Yesterday was a day of sensory overload. The colors and smells and fast paced people were so much to take in. We met the Lucky family as we were boarding the tour bus. Great family. Easy to talk to. She’s a teacher and he owns a software development firm. Needless to say, we had things in common.
Our tour director was Ming, but he offered to let us call him Mr. Dynasty. Get it? Anyway, he came highly recommended from Matthew, and he lived up to every bit of the billing. He was so full of knowledge and had so much cultural perspective to share, and he didn’t mind sharing it either. It helped us out to better understand the family member we are about to add.
Once we get home and don’t have the firewalls we have here, I will embed a slideshow of our Hong Kong tour so you can see everything I cannot describe. What I can say is that it is a country/city of vast wealth and poverty, but the citizens are hard workers. Knowing that they spend 12-15 hour days earning a paycheck puts things into perspective. It also made sense as to why there was still so much traffic on the roads as we headed to the hotel so late from the airport. Ming said it was the time they could finally get together with friends after working all day.
We visited a number of beautiful places, but the curvy roads in between them all was a bit much for several of the tour members. There was some Dramamine passed around to settle the stomachs.
One of the highlights of the tour had to be the boat tour through the harbor. Seeing how the fishermen lived was truly astonishing. I took lots of pictures because I’m pretty sure I couldn’t put into words exactly the state of their “homes” on the water. Once again, it makes me appreciate what God has given me and my family.
Christian will tell you that his highlight of the day was Stanley Market. He was on the hunt for a case for his iPod, but he ended up in serious negotiations with an older gentleman to get a better price for a heliquad (his term for this neat remote controlled, video camera flying machine) and a new green laser pen (an addiction created by my colleague and good friend Michael Gras). While the price started at 880 HK Dollars, Christian negotiated him down to 475 HKD (roughly $65). Not bad at all. He even got a free battery thrown in. We left hearing the gentleman’s wife yelling at him over the deal. I’m pretty sure that gave Christian some satisfaction knowing that he got that good of a deal that the guy was getting in trouble with his wife. In the end, we were five minutes late back to the shuttle bus, but Christian was two items richer. For me, I look forward to seeing how long the quadcopter lasts. We have acres and acres of trees around our house hungry for just that type of meal.
We ended the day at the Hyatt Regency downtown since there were more restaurants to choose from. We waited by the bay for a laser light show, but it just never happened. A stray laser here and there got our hopes up, but it just made us realize how tired we really were. Standing and waiting will do that to you. So we did what any red blooded American would do. We went to Outback. I don’t know if it was our level of exhaustion or just acclimating to the food differences, but it wasn’t that great. We finished and hurriedly found the shuttle back to our Hyatt for some much needed rest. It didn’t take long to realize we were about 4 hours past the time we should have been back in bed. We had hit the wall.