I'm In China!

EDIT: I almost forgot to tell ya'll... Why are most toilets a whole in the ground???? It takes balance and a good aim! I got too happy when I went to pee a the spa and it was a regular toilet.


This trip has been crazy so far. I don't have much time, so I'll just hit the high lights. At the airport we(L and myself) found out that we needed a visa to go to Viet.nam. Who knew? So, we had to figure it out along the way. Lucky, out first stop was Ho.ng Ko.ng, then on to Viet.nam next. We flew in to Ho.ng Ko.ng on a very long LONG 15 hour flight(9am or so we landed) and planned to speak to someone here about it. After the flight was delayed, we didn't get the Viet.nam thing settled AND we missed the ferry to Ma.cau. We had to take a bus to Ho.ng Ko.ng city and take another shuttle over. There we met with L's friend's father. He then proceeded to take us around the city of Mac.au(not mainland china and not HK) until 7pm. Did I mention that I didnt' sleep at all on the flight and was completely exausted. So, then we waited for his girlfriend to get off work because we had to go through customs yet again to get to mainland china. That is 3 trips through customs in one day! All in all, we didn't get to his house until 10:45pm! I thought I was going to DIE! Along our sight seeing, we ate some excellent food. When we first arrived, it was dumplings/Dim Sum. Yummy! For a snack, we had some great noodle soup with shrimp dumplings. And For dinner, we had a ton of stuff. They do everything family style here. Since L and I will eat anything, they just order for us. I was actually served chicken feet in a very nice black bean sauce and pigeon, fried like chicken wings. Not bad. I've made it a point to try everything at least once. I dont' know if that will come back to bite me in the ass later or not! LOL!

The next day, we went sight seeing around mainland china. It has been cold and cloudy, but still good. We did the coolest thing. We went to a Tea shop. Shelly, you'll have to tell MN all about it! It's basically a little cubby hole of a shop with a wooden table with holes in it and a bunch of carved wooden stools. One of the guys we were with was buying tea. So they bring out this vaccume sealed bad of tea and cut it open. They poured it into a little tin for him to look at, and smell. Then they poured 4 little cups of it for us, about half the size of a shot glass. they explained how tea works. Aparently, you can use the same tea leaves 5 to 6 times. The first time you pour water in, you dump it immediently. It is no good, aparently. The second time is the best time, but you can do it 3 to 4 more times. We did this with green tea and oolong tea. I LOVED it! I have pictures of the whole setup. I am not really explaining it that well, but that's because I only have a little bit of time to write. Sorry. Well, after all that, we ended up going to dinner very late. After dinner, the DR(Guy we are staying with's girlfriend) took us to some Hot Springs. OMG! It was amazing! We arrived at midnight. It was so cold out but the water was 40-41.5 degrees C. There were various pools, some of wish were infused with chinese herbs to cure stuff. And there was tea and juice bars everywhere. We even napped on this warm stone. Ok, everyone has been to Cold Stone right? Well, imagine a marble slab like that, but large enough for 20 people to lay down next to each other and heated to a nice temp. We napped on that and it was excellent.

We got home at 5 am and prombly passed out. This morning, we are at a spa with the guy we are staying with's brother in law and his wife. This is the first time we have been on the internet. I'd better run now, but this is the update so far!

BYE!