October 27

Hi again. Sorry for the interruption last time but it was time to go. But I can continue now for a bit. I think I left off in the middle of dinner with Mr. Lee. What a character and a chatter. It was interesting to hear his perspective on work and life as a mainland Chinese person. He very graciously paid for dinner and walked us back to our hotel. He was going to meet us the next morning to help us get to the airport but we said that we thought we could figure it out and thanked him again for everything and then we parted company. Our room at this hotel was on the top floor around a courtyard so we had a cup of tea in the courtyard before we retired for the evening.

The next day we were up pretty early and got packed up - we went in search of some breakfast but were not successful. We got a taxi and with a bit of difficulty made it to the airport bus terminal. The bus ride was uneventful and we had enough time at the airport to grab some breakfast and hop on the flight - once again it was pretty full but the service was good and we arrived safely at Shenzen airport on the boarder with Hong Kong. Our bags came through and we went out to catch the shuttle bus to the Turbo Jet ferry to Hong Kong. We had just missed the noon-time ferry so we had to wait until 2:30pm. The ride over was fun and very fast and we got into Kowloon around 3:30pm. It was pretty warm and a bit hazy. We went in search for a place to stay. One guy in Chengdu had given us a suggestion but when we found it we decided to look further. We trudged around for a while and decided to look at a bit of an upmarket place but their rate was very high for Saturday night - they did say that the next night the price would be cut in half....but they could not do anything for that night even though they had rooms available....strange thing. So we went back to a small place we had found and stayed there one night and moved to the Park Hotel the next night - we moved again on Tuesday as we really were over budget even with the lower price...now we are at the Hotel Victoria....it is small and clean and is priced in between the prior two hotels but we discovered last night that things got pretty active there from midnight to 4am.....we did not get much sleep. So we'll try it one more night - we moved rooms to see if it would be a bit quiter tonight and if it isn't any better we will probably stay on one of the out islands as we are thinking about going to Lantau Island and maybe Macau. We would rather not move again as it is really a very cute place...just the activities are a bit interesting or at least that is what we surmise from behind our locked door :-)

So what have we gotten up to in Hong Kong besides moving hotels and finding a great Chinese laundry - we have walked pretty extensively around Western and Central areas of Hong Kong Island, riden the Peak Tram up Victoria Peak, riden both the fast ferry and the Star Ferry between Hong Kong and Kowloon, riden the MTR (metro) quite a bit, taken a tram ride to North Point, the bus through the harbour tunnel, walked from the Wong Nai Chung Gap down to Stanley through the Tai Tom National Park, had a beer in Stanley and taken the bus back to Central, been to the History Museum, eaten chili crabs with our new friend Carmen from the Wellington Office, oh and most importantly we voted and sent in our absentee ballots!

It has been nice to be able to speak English almost everywhere. We have also enjoyed getting some food that we recognize - yogurt, red wine, cheddar cheese. We paid a visit to Marks & Spencer today to buy Tom some socks - they did not have his size anywhere in China! We have also had our share of good Chinese food two - and ordering from a menu that we can understand is a treat.

We are planning to go to the horse races tonight but we need to get some more work done on the computer so we may not get there - we'll see. Then tomorrow we would like to go hiking again on Lantau Island.

Saturday will find us heading back to Shenzen to catch a flight to Guilin and on to Yangshuo where we plan to spend 4 - 5 days before heading to Kunming and Yunan province. We will spend our last two weeks in China there and then head to Vietnam.

We'll keep you posted on our progress - don't forget to write.

Final thought - how about those Red Soxs!!!We watched game three this morning - it was live so some of you were up pretty late! And that Patriots too - who would have guessed. Go teams!