Al and Jeanne's Trip to China 2006
Ah, the end of our day tour is a spectacular trip up the auto road to Victoria Peak. We saw some of the most incredible mansions and resorts on the trip up. This is the exclusive residential area of millionaires such as Jackie Chan. Of course, their homes are gated and guarded, but we did catch views of them. Speaking of views, here is the view looking down on Hong Kong harbor from Victoria Peak.
Every night, there is a light show. We expected a few lasers and some signs to flash, but this was a show where entire buildings - as in 30 story high rises - did multicolored lightings synchronized to music. It was the most amazing display we have ever seen. This photo in no way shows what happens, but you can see some of the lights.
Our second day in Hong Kong. Okay, actually we traveled out of Hong Kong - to the Outer Islands and specifically the island of Lantau - as we saw just about everything we wanted to see in Hong Kong yesterday. It has been a little bit of an adventure to get to this picture.
In brief, we were told that it would take "2-30" to take the ferry to this island, so Al used the ATM to get 500+ Hong Kong dollars. The ferry was 2.30 dollars each! So we had a bit of extra cash. Next we stood for a long time in a bus line, but the bus took only exact change of $12.50 each, and Al had $50 bills. A nice Austrialian couple helped us and paid most of our fare. Then we had a 90 minute curvy, bumpy bus ride to get to this location.From the Buddha on the Mountain, we took another bus - by then we realized that we needed exact change and got it at the concession area - to a quaint Chinese fishing village called Tai O. We took the boat ride around the village and to see the white dolphins. Here is Al waiting for the boat to shove off.
Okay, this is a bit of sequence as we first walked in the village. It was quite small, but there were lots and lots of fish and other sea critters to buy, fresh or preserved. Yes, the smells were exactly as you would expect. We even went into someone's back yard and found fish hanging and drying in the sun.
Needless to say, since we are not big fish eaters, we decided right after our boat ride to head to the bus stop and catch the next bus to the ferry and back to Hong Kong.Another Chinese adventure for Jeanne and Al.
We got the flight out of Hong Kong, and after catching other flights in various Chinese airports, we arrived at Yichang, China around 11 p.m.- about 2 hours late. Thank heavens, we arranged for a transfer to our Yangtze River cruise ship BECAUSE Yichang airport is one gate large and closed immediately after we got our bags. There were no taxis or any transportation for hire that we could see at 11 p.m.
The trip to our cruise ship took over an hour on the worst imaginable roads - even though they were major highways - potholes galore. At one time we saw pigs and chickens in the road and we thought this might be the end of our travels forever, but the driver just took a detour so we could see the "old" dam on the Yangtze River from on top of a high hill.
We made it to our ship around 1 a.m, and negotiated for a suite rather than a room. The "room" was the size of a closet, and the suite actually had two rooms - sorta. We got the suite at 50% off.
This photo is of our landing to the ship taken the next morning.We are on the observation deck and at the beginning of our Yangtze River cruise. That is a work boat of some sort behind us. Notice how hazy it is. We found out this day that we have chosen the hottest time of the year for our trip. By hot, we mean very, very hot - 100+ degrees F and we also found that the humidity was about 100% this day.
So, we are fresh here, but in some photos later we are going to be wilted big time.Okay, we said it was hot, and here is Al sweating to prove it. Actually, all we have done is to get off our airconditioned bus and walk about 20 yards to the observation area for the dam. Yes, the hat and sunglasses are absolutely necessary, and the neck thing is our pass to get back on our cruise ship and not to wander onto another one. Plus, if we pass out from the heat, they will know where to call, we think.
Our bus took us to the top of a hill with a facility with a large display model of the dam, and we could walk up to the top of the hill and take a picture of the 3 Gorges Dam below.
This is the largest such dam project in the world, and when it is done, the water level behind the dam will rise some 70 feet. It has already gone up about 20 feet, and it will go up another 20 feet at the end of this summer. Literally, millions of Chinese have been moved or are being moved above the expected final river level.