We arrived in Hong Kong at 10 p.m. after a 30+ hour trip via Atlanta and Seoul, Korea.

This is the start of our Hong Kong city tour. We are at the Wong Tai Sin Temple, a combination Buddhist and Taoist temple. We saw lots of food offerings and a great many Chinese people making offerings.

Here is our tour guide at the Wong Tai Sin Temple explaining to Al the various offerings that we can see going on. Notice the incense smoke in the background.

From the temple, we went to Kowloon Walled City Park which was a British fort during the Opium Wars and when Hong Kong was first under British rule in the late 1800's/early 1900's. Al is standing beside an old cannon at the fort.

Here we are at the Walled City/British fort in front of another cannon. It is amazing that in the 1990's, this was a very dangerous slum and drug area, but the city of Hong Kong took it over and turned it into a park about 15 years ago.

For lunch, our tour took us to a floating Chinese restaurant in Aberdeen Harbor. To get to it, we had to ride in a sampan. We are just starting out, and the ride includes a sightseeing trip around the harbor.

Here is our sampan captain. She did not speak any English, so there was no narration on our sightseeing tour.

Here is a shot of our floating restaurant. The sampan took a right-hand turn from this view to take us around the harbor.

Here is a sampan at anchor.

More anchored sampans. We saw lots of larger boats that were anchored and which were the homes of families of Chinese fisherman.

Here is a photo of us on the floating restaurant after lunch.

We are now in Repulse Bay which is mostly a recreation area with very nice beaches and high rise condos and apartments that must be priced somewhere in the stratosphere. Some were very modern and almost like sculptures. Oh, and Al forgot his sunglasses as you can see here.

Al tries to see more high rises in Repulse Bay. The bay is named because it is shallow and Chinese pirates could not maneuver against British warships here.

There is a famous garden area in Repulse Bay, and here we are at the entrance.

The garden is known for its very large sculputures. Here is a colorful dragon just inside the entrance.

We are inside the Repulse Bay garden and by the beach. Notice the very large statues behind and to both sides of us. They are gods who protect fishermen in this area.

Al by a statue in the garden

From the brochure: "towering twin statues of Kwun Yum and Tin Hau, both protectors of fishermen."

Again, from the brochure: "towering twin statues of Kwun Yum and Tin Hau, both protectors of fishermen." Sorry, but we do not recall which one is which.

This is a momument for either: long life, happy marriage, or good luck. We'll take all three, thank you.

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.

Another view of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak.

Evening of our 1st day in Hong Kong. We stayed in a hotel very close to the harbor, so we took a stroll on the long walkway on the water. It was a bit breezy, so Al had his "windy hair" look going on.

The building lights on Hong Harbor are really something to see. Here is an early dusk shot of some of them.

Here is Jeanne with the Hong Kong building lights across the harbor behind her.

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.

This is a famous Buddha, called in our tour book, "Big Buddha," on top of a mountain. There are about 500 steps up to the top after the bus lets you off. Al is about 1/3 of the way up.

Al at the top. We found that there were 10 foot or taller statues surrounding the Buddha.

Here is a close-up of the Buddha at the top. It is about 70 feet high from bottom to top and very impressive. It is the largest bronze statue of a sitting Buddha.

Jeanne is beside other large statues at the base of the Buddha. From this vantage point, we could actually see 747's on their glide paths into Hong Kong International Airport which is on the island of Lantau.

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.

Wow, this is pretty amazing. All of the houses in this Chinese fishing village in Tai O are on stilts! There are waterways that serve as streets and bridges for folks to walk over, and we looking into just about every Chinese home on this waterway.

By the way, we never saw any dolphins.

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.

Our last day in Hong Kong. The fight out is mid-afternoon, so we took a walk on the harbor walk, and the weather was just great. Here is Al with Victoria Peak and the harbor skyline behind him.

Jeanne with Victoria Peak and the harbor skyline enjoying our last day in 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.

Roughly 8 am and our cruise ship has departed. Notice how steep the Yangtze River banks are here. This is a shrine of some sort on the river bank.

This is a mountain peak that we came on early in the cruise the first day. You can see how steep the sides are, and they drop right down into the Yangtze River.

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.

A view of a bridge over a tributary of the Yangtze River in the morning of our first day on the cruise boat. You can see how hazy it is, meaning that the humidity is really high.

Some more hazy landscape on the first day of the cruise. It was rather surreal, almost.

Since we are going up the Yangtze, we encounter the 3 Gorges Dam on the first day. Our ship docked, and we took a bus to the dam. This is a shot from the bus as we passed over the locks that allow ships to pass through the dam. We will be entering this lock in our ship later today.

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.

The 3 Gorges Dam is massive. You cannot tell from this photo, but it is the largest project of this type in the world. It is still under construction.

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.

The lock gates are behind Jeanne. You can see the high water level that is pumped into this step to move all the ships in this step to the next one.

We have freshened up a bit after our 3 Gorges Dam visit and lock passage, but you can see that it is still very humid and hot.

Day 2 of our Yangtze River cruise. We are at Shennong Stream which is a tributary of the Yangtze River. We are on a shuttle boat to go up the stream (actually a fairly large river at this point, but it becomes very narrow upstream). This is a photo of our cruise ship as we depart.