Second round of Hong Kong pictures-scenery around Cheung Chau

Hong Kong in the distance on the right

The first few days we were here I tried to avoid walking down the streets where they were drying fish because the smell grosses me out. It didn't take me long to realize it's impossible....there isn't a street that doesn't have drying fish hanging somewhere.

so many bikes

so many boats

Cheung Chau's version of a car

more bikes

more boats

The island is interesting spiritually...Buddhist temple, Buddhist college, Christian seminary, Anglican House of Prayer, idols for ancestor worship, Salvation Army Camp, Catholic Church, and those are just the ones we saw.

Oh, the travel

We left our house at a bit after six in the morning.  Catherine had diarrhea and felt a bit warm.  It's going to be a great travel day.  A friend met us at our gate to drive us to the airport.
All went relatively smoothly with check in and security and our flight was on time. Here we are on our way to Beijing.

We had gate checked our stroller in our city, but when we got off the plane in Beijing, it wasn't on the jet way.  We asked on the plane. They said it would be at the elevators. We asked the dude standing by the elevators, he said we should go back to the plane. The attendants on the plane again said to wait by the elevator. We waited at the elevator just a bit until another worker came to tell us we'd have to get it at baggage claim. GRRRR. The main reason we like having a stroller is not having to carry them across the airport. This also means we have to go back through security again.








However, I'll give BJ a pass on the stroller incident because if there's one airport you have to lug your kids through, BJ is a great one. Family restrooms, free luggage carts with a "car" kids can drive, nursing rooms, playgrounds, and these little contraptions so the mom or dad can actually use the restroom.

more airport pictures are in the post below.  Keep up the good work, Beijing Airport!

Next, we were off to Hong Kong.  It's generally a bit cheaper to fly to Shenzhen and take a ferry to Hong Kong.  We were already going to have to take a ferry from Hong Kong to the island where we were staying so we didn't want to have to add another step. And this time the tickets we found actually weren't that much more. And the little extra we paid for tickets was worth not having to take another ferry and a border crossing with two little ones.

Our travel to Hong Kong was the first time Catherine had her own seat. On our flight to Hong Kong she got her first ever in-flight meal. It was complete with smiley faces. :)  good job, Air China.  

Once we arrive in Hong Kong at 4:30ish, we have to clear immigration, get a taxi, take a 45 minute taxi ride and make it to the pier to get on a ferry at 6:15. That was tricky. Again, the stroller we had gate checked wasn't waiting on the jet way. Again, we had to go get it at baggage claim. Only it wasn't at baggage claim either. We had to go to the lost luggage desk to find it.  Grr.  again with the stroller. Now I'm wondering if we should have even brought it.
We knew Catherine wasn't feeling well and getting your forehead scanned for fever is part of HK's immigration process. Thankfully Catherine didn't register as having a fever at that moment. Whew.
Off to find a taxi. We need to find a taxi going to Lantau Island. The one line of taxis with people waiting and no taxis as opposed to all the other lines which are taxis waiting with no lines of people.
We got in a taxi just in time to make it to the pier in time for a little girl to have a potty break and make it on the the ferry just as it's pulling out.
The ferry ride was about an hour.  I'm already "glistening" from the humidity in Hong Kong and the real work hasn't even begun.

We arrive on Cheung Chau and now the really interesting leg of our travel begins. Thankfully, we were fore-warned about what awaited us. We grabbed some dim sum to go and headed upward.  By upward I mean UPWARD. We're staying at the top of an island that doesn't have any motorized vehicles. We have two children, a suitcase, a diaper bag, a backpack, and my purse. (Sidenote: for staying two weeks, I think we did great on the packing). We've been traveling for more than 12 hours. It's dark now. And it's raining (sprinkling). And we have what we now know is a 1.87 mile hike straight up before we can eat our tasty dim sum and collapse on a bed. I should also point out that when we left our city it was a fall morning in the fifties so we needed to have the girls warm-ish and we were both wearing jeans. WHY, oh why, was I wearing jeans??????? I have a heat-radiating child strapped to me in a tropical location as I hike almost two miles straight upward. Did I already mention that I wanted to go to Mongolia? At this moment I REALLY want to be in Mongolia. And I'm pulling a suitcase. Or carrying a diaper bag. Or both. Remember my comment above abut wondering if we should have brought the stroller?  Yes. Yes. Yes. I am so thankful to God we had the stroller.

One of our first views of the island

Above is one of the main roads near the town square in the village at the bottom of the island. The "roads" look like the pictures below.

One day coming down, I tried to take pictures of the entire road, taking a new picture each time I walked out of the frame of the previous picture, just in case I wanted to re-live the torture someday. As I write this, I feel I'm being overly dramatic. However, this post comes no where close to describing the true emotions I was feeling on that first walk.

We followed the directions with only one slight misstep with was corrected quickly by a friendly local lady. Thank you, friendly local lady, for not making us take any unnecessary detours.

Finally, about a half hour-ish later, we, our kids, and our junk have arrived. It truly was worth the climb. We're staying in a guest house of sorts with breakfast and dinner provided in the (very affordable) cost of our room.

There's a beach nearby, toys and playgrounds for the girls, and all other necessary facilities. We meet people from all over the world everyday and only leave our little cloister when necessary. We are thankful for God's provision of such a great place, since we are "stuck" here until our passports with new visas arrive from their journey to the Chinese Consulate in Houston. (which, by the way, as of TODAY is apparently no longer allowed. We just squeaked by on the deadline to process ours, Thank You, God!)


Now that I have vented about the actually getting here, I'll try to post more pictures of the fun we're having soon.

First Round of Hong Kong pictures

Most of the roads on the island where we're staying look like this.  Narrow, windy and steep. No motorized vehicles on the island.

One of the main roads near the town square

There's nothing like 200+ meters of straight upward (or downward) incline with either a child strapped to your body or pushing a stroller in 80+ degree weather to make you really sweat.  :)

How Ann enjoyed her first day at the beach

And parents are advised to pack as light as possible

in the Beijing airport on our way here

one weary dad

Great job, Beijing Airport, on being kid/family friendly!

Catherine loved driving her car

And Ann was a happy traveler too!

How we ended up in Hong Kong

here is the brief story of how we came to find ourselves in Hong Kong: 

We clearly knew what day our visas/resident cards were set to expire and that date was September 5th.  However, from the late spring/early summer we had planned on working for the hotel where I previously worked.  We had been on a student visa and would need to switch to a work visa.  Switching visa types requires a trip out of country to reprocess.  When the hotel confirmed this, our deal with them fell through.  We knew we (James) could continue his study at the university and renew our visa that way (which would not require a trip out of country), but we were hoping for another option and hadn't felt right about starting that process.

Then, we (James) got a job offer from a local university to teach English.  We felt like it was a great solution, especially since the school would pay for all our travel costs and visa renewal fees.  During James first meeting with the school representative she offered him a job teaching some oral English classes.  We moved forward with submitting all our documents, and they were approved.  When James went back to finalize the details of the contract, the school now wanted him to teach a more-than-maximum number of hours of Academic Writing.  Aside from the fact that it wasn't what we had agreed on AT ALL, that number of hours of class time, plus prep, plus grading hundreds of poorly written English papers a week wasn't a very feasible option for our family.  At this point we have about a week left on our current visa.  We still don't feel like it's the right thing to renew our student visa and we may not even have time for that to come through in time now, anyway.

And the situation is further complicated by the fact that China's visa policies and types changed on September 1st and ours are due for renewal on September 5th. So even when one calls the police department or visa processing center their answers are different and uncertain and the truth is that no one is quite sure how to apply all the new changes yet. 

We thought and prayed and reasoned and argued about where we go when we needed to leave the country.  North to Mongolia or south to Hong Kong?  We decided on Hong Kong for many reasons including the fact that the place we choose to stay included 2 meals a day (less to worry about for us) and the reliability of the postal/FedEx service for sending our documents to America if necessary.  (and it was indeed necessary). 

So, Hong Kong is where we find ourselves for these two-ish weeks while we wait for our new business visa to process.  We last heard from the service company it should be ready to mail back our direction on the 18th.