China Part One

Our big trip this year was to China! We started in Hong Kong and met up with Dave and Mikelle, some friends from home.

Utah was stunning when we left it:




Hong Kong is a massive city, with endless sky scrapers. The view at night from Victoria Peak:




We took a ferry to a little fishing village on a mile-wide island. We wanted to go fishing, but how do you act out "take us fishing but we don't want to keep any of the fish?" We thought we'd communicated well, but we ended up with a 2 hour boat ride with no fishing, breathing diesel fumes. Oh well. :)

Our Captain:


The people in China didn't seem very environmentally conscious. Our captain took out a plastic bag with a fish steak in it, put the fish on the boat roof, and tossed the bag right into the sea. It was the most exciting moment of the entire boat ride.

Some of the many boats docked:


Here is an apparently disliked political figure:


Some stuff for sale at the market:
I think these are sea horses.  They're also sold at the pharmacy for chinese medicine.


Blow fish skin:


Organs.  Thanks to my anatomy class, I could identify most of them and it was pretty strange because they were about human-sized.




I also had my first encounter on this trip with the squat toilet:


There were sometimes normal toilets too:


When we got hungry, we decided to try "Dim Sum," a popular dish among the locals. I got chicken and rice, and after picking through it a bit I found several pieces of meat that didn't look like chicken. Eventually I found one with legs! I was pretty much done with my dim sum upon that discovery!


Dave inspecting his mystery meat meal:


Todd with a mouth full of dim sum:


We went straight to a McDonalds. French fries never tasted so good!


We ended up swimming in the South China Sea- it was full of garbage, but still fun.  Sorry no photos of that.

Here's one incredibly tall building (there are a lot of these)


We made it back to our hotel in one piece. Here's the tiny bathroom where you can shower, brush your teeth, and use the toilet all at once:


After a few days in Hong Kong we took a hard sleeper train to Guilin on the mainland. It was a bit tight, but we didn't care- it was comfortable!


Mikelle snoozing:


There wasn't much to do but take photos and play games with some local Chinese. Todd made a friend and had some interesting conversation on the trip.  He and Dave played the bubble game on Todd's I-phone with a toddler who nearly broke the screen slamming her finger into it.  It was pretty funny.


Todd's "friend"


With nothing else to do we pretty much stared at eachother till we got tired. Todd's eye:


And then we fell asleep.