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Today we bid goodbye to Zhanjiang and also goodbye to China for this trip. We’ve had an interesting, but tough week. It’s a lot of travel and nasty hotels packed into one week. Add two young kids and the two old women we’re dragging with us this time, and it’s been a hell of a week. Being in a place where no one speaks any English and where your every meal is pre-selected by someone else gets old quickly, so I’m looking forward to getting back to Hong Kong where I have much more freedom! We had agreed to have late breakfast/early lunch with Danny’s cousin and his wife again today, and then they were taking us to the airport for our flight. We had decided to just have the meal in the restaurant at our hotel for ease of meeting. The meal wasn’t very good. They didn’t have many of the standard dim sum items that my kids really wanted so they ate virtually nothing. There was also nothing but one dish that I liked, so I was hungry afterwards too. Notice in the photos, and some I’ve shared previous days, that all the hotels and restaurants are really decked out for Christmas. Funny thing in a country where anything religious is banned outright, eh? The really funny thing is that they spell it wrong. A lot. Stephanie’s bear that aunty bought her has “Merry Chrismas” embroidered on it!! Much to my chagrin, we were really late heading to the airport, but his cousin kept telling us not to worry, we’d be fine, don’t need to be early. He was right. We got to the airport less than an hour before our international flight, but it was ok. Took about 15 minutes for two employees to view our passports and then we waited for security. Although they scrutinize your passport as though they think you’re an internationally acclaimed criminal, the actual security check was cursory. Danny’s aunt even carried a bag of oranges in her coat pocket and they didn’t notice. And no, you’re not supposed to bring fruit from one country to another!! We got on our plane on time for the 40 minute flight and it departed quickly and easily. By the time they’d served peanuts and bottled water we were landing in Hong Kong. Hell of a sight better and easier than the 7.5 hours in a bus, with NO BATHROOM, whereby Emily puked all over me that we did last year to make the same journey, eh?? Arriving back in Hong Kong felt like heaven. We hopped on the airport express train to get to the city, then a quick taxi ride to the same hotel as before. Stephanie and I headed back out immediately to get bottled water, cereal, and drinks, while Danny and Emily went to drop off our dirty laundry. We all met back at the hotel and decided that what we really needed was a good meal, that we chose, and with just our family. So, we hopped in a taxi and went to Little Sheep hotpot. Funny thing, when we arrived, they said “Oh, we had a pipe burst, so no bathrooms tonight, if you need it, you’ll have to go down three floors to McDonalds.” Seriously. They were open for business and that was their plan. Only in Hong Kong!
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