Things I Learned While Traveling in China

1. Given the choice between authentic Chinese food and spaghetti, Mom
will pick spaghetti every time.

2. The iPhone 4S has remarkable battery life when left in airplane mode
for two and a half weeks.

3. Puns on the Disneyland Jungle Cruise are funny in every language.

4. I am half-baked. According to Chinese legend, there are three races
in the world, and they were created when a goddess baked people out of
clay. Caucasians = under-cooked, Africans = over-cooked, and Asians =
perfectly baked.

5. There are places in the world without Diet Coke. Be thankful for
all of your freedoms, Americans.

6. Xi'an is ancient Mandarin for "sandy shit-hole in middle of China".

7. Nothing makes you appreciate a reclining sofa more than a 14-hour
plane flight.

8. State Fair on Labor Day is not crowded. Times Square on New Year's
Eve is not crowded. The Mall of America the day after Thanksgiving is
not crowded. You haven't seen crowded until you've ridden on a Beijing
subway on a Sunday afternoon.

9. There's no end to the number of dam jokes one can make about a dam tour.

10. If it's made of tofu and looks like a bathtub mat, it will taste
like a bathtub mat.

Things Emily Learned While Traveling in China

1. Photo-bombing is funny in every language.

2. As long as you can mime sneezing and coughing, you can get cold medication anywhere. A mime is a terrible thing to waste.

3. Without sugar packets, tea is just disgusting hot water.

4. There are different levels of bathrooms in the world. When ranking a bathroom's quality, start by asking "does it have toilets or just holes?".

5. Everything in China is lucky. Literally, everything.

There's No Place Like...Your Own Bed

We returned home yesterday, to a balmy 27 degrees and a flat tire on Emily's car.  Sounds about right.

Today is St. Patrick's Day, and I celebrated by sleeping for 16 hours.  In my defense, I barely slept on the plane from Hong Kong, I still have the cold Emily gave me a week and a half ago, and I took some Zzz-quil before going to bed.  Truth be told, if Emily hadn't woken me up at 5pm I probably would have slept all day.

I updated all of the posts this evening so now everything displays properly. In case you were on the edge of your seat wondering about the rest of our adventures, you can now go back and read it all.  This blog thing was kind of fun and I think I might try to keep it up for future trips. Next up is skiing with Natalie in Vermont. Not quite international, but plenty of opportunities for incidents I am sure.

Almost home

We made it back to Chicago. 

Quoth the pilot, "The weather in Chicago is...sigh...not great."

The Happiest Place in Asia

Did you know Mickey speaks Cantonese? He does at Hong Kong Disneyland!

Hong Kong Disneyland is very similar to California Disneyland, just a little smaller  And Sleeping Beauty has a killer mountain view from her castle.

They also have a whole Toy Story Land!

They don't serve food like this for lunch as the US Disney parks-

-but the fireworks are terrific in any language!

Every vacation should end with fireworks!

The Big Buddha

I really should have counted how many buddhas we saw on this trip.

Today, on our way to Disneyland, we first went to see the Tian Tan Buddha. He is the world's largest seated outdoor buddha. To get to him, you take a 25-minute cable car ride over lushly vegetated, mountainous terrain. 

Or rather, that's what you do when the cable car is operating. When it's closed for repairs for a week, you take the bus. 

The terrain was still beautiful from the bus. It sort of feels like the island from Jurassic Park. Emily hopes the researchers at this facility keep a little closer eye on their velociraptors. 

At the top of the mountain, you climb 200-some stairs to see the Big Buddha up close. And he is big. 

That is three significant days of stair-climbing in a four day span. I need to relax. Time for some rides at Disneyland. 

Did I mention that Hong Kong is awesome?

High Tea at the Peninsula was well worth the wait. 

We each enjoyed selected our own preferred flavor of tea. Me- Jasmine, Emily- Raspberry, Mom- Tree Bark, I mean Chrysanthemum. We also had a selection of finger sandwiches, desserts, and scones with jam and clotted cream. Yum. 

It was almost unfortunate that we were too full for dinner, because after our tea we went to Hong Kong's "mid-levels" neighborhood, a trendy area with lots of bars and restaurants. The mid-levels are the area of the island midway between sea level and mountaintops. A lot of residents live in this area and work in the central district (at sea level). To encourage these residents to walk to work rather than drive or take crowded public transportation, the city built a series of escalators all up the side of the mountain. 

We rode the escalators as far up as we could go, then walked back down. (The escalators only go in one direction- since it was evening all the commuters were heading home, so the escalators were going up.) 636 steps back down, plus about 200 yards at a downward slope on an area without steps. 

We went back to the hotel and dropped Mom off- her knees would have preferred only around 300 steps- Emily and I went out for a little more souvenir shopping. A quick walk from our hotel was a frenetic night market, with busy stalls, interesting smells, and lots of people. 

We are sad that tomorrow is our last day, but happy that we'll be spending it at the happiest place on earth- Disneyland! Better get a good night's sleep!