Guilin, China

We have returned from our weekend trip to Guilin mainland China. I've never seen a third world country until this trip so it was definitely a bit of a culture shock. It is a scenic place and has some natural beauty to it, but I don't think we'll be returning anytime soon!

We got to go on a tour through an old cave, ride up to the top of a mountain in the cable car, take photos with a monkey, go on a riverboat tour and have a tour guide show us around the area. The best thing was the hour long massage we got for about $12 bucks each!

Here are some of our photos.

The entire album from this trip can be viewed by clicking here: Guilin Photos

On the riverboat

There were all these people following alongside the boat the whole time begging for money.

I never knew a place dirtier than Tijuana could exist, but it does. Nobody uses toilet paper in mainland and good luck even finding a regular toilet anywhere. Most of the things we saw that were called toilets were disgusting holes in the ground and completely unsanitary. I don't even want to be descriptive in explaining it. It was truly the nastiest thing I've ever seen in my life. The cleanest public bathroom was in the airport and I even cringed at it. Who came up with this retarded idea of a toilet on the floor???

Finding food there that wasn't snake eyes, turtle soup, fried frog or an organ from some animal was as bad as finding a normal toilet. The stuff people eat there looks SO GROSS!! We pretty much ate M&M's, fruit, rice and french fries at the restaurant in our hotel since that was literally all we could find that was "normal" to us. Oh, and people drive crazy in China! There are no traffic laws there, all people do is honk at each other and pass eachother on the wrong side of the street! It was an experience but we were happy to get back to civilization and normal food in Hong Kong on Monday night!

Friday we leave for Singapore and Bintan for 6 days. Looking forward to that!

Funny

I forgot to post this a few weeks ago when it happened. I thought it was funny that our cab driver's name was Shit!

Shopping for shoes in Hong Kong SUCKS

Apparently, an 8 or 8.5 shoe size = giant ogre over here. Nearly every place I go looking for shoes doesn't carry anything larger than 6 or 7. LAME!!! A lady working at the Nine West store looked at me like I was crazy and yelled, "NO SIZE, THAT WAY TOO BIG!"when I told her my size. At least I finally found a pair of hiking shoes today. I was starting to get pissed off.

Dave and I booked a few trips for the next couple weeks!

We are going to Guilin in mainland China this weekend and will be going hiking and doing some outdoors stuff there. It's about an hour flight from HK. Guilin is supposed to be really beautiful and scenic w/rivers, lakes and hiking trails so we're excited to check it out.

Next Wednesday we are flying to Singapore for a few days and then taking a boat to Bintan island in Indonesia for the weekend. It's peak travel season here because it's Chinese New Year, but we were able to get lucky and get a room at this Bintan Lagoon Resort. http://www.bintanlagoon.com It looks pretty amazing. I want to rent boats and jetski's there and do it all!

World's Tallest Buddha

Dave and I went with Amanda and Lou to see the big buddha last weekend. We took the cable car over the water to get all the way up there. It was awesome.

We are really high up! Scary?!

This thing is HUGE.

Click here to see more of the Buddha pics: Buddha Photos

The Hong Kong Carnival

Amanda and I went to the carnival here last week. It was awesome. I love rides! That's my chinese fish I won at one of the games. Word!



The best part about the whole thing was the music. I have never been to a carnival that had strobe lights everywhere and sounded like a club in Vegas. I was expecting the typical happy carnival type music, but no, at every ride they were blasting clubbing music. It was hilarious.


This ride (The Destroyer - nice name) was awesome but the music was the best...HAHAHA.

Click on the video to play:




I thought I was going to die on the one ride called the G-Force. It was insane.

Click on the video...watch out for the crazy music.

Out in Lan Kwai Fong

Lan Kwai Fong is Hong Kong's popular entertainment district right down the street from our apartment. There are tons of bars, restaurants and drunk people everywhere. Happy hour is from 3-9 pm at a lot of the bars. My friend Amanda and I took advantage of that one day last week at this place called Bar George while we waited for our guys to get off work and meet us. Fun!!

They don't mess around with the liquor in Hong Kong. Those drinks were strong! We ended up getting pretty drunk before our guys even got there. I have a history of drunk dialing, so of course I thought it would be funny to drunk dial someone in California at about 2:30 AM there. Heh heh heh...sorry Chris and Mike!

Dave just got there and I'm already looking pretty smashed.

Apparently Amanda and I were more drunk than we thought at the time and we were falling down quite a bit as we were walking. Oops. Funny someone always gets me on camera when I'm wasted!!!

Dave and I went to dinner on Friday at this place called Mo Bar with Amanda and Lou, then we all decided to go back to Bar George again for some drinks. This time nobody fell walking down the street afterwards.

At first I thought this dude was drunk and passed out in the street but as I got closer I realized it was actually a homeless guy. This dude is right in the middle of a street. CRAZY!

Now who's coming out to visit?!

Arrived in Hong Kong

FYI: Hong Kong IS NOT JAPAN!

We got to LAX early and our flight ended up being delayed a few hours, so we got to hang out with D-Rod and Chris a couple hours longer. Thanks to you both for helping us out with everything and being there to say goodbye. Flying in Business Class for over 15 hours wasn't too bad. :)

On the plane getting ready to take off from LAX

All our bags crammed full!

We've been living in Hong Kong for almost two weeks now. So far it's been good! I haven't gotten out too much by myself during the week yet since have no idea where things are, but I'm slowly starting to figure things out. I got lost pretty bad the first day when I attempted to find Dave's work. That was an adventure down a strange street or two. I can tell you the TV here is pretty awful. Thank God for the slingbox.

The street we live on is pretty interesting. There are people who sell all kinds of things on the street all day. There's a pretty random variety out there: fruit and veggies, fish, chinese medicine of some kind, some questionable looking food - possibly some sort of meat (we still have no idea what it is). At first we thought it was all pretty sketchy, but we bought some of the fruit the other day from the one on the corner and it was actually really good. Now we know where to get our fruit since it costs 1/10th of what we'd pay at the supermarket.

There are some cats who hang out in the street at night. This one is always out there at the place across the street. We keep thinking one day they all will be gone ;-)

The area we live in is called Central. There seems to be a lot to do here and we've seen some good restaurants and bars. Here are some photos of our apartment:

View from our apartment on the 19th floor

The Peak

We went up to The Peak this past Saturday. You can see the whole city from up there. It was awesome. We took this tram up to the top.

We had dinner at a restaurant up there and also got to see the view from The Peak at night. We got a really good shot.

If you want to see more pictures from The Peak you can go to our photo album here: The Peak

I'll be updating our website often so add our page to your favorites.