Meet My New Boyfriend (Marc Doesn't Mind!)

Yes folks, that is me and MIKE WEIR! He's soooooo dreamy! Don't worry, Marc doesn't mind, in fact, he took the picture!

So, here's the low-down... two weekends ago, Marc found out that the Hong Kong Open was being played at Fanling golf course, a fancy schmancy members-only golf club in the New Territories. Being the avid golfer and golf fan that he is, we went to check it out. (For all you golfers out there, Marc has been invited to play that fancy schmancy golf course next week and he is super psyched about it.)

Now, I'm not a golfer, in fact, it's better for the safety of all those within 50 yards for me *not* to wield a golf club of any variety, even a putt-putt club. Watching golf on tv catapults me into a comatose state faster than you can say "Fore!" However, the ONLY exception to this is Mike Weir, man what a hottie. So, when Marc suggested going to the HK Open and I found out Mikey was going to be there, I gladly agreed. Hey, they say marriage is about compromising, right? I'm getting a head start.

The trip to Fanling took 1 1/2 hours on a shuttle bus and we got there around mid-afternoon. Marc salivated over the golf course for a while until I convinced him to find Mike. There were other famous golfers there too (not Tiger but others that I don't know) but I was on a mission.

We caught up with Mike on the 12th hole where he nearly made a hole-in-one. The ball hit the stick thingie with the flag, the one that sticks out of the hole and shot back out of the hole (it was on ESPN the next day!). I like to think I brought him some good juju even though he didn't get the hole-in-one. We stalked him for the next bunch of holes and I tried surreptitiously to wink at him as he walked from hole to hole but he was in a trance. It's OK, I forgave him since he has to concentrate, I mean it *is* his job.

At the end of the game, he walked off the field through a trellis where a bunch of cute Chinese boys were begging for his golf ball - "pleeeesss meester pleeeeees!" Mike then went into a tent to record his score and then came back out to do an interview. After all that, he got down to business, signing hats, golf balls, gloves, babies, boobs, etc. It was a bit of pandemonium:

But I got the goods:

Then, after he finished his autograph session, the best thing in the world happened. I noticed Mike was walking towards the clubhouse, so I made Marc get in position so he could snap a picture of him as he was walking past me. Marc was too slow and managed to miss the picture, but then, that's when Mike turned around and realized it was Sabrina The Puerto Rican who wanted a picture with him. HE TURNED BACK AROUND, walked over to me and voluntarily put his arm around me so Marc could snap the picture! He didn't do this for anyone else, just ME! Man, those Chinese people were pissed. I had to resist the temptation to do the "I'm awesome and you're not" dance.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon and I got a new computer desktop background out of it, tee hee hee! Here's to compromise! ;-)

Don't Tell Our Moms...

Place: Yangshuo, China

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Hello: Nĭ hău (knee how)

Thank you: Xièxie (shie shie)

There is a program on the Travel and Living channel over here called "Don't Tell My Mom I Went To [fill in the blank]." This guy travels all over the world to dangerous places like Afganistan and puts himself in some very sticky situations. That's how I feel about our time in Yangshuo.

It all started when I read that there were a few outfits in Yangshuo that would take you rock climbing on the karsts. Are you kidding me? Heck ya! I can't believe Marc didn't even tell me this was an option. He is no longer allowed to plan our itineraries because of this. So, after Marc's rousing game of ping pong with the Locals, we stopped by Karst Pizzeria which is a pizzeria, duh, and a rock climbing outfit. They also have a small hostel upstairs. Don't worry Moms, I read all about the rock climbing companies and chose the one that was highly recommended and specifically requested that the owner (who happens to have the most experience of all the rock climbers in Yangshuo) take us herself. I also checked all the ropes to make sure they were sturdy and new. We talked about our experience (mine at the rock climbing wall at Chucky Cheese and Marc's at the rock climbing wall at the Bull Durham minor league baseball game during the 7th inning stretch) and concluded we were beginners since we hadn't actually climbed a real outdoor rock/mountain/wall/cliff/ledge/hill. Our best bet was Baby Frog Rock, a good beginner's climb with good scenery for Mr. Shutterbug over here.

I wish we could say that we got a long lesson on how to climb the sucker in front of us but the only lesson we got was how to tie the ropes. I guess when it comes down to it, you just have to figure out how flexible you are feeling that day. To her credit though, our guide helped steer us in the right direction since she knew Baby Frog like the back of her hand. Marc went first, scaling the side of the karst like a spider monkey:

When he rappelled down, he whined like a little girl about how hard it was and how he didn't think I could make it. Waaa waaa waaaa, all I heard was a challenge and boy did I prove him wrong:

Not only did I climb that route, but I also climbed a more difficult route that went even higher. Don't worry Moms, we were only 10 feet off the ground, just enough to break a wrist but not die (see picture below).

As promised, the scenery was great and we took a bunch of pictures.

Rock climbers extraordinaire!

When we got back home, my mom almost reached through the computer to strangle me. I guess I won't tell her about the next dangerous thing we have on the itinerary for Bali... just kidding! (sort of).

Later that night, we went to a spectacular light show that took place on the Li River. We highly regretted forgetting the camera because it was a feast for the eyes. Over 600 performers put on a show unlike anything I've ever seen before. The karsts were illuminated making a magical natural backdrop. Cormorant fishers paddled on their bamboo rafts with lanterns. Chinese women and girls sang and danced in traditional Chinese costumes with elaborate headpieces and jewelry. At one point, over 200 performers wearing outfits made of white Christmas lights walked seemingly on the water (but really on floating walkways) in a long procession and flickered their lights in mesmerizing patterns. We bought the video so if anyone is interested, we can show you what we're talking about because I'm not doing a good job describing it.

The next day, we woke up early to bike around the surrounding farming villages and nearly wore our butts off on what had to be a 30 mile ride. We stopped frequently to take pictures like this one when we came across a bride and groom taking pictures in the rice paddies:

Nothing says romance like rice paddies, mud and water buffalo dung... We also stopped to see a 1,400 year old Banyan tree and to hike up Moon Hill. If you ever go on this trip, let me just warn you that Moon Hill is gorgeous but there are over 1,200 extremely steep steps and there are old Chinese women that follow you ALL THE WAY UP the mountain trying to sell you water and fan you with their bamboo fans. It's extremely irritating and no amount of ignoring or polite declining will deter them from possibly making a sale. The view at the top is worth it though:

Afterwards, we biked around the farms and came across this:

Yup, that's a water buffalo. Don't worry, he was accompanied by his owner, an old farmer lady that was gracious enough to drag her water buffalo out of the fields and let us take pictures with it. Many Locals have water buffalo to help till the soil for the rice paddies. It's really bizarre but you can be biking down the side of a road and all of a sudden, you're sharing the road with a family of water buffalo. Craziest thing I've ever seen - good thing they are tame!

Our biking trip was Marc's favorite part of the entire weekend and he took a TON of pictures like this:

And even another video:

After enough putzing around, we returned to the hotel to get our bags and a taxi to the airport. We thought we had plenty of time until the concierge told us it would take an hour longer than we expected to get to the airport. YIKES! We told the cab driver to step on it and BOY did he! The 1 1/2 hour ride from hell, I mean cab ride, involved lots of swerving to pass bikes, cars, buses, even people. We would swerve into ONCOMING traffic as if the cab were a ball in a pinball machine only to swerve back into our lane at the last possible minute. We turned on and off dirt roads without signs and, if we hadn't already used the same taxi driver the night before, would have thought he was leading us out back to get shot. I've been in many a harrowing taxi cab rides before, including Hong Kong and Thailand, but this one took the cake. We changed our pants before the we got on the plane, barely on time but on time nonetheless thanks to Speedybombeedy, and made it safely back home, much to the relief of our mothers.

Guilin - Home of 1,000 Carps

Place: Guilin, China

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Hello: Nĭ hău (knee how)

Thank you: Xièxie (shie shie)

We are just hanging out at the apartment this weekend, waiting for Morgan to call us, so I decided to post a blog about our travels to Guilin and Yangshuo.

[For those of you who don't know what/where Guilin is, just look up page 422 in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die (we're steadily making our way through this book by the way). For those of you who haven't bought this book even though I told you to, it's about an hour plane ride northwest of Hong Kong in the province of Guangxi.]

We left on Thursday night for a short weekender of action-packed adventure. The flight was non-eventful and we landed in Guilin around 8pm. Yet again, we have another story from the airport in Guilin. It seems that we can't start any vacation without some sort of note-worthy airport experience. My pea-sized bladder apparently couldn't survive the hour long plane ride so I rushed out of the plane in search of Le Toilet and came across this sign:

DO WHAT???!?!?! I was laughing so hard I just about didn't make it to the bathroom but luckily I did, without my passenger friend, and everything came out just fine,thanks for asking.

We made it out of the airport without further incident or confusing signs and made our way to the hotel. By the time we got there, it was late and we were both starving so we went to Congee City Restaurant, recommended by the concierge because it had a great variety of food available. So, I had some very tasty beef and vegetables with rice while Marc decided to go off the reservation and eat this:

Guesses anyone? I will give anyone who guesses correctly (and hasn't heard this story yet) $20 USD. Here is a close-up:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is duck jaw. Marc, in his infinite wisdom, decided to voluntarily eat the beak, tongue, ear canal and jaw ligaments of DUCK. Seriously? Out of all the things on that menu and he picks DUCK JAW? Granted, some of the other options weren't very appetizing either:

• Duck tongue (for those who don't want the ear canal I suppose)
• Soft-shell turtle
• That reptile I hate whose name starts with an S
• Donkey meat
• Guilin river snail (a local delicacy, how do you say escargot in Chinese?)
• Pig pizzle (what? There is some pig pizzle in the hizzle?)
• Sparrow (a "special kind of fish" according to the menu)
• Mouse-like fish (so, is it hairy?)
• Frog saute
• Squid on a stick
• Congee (I have no idea what it is, but you could order congee with EVERYTHING)

I'm all for being adventurous, but come on folks, some things just aren't meant to be eaten. Besides, Marc said it was kind of gristly and didn't have a lot of meat on it. Really? Does any animal have muscles around its mouth? Like I said, I stuck to my safe beef and vegetables and got plenty to eat. [I've been chastised for writing about gross Chinese delicacies because I'm deterring potential visitors from coming to Hong Kong, so I'm making more of an effort to elaborate that you can get a side of normal Western food to go along with duck jaw if you so choose.]

The next day, we woke up early to board our Li River cruise boat. Now, Marc and I are not the tour types, we like to set forth on our own adventure not shuffled like cattle from one must-see tourist attraction to another. However, some things we can't do on our own, like boating down the Li River (which is what the book recommended). So, we got on board with 100 other tourists and this kid:

Boy was HE excited to be there, he could hardly stay in his seat. Luckily, once we were moving, we were allowed to move all over the boat, including the top deck where we could take some spectacular pictures.

The scenery in this province of China is full of strange narrow limestone mountains called karsts. I kept forgetting what they were called, so throughout the trip, I kept saying "Take a picture of THAT corpse, it looks like a pencil!" or "Holy carp!" It was funny at the time. Marc ignored me and instead took so many pictures that I made him go through them all and delete 75% of them. Here is one we kept:

Marc's visions of the foggy Chinese-y mountain-scape was coming true and he was like a kid in a candy store. It was (secretly) very cute (shhhh, don't tell him).

On the boat, we met some Americans, the first since we moved to Hong Kong except for 1 of Marc's co-workers. It's amazing how many Brits and Aussies we run into, but Americans really are the minority. It was comforting to hear American accents and we spent some time telling the tour group members where to go in Hong Kong (their next stop on their itinerary).

The other group of tourists on our boat was a loud group of Spaniards who asked me to take their picture. When I said "Sure, no problem" in Spanish, they got even louder "Oh! She speaks Castellano! Let's get her to take a group picture!" One group picture turned into 20 and 5 minutes later, I was part of their group and even invited to dinner! Marc and I had other plans, so we declined but it was just really neat to meet other tourists who spoke our language(s) and who were enjoying China as much as we were.

We disembarked at Yangshuo 5 hours and 6,762.5 pictures later and found ourselves in a quaint farming river-town with more karsts and bicycles galore. Lonely Planet had offered this interesting item: "If you're like most, you'll come to Yangshuo for a couple of days after the Li River cruise but end up staying far longer." Even though it was a sleepy little town, it had so many things to do, we could easily have stayed a week exploring the town and its surrounding areas.

The main area of town next to the river is a big pedestrian walking mall with tons of unique Chinese handicrafts, paintings, clothes, fake Rolexes (of course), traditional musical instruments and jewelry. Also in town were tons of little coffeehouses and restaurants aimed at tourists' palates. You could get Italian, Greek, English pub food, even pizza! And it was good, not the weird concoctions we find sometimes when we go to the Pizza Hut in Hong Kong (prawn pizza anyone?).

We found our way to our hotel and quickly rented bikes, THE mode of transportation. Then, we rode along the river-side to a local market and made a pit-stop for Marc to play an intense game of ping-pong with one of the locals. It went like this:

• Marc sees Chinese men playing an intense game of ping-pong in the park.
• Marc says he wants to play ping-pong.
• I say OK, but they are going to kick your butt.
• Marc says I know.
• Marc plays old man at ping pong.
• Old man beats the pants off Marc at ping pong.

HELLO! They're Chinese, they invented ping-pong, what did you expect?

While Marc was getting schooled, I sat on the curb next to the guy whose head you see in the picture. We got to talking and he asked me how I was enjoying Yangshuo. I told him I really liked it and it was a very pretty town. Then, he asked me to fill out a page in a journal he had with my thoughts on his home town. His journal was just a regular black and white composition book but I could tell it had been used a lot. I flipped through the pages and saw about 100 pages filled with comments from other tourists from all over the world. How neat! I wrote a few paragraphs and he practiced his reading in English while I helped him with some of the harder words. Marc and I both agreed that this graze with the Locals was one of the most interesting moments of our trip.

Later that evening, we went back into town to line up some activities for the next day and called it an early night. Stay tuned for days 3 and 4 of our Yangshuo adventure. In the meantime, here's a video from our Li River cruise, you can see one of our newfound Spanish friends yet another picture at the end of the video. Enjoy!

Holy Batman!

Today, Marc met me at Subway on the escalator for lunch, something we do fairly frequently. However, today was a bit different because when I went to meet him, the first thing that came out of his mouth was "I just passed Morgan Freeman on the escalator."

WHAT??!?!?!?!?!

Turns out, Morgan was filming the newest Batman movie, The Dark Knight, just a few levels down on the escalator. To heck with lunch, who needs nutrition when there is a mega movie star in our vicinity? So, we went back down the escalator to Lyndhurst Street where we found hundreds of production crew members standing around and shouting into walkie talkies. We were in the middle of an honest-to-God movie shoot! At that point, we didn't know what movie, mind you, but I didn't care. Morgan Freeman was within 50 feet of me and I had a great view of him from the stairs!

We stayed for a while watching Morgan walk down a really Chinese-y side-street that I like so much - boring, I know, but the cameras were following him and the director was shouting Action! and the whole thing was just so Hollywood - right in the middle of Hong Kong! After Morgan did his strutting, his handlers shuffled him over to Pizza Express for lunch and pulled down the shades so we reluctantly went back to Subway to nourish ourselves.

Funny thing was, Marc had almost changed our lunch plans to go to Pizza Express, our favorite pizza joint, before he encountered all the craziness. AND, he had heard that the Batman movie was set to shoot in Hong Kong but that a key action scene was cut out of the movie because it involved dropping an actor into Victoria Harbor which is extremely polluted. (This tidbit turned out to be false: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/entertainment/view/310579/1/.html )

After lunch, we went back to stalk some more and saw that all of the camera equipment had signs for the movie Rory's First Kiss. "Booo," Marc said, "I'm turned off now."

However, when he went to his office, he looked up the fictitious movie and found out that Rory's First Kiss is the code-name for Batman: The Dark Knight and that Morgan Freeman is one of the actors. So, it really was Batman!

The shooting was scheduled to continue this afternoon but I refrained from making my way down there to play the star-struck fan. Who knows, maybe we'll be at dinner this weekend and run into Morgan. We can invite him to our table to have drinks and we'll become fast friends. He'll invite us to Aspen to go skiing and Lake Como to hang out with Clooney. I'll be sure to write *all* about it...

National Day

The night we got back from Thailand was National Day in Hong Kong (October 1st), celebrating the beginning of nationhood for China. Even though Hong Kong is a special administrative region and has its own Special Administrative Region Establishment Day, it still participates in Chinese holidays like this one (did I mention they are smart?).

From our apartment, we could see the fireworks celebration taking place over Victoria Harbor:

No messing with crowds and Locals who don't really understand the meaning of personal space, it was nice to just sit in the living room window and watch the 30 minute fireworks display.

For those of you who were wondering, yes, some people celebrate Halloween here in Hong Kong. It's not as prevalent as it is in the US, but there are plenty of Halloween decorations everywhere and a few big street costume parties in ex-pat sections of the city. I did see some kids dressed up earlier in the week, but none came trick-or-treating which is a shame really because if they did, they would have one stop shopping, er, trick-or-treating! Our building as 33 floors, with 4 apartments per floor, that is 132 doors to knock on without having to walk very far!

We're off to Guilin, China this afternoon for a long weekend. We'll be back on Sunday so enjoy the past few blogs while we're out. I promise not to be so slack next time! :)