Brent and Bonnie - Our China Adventure

Hi everyone!

Sadly, today is the last day of our month long China adventure. Although we are sad that this trip has come to an end we are looking forward to coming home and seeing our friends and family and sleeping in our own bed!

China has been a country of contrasts. From the beautiful mountain scenery in Yangshuo to the crazy skyscrapers and hustle and bustle of mega cities like Hong Kong and Beijing.

We have seen so many wonderfull sights and learned a lot about china's history. We have taken hundreds of pictures and we look forward to sharing them with everyone.

So long from Hong Kong!

B & B

Hello everyone!

Well, we arrived safely in Hong Kong on Wednesday. What an incredible city! A total change from what we have seen in the last three weeks. Hong Kong is a real mixture of high tech with old world China mixed in. We are staying very close to the Harbourfront in Kowloon and we have a partial view of the harbour from the window of our hotel! The problem is that by the time we get back to the hotel at night we are too tired to look at the wonderfull view.

We have done some sightseeing already in Hong Kong. We saw the light show in the Harbour on Thursday night. Here is a picture of a portion of the Harbour.

We also visted the Hong Kong Museum of history. We learned the history of Hong Kong over the last 4 million years in about 4 hours! Very interesting.

We have also visted some local markets in the area and picked up some art to bring home. The markets here are crazy with people everywhere, even on a weeknight. Actually.. there are wall to wall people here almost everywhere we have been to so far.

Before we left Yangshuo we visted the Longji rice terraces. The terraces are located high up in the mountains and all the houses are built on the side of mountains on stilts. It was a really beautiful place and we wanted to post a picture. Here are the terraces on a foggy day.

We hope everyone is doing well at home!

Brent and Bonnie

Hi everyone (it is Brent),
Thanks for all the birthday wishes. My birthday was a travel day, so it was fairly uneventful and we were both exhausted. We left Yangshuo and travelled to Guangzhuo, a late addition to our plans in place of Chengdu where the earthquake was. The area we are staying in Guangzhuo (pronounced g-wong-show) is an old expat area, where the British, etc built large house on a small island away from the many city about 100 years ago. Now it is the place where people come to adopted Chinese babies. There are American families everywhere with little chinese kids.

We leave in 15 minutes to take the subway to the train station to the last city of our journey. We are "leaving" China to go to Hong Kong, which is China with special circumstances. We will post another entry once we have arrived.

Bye for now, happy Wednesday!
Brent

Hello!

Here are a few photos and descriptions from the three very different cities we have been too.

First a picuture of the great wall. We went to the most unrestored section of the wall and therefore there wern't too many other tourists there.

Our first celebrity experience. Here is Brent at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing with three little old people!

A picuture of the terracotta army. This is one of the excavation sites. It is massive.

Our most recent destinatio is Yangshuo. Every picutre here looks like a postcard. Really one of the most beautiful places we have ever been.

Hope everyone is doing well. We now just arrived in Guangzhou. Will update you soon.

Bonnie and Brent

Good Friday Morning!

It is Friday nigt for us. We arrived in Yangshuo (pronounced Yang-Show) Monday afternoon. It was an hour ride from the airport, so we got to see some coutryside. Yangshuo is in south west china and much less developed than the other larger cities we have been in. We are staying at the www.riverview.com.cn . From the airport you pass small villages and rice fields everywhere. Yanshuo in kind of like Banff. It is a smaller town that gets tourists from all over the world. It is beside the Li River and all the good things to do are outdoors. We have got a lot of exercise since being here. Today we cycled about 8 kms (in +30 with 90% humidity) and then walked up the 900 steps to the top of Moon Hill, one of Yangshuo's biggest attractions. Basically it is just a hill with a hole in it, but pretty cool once you are up there. Yangshuo is surrounded by mountains that look like the one the Grinch lives in, in the movie The Grinch Stole Christmas (Bonnie is not here and i do not know how to upload photos, she can post a couple of Yangshuo when she gets back, she has just left for a message at Dr. Lilyays, an affordable luxury here in China. One hour is about $10.)

Highlights from our week include a bamboo raft trip down the Yulong River, hiring a guide and going on a mountain bike trek through the country side. We went from streets, to roads, to gravel, to paths, through villages and across rivers. It was fantastic. We also did a couple of cave tours, one was all in chinese and one had a mud pool in the it, so I went in and took the 30 metre mud slide into the mud. Very strange.

The highlight so far has been the Water Theatre show. There are 600 performers, all locals and farmers from surrounding areas. They do 2 shows every night and it is not small scale, it is big budget. There were 2000 people there all paying between 30 and $100 tickets. It is very cool, a show all on water. They even lit up some of the mountains in the distance. To google it try Li River Mountain-Water Theatre.

Tomorrow we are off to see the Longsheng Longji Rice Terraces. They are suppose to be the largest in China if you believer the brochure! Thats all for now, enjoy your Friday!