw stunning views of the city and harbor below.  Being pretty hungry by now, we were able to get a table by a window at Bubba Gump’s when someone with reservations didn't show up.  It was cool to eat while watching the sun go down and the city lights come up.

Going up the Peak Tram

View from Victoria Peak

Dinner on Victoria Peak

If we thought the line to come up the peak was long, we were in for a surprise at the really long line to go back down.  And it was colder then too.  But the ride down was just as fun as the ride up.  Another bus and a ferry and we were back on the Kowloon side.  We took a stroll along their waterfront promenade with the Avenue of the Stars – kind of like their Hollywood walk of fame – where famous Asian stars left their hand prints.  They have a famous statue of Bruce Lee.

City and Harbor at night

It was Leanna’s last night before returning to NYC so she was in a funk.  But to make it worse, when we returned to the hotel and could check emails, she found out her flight had been canceled due to bad weather on the east coast.  They were expecting the “storm of the century” and all of the New York airports were shut down in advance.  She originally had a non-stop flight to NYC.  We spent a few hours panicking until she was able to be re-routed to Chicago.  From there the airlines would see about getting her into New York.  She had to leave messages with her roommates and bosses about what to do in case she couldn’t make it in.  She really didn’t want to have to spend the night in the Chicago airport.  I don’t think she got much sleep that night.

 

01/27/2015   We went to the airport and just hoped all would be well.  A very nice United representative met us at the airport and talked Leanna through all her options.  She stuck with the Chicago choice and it turned out OK.  By the time she got there, the “storm of the century” didn’t materialize and she was able to go on to NY eventually.  Unfortunately she also had to go into work the next day.  They don’t call it work (instead of “fun”) for nothing.  We sure loved having her here and being able to show her our life at the moment.  We hope she was astounded and impressed with our abilities to survive and thrive.