This is the view from the Kowloon side. Many of the buldings had Christmas lights on them.

Christmas in Hong Kong

Our internet has been screwed-up because of an earthquake in Taiwan. They say it could be some time before it's fixed - I managed to get this one picture of our trip to Hong Kong. Stay tuned for more soon!

Our trip was great - we love Hong Kong! It's a much cleaner city than Shanghai and the people are extremely polite. We stayed on Hong Kong (the island) and made our way to various parts of the city. The highlight was going to a place called The Peak - we took a cable car up one of the hills to a platform that overlooks the entire city. We got some amazing pictures up there. On Christmas Eve we tried to go to the Kowloon side of the city (it's the mainland side that faces the island) to get some pictures, but we got corralled away with thousands of people. The police were working some serious crowd control and we weren't able to get anywhere near our destination. A lot of the subway entrances were blocked off, so we had to walk for miles to get home. The restaurants were all booked, so we didn't get to eat until very late. Our only option was a sports bar in the hotel where we ate BBQ chicken pizza. At that point it tasted like the best thing in the world. On our other days we went to the south side of the island. We were on a double-decker bus and drove on some pretty narrow and steep roads - it was like an amusement park ride. It was worth it though, the beaches and sights were breathtaking.

Our time went extremely quickly, but we enjoyed the trip a lot. Hopefully I'll be able to post some more pictures soon. Hope everyone had a good Christmas! For New Year's we went to a little pub in Shanghai and saw a band play Chinese music with a few standards like "Freebird" and "We Will Rock You" thrown in. I've never appreciated those songs as much as I did that night.

This is on Christmas night. We're on the Kowloon side looking at Hong Kong Island. It was packed full of people - we had to fight through the crowds to get this view. Luckily we're tall.

Trip to Yuyuan Garden

Today we took a bus to Yuyuan Garden with some teachers from SMIC School. It's not difficult to get to, but the school provided a bus, so we took advantage of the free ride. Yuyuan Garden is a popular spot for tourists. The garden is supposed to be amazing (we didn't go this trip), but we went for the shopping. The garden itself is surrounded by shops - it's like a maze. We'll come back for the garden when the weather isn't so cold.

The Yuyuan Garden area is right in the middle of Shanghai - about a ten minute walk from the subway. You can see the Jin Mao Tower in the distance.

Trying to track down the Master Shopper. Mandy does all of the bargaining because I don't know my numbers as well as she, and I'm too nice. All of the shopkeepers turn to me in their frustration in dealing with her, and all I can do is shrug my shoulders. She's gotten us many deals over the past few months. It will be funny watching her trying to bargain with salespeople at the Mall of America. She'll definitely get some strange looks.

The area is made up of hundreds of little shops. There are people constantly trying to pull you into their stores to buy things. It's tough keeping up with Mandy in a place like this - she stops all too often. We picked up a lot of souvenirs here - pretty cheap prices too.