Some pictures of actual people including us...
Handwashing clothes in Shanghai (Yi exercising his wringing skills)
Subway in Shanghai
The counterpart to the erhu guy on Whyte Ave... violin guy on the Bundt...
Bus in Shanghai going to 7 Treasure Town (just outside of Shanghai)... all of them have flat panel TVs!
A man dressed in traditional clothing (with a traditional beard and sunglasses)
Some skewers in the food stall area... pig snouts, mmm...
eating wontons in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the morning... good, but lots of msg in the soup... instant wonton?
On the hard sleeper car in the train to Beijing... 12 hours!
There were soldiers everywhere, wasn't sure if they were working or also tourists...
me doing one of many silly poses...
Yi getting his pants fixed at a local tailors... damn cheap 40 yuan pants :P...
Some traditional Tibetan clothing... it's actually very warm! especially the fur hats...
Snowfall overnight, so made a snow bunny...
locals have really red cheeks due to the high altitude, can run up and down the mountains in Huanglong while we need a slightly slower pace :P
Brrr, no central heating...
Bicycles and scooters galore in Chengdu, with no discernable traffic patterns...
an Australian woman we met going to the Panda Observatory (from Brisbane actually), giving a panda back massage... looks pretty comfortable...
any resemblance?
Tourists making their way down the cliffside at Mt. Leshan, very steep and narrow stairs...
Eww, toejam...
Sichuan hotpot (normal on the outer part, firey chili in the inner bowl...)
On the Yangtze River, fruit peddlers come to the side of the boat and sell their wares directly to the passengers through their window...
Our daily instant noodle breakfast amongst the Three Gorges...
Chump level indicator after being shown to the Three Gorges Dam... parking lot...
Water calligraphy on the marble slabs in a park in Wuhan...
The result of our quest for meat-filled breakfast buns in Wuhan...
Yi passed out on our 24 hour train ride from Wudangshan to Guangzhou...
A restuarant chain called "KungFu", with a Bruce Lee lookalike mascot... WATATATATATATATATA!
Angkor Wat in the morning, with some local kids playing in the lake in front
All the temples have a moat, over which a bridge is constructed with demons on one side and gods on the other holding the tail of a seven-headed snake (naga).
The Bayon, 216 carvings of 4-sided enigmatic stone faces... Yi just looks like he's stoned...
A tree growing into the temple wall at Ta Prohm (there are many, and they are all huge!). They grow fast, but don't live very long. Some are actually supporting the walls so they can't be removed. Go jungle...
The famous tree in Ta Prohm
one of many adorable children in the park selling tourist souvenirs...
Loads of coconuts in Cambodia
Yi getting a traditional Cambodian haircut?
sunny Cambodia!
a palm leaf hut on stilts in Kompong Phhluk... the water level is low in the winter but rises to floor level in the summer...
The Flooded Forest of Kompong Phhluk
Kompong Phhluk
Sophal our tuk tuk driver (motorcycle with a pedicab on the back) who took us around the temples and the floating villages... translator, tour guide and travel agent all in one!
Our Ecstatic Pizza meal (guess which slice has the ganja on it :P)
The Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (we got to see it at sunrise because we had an early flight to Cambodia)
sunny Langkawi (a local napping during the hottest part of the day, smart)
lots of fun at the beach
A wicked-looking crab in a fish farm in Langkawi, Malaysia...
Feeding the stingray (it doesn't bite THAT hard...)
diving off the coast of Pulau Payar with Liushi... everything is okay-lah!
Liushi's favorite almost-non-alcoholic beverage when she was a kid...
We're in Hong Kong now, visiting my family and catching the nightlife. Hanging around with Uncle Joe (Sam Sook) is really an adventure, he had a whole spreadsheet schedule made up for our time here in HK! We have been trying out different restaurants (Lei Yue Mun is really cool, a sort of Fisherman's Wharf area with live seafood), shopping here and there (Times Square, Mongkok, Tsim Sha Tsui) and basically trying to get some nightlife in (Lan Kwai Fong, Central, Causeway Bay). Tonight there was some light show by the harbour (tons of people gathered in the streets), unfortunately we got off the train just when it ended... Oh well! We walked around for a couple hours as the trains ran overnight for Christmas, lots of colourfully decorated people :P. Uncle Joe's family is very nice, and they were able to help us buy tickets for Shanghai (leaving 8:30pm on the 26th)... it took 2 hours of phoning around and 1 hour of negotiating at the travel agency before we could get them (it's a holiday in HK and we're buying on short notice, so difficult to get ahold of anything), but we got the tix for a very good price ($1400HKD, so around $200CAD each). One difference between HK and China is that for the mainland it's very hard to get reliable information, and the phone numbers are often incorrect or out of service...
My cousins are all older than I remember; Joeii is 18, and Jackie is 16, they are both very fun. They are all very considerate of Yi not being able to speak Cantonese, so they talk either in English or Mandarin (Uncle Joe's Mandarin isn't very good, so the rest make fun of him for that all the time :P). The first day we got there we had hotpot at Uncle Joe's for the Winter Festival, so much fresh seafood! We had a great Christmas meal at Uncle Stephen's (baked foie gras, roast beef...) made by his wife, complete with Chistmas crackers. Yvonne is 19 going on 20 and Charlotte is 18. We saw Auntie Mary's sons Paul and Francis at lunch, they are 28 and 27 respectively, very tall too! Uncle Joe's daughter Joan (Mui Mui) is 18 now, not the little girl I remember from the 20-year old pictures... Everyone really wants to see the rest of the family, after getting a taste of the Canadian branch this year. :)
Everyone says I look and talk like Mom, while Kat and Ben resemble Dad more. All the girls are very stylish and trendy, quite a contrast from the dirty backpacker look I'm cultivating :P. Bought some clothes here as most of my stuff was dirty when I first got to HK. Prices are bit expensive, but we went to the less pricey stores... and pretty much HK is all about shopping (Uncle Joe scheduled shopping times for all three days :P). We met up with Kit to party last night, had loads of fun and she says Merry Christmas to you all back in Winnipeg. She misses all the outdoor activities in Canada as you can't really do any hiking here. We are going for breakfast with Simon (my old high school classmate) on the 26th in the morning in Causeway Bay, then will probably visit Lantau Island before going to the airport.
Anyways, it's 6:30 in the morning now, so I'm going to bed... will post more pictures later. Won't be able to post Yi's pics of Cambodia and Malaysia until he gets them off his camera in Shanghai in a couple days though (that's why most of the pics only have him in it). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
cheers, Ange
Labels: Pictures
