Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Hong Kong!

We are in Hong Kong for a series of trainings and then a few days of sightseeing.  A friend generously offered us her apartment for after the meetings, so we have a free place to stay.
We flew from Shenyang to Shenzhen with a  stop in Wuhan.  Chinese airline service is amazing!  The flight attendants bow, they do exercises, they are courteous and kind.  This time our pilot was an American and he invited us to the cockpit.  Really fun.
So we arrived in Shenzhen.  We were supposed to meet a friend and then take the bus into Hong Kong.  Traveling this way is much cheaper as a flight from China to Hong Kong is an international flight.
We got off the plane and didn't see our friend.  We waited.  And waited.  And waited for two hours.  Our plane was late so we were really late.  We looked around the terminal and couldn't find our friend.  We got our lap top out and found out that we had sent the wrong flight information. This lead to some fruitless marital discord over who did and didn't do what.  :)
We decided to get on the bus and go into Hong Kong.  We e-mailed our friend that we would meet him at the place where Paul was to speak the next morning.  We got on the bus...and there was our friend!  He was in the wrong terminal and had finally given up.  We were thrilled to see him as Hong Kong is a complicated place and I'm not completely sure we could have found where we needed to go.
A security agent entered the bus and filmed everyone on it.  Then we took the bus to the border where we went through several checkpoints.  Finally we arrived at our friend's apartment complex.  We spent the evening looking at Hong Kong!  It is simply amazing. Multi-cultural, multilingual, prosperous....incredible.
We spent the night at someone's 500 square feet apartment with the windows open!
The next day, Paul spoke at a friend's special meeting.  When he got dressed, he discovered that he had packed a pair of pants with a huge rip in them!  His only other pants were jeans and there was no way that he could speak in them.   We found some safety pins and pinned the rip together.  He stood behind a podium the whole time he was speaking.  He had to speak a second time, and there was a little break between the two speaking times.  So he ran down to the mall and found a tailor.  He took off his pants, hid behind a curtain and the tailor fixed them!  That was one of those only in China/only in Hong Kong moments.
We are very thankful to be here and spend 10 days out of the frozen north!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

love this...I remember when we were coming home to the US..Kenji and I and the older three boys got on the wrong train to get back to our hotel the night before our early am flight-we still needed to pack some stuff and weigh suitcases that night.Kenji's dad was at the hotel with Tio-5 mo. old...no cell phone or laptop..what was supposed to be a maybe hour trip became SEVERAL, we got off the train practically in the middle of nowhere when we realized...too late for more trains and paid alot of money for a taxi ride back..a little silence on that trip;). but at least it was Kenji's country:)you guys are brave..and GOd is always good! Heather Kaneko

Tanya said...

LOL! Tailors and Hong Kong are almost synonymous. So glad he found one so easily.

And glad you're enjoying the warmth.

Sarah Bessey said...

So glad you are getting a bit of a rest. Hang those long johns up for a break.