Aug 18 2008
Eat at Jinbeh… Cure Cancer (Welcome to Hong Kong)
I know you have all been anxiously awaiting my thoughts on the Beijing trip, so I figured I needed to hurry up and blog!
My family had a lay-over in San Francisco before the flight, so we took them out to dinner. After dinner, they came back to check out our place! It’s really nice to show your family your place. My mom, grandmother and sister were especially excited to see the decorations.
Matt and I had a little mishap the morning of the flight. We had scheduled a shuttle to pick us up and take us to the airport between 9:45-10:00 am. The instructions said that if the shuttle was 15 minutes late, we should call and make sure everything was ok. We were sitting on the couch, bags packed, ready to go, for about 30 minutes. No shuttle. Waiting…. waiting…. maybe we should call…. waiting. We finally decided we should call, and when we looked at my phone, we had 10 missed calls. Now, two things wrong with this picture. First, why didn’t my phone ring? Note that it WAS set to ring. Second, why didn’t the shuttle driver just get out of the car and knock on the door? All of this to say, we drove our own car to the airport.
This troublesome incident was remedied the second we got to the Cathay Pacific lounge. My dad spoiled us with business class tickets, allowing us access to the cool airport lounge. The plane was REALLY cool. The seats fold into a flat bed, and everyone has their own personal TV screen, complete with movies, TV, and music. They also handed out menus, featuring two 3 course meals and a snack option. The flight attendants learned our names and pampered us the whole flight…. I’m never flying coach again! 
Hong Kong was really interesting. All the signs were in English and Chinese, which I thought was kind of odd. I guess it’s because there are several different dialects of Chinese, and if you don’t know the alphabet, you are completely clueless. We dropped by my dad’s office. He works for a company that sources baskets out of China. We also shopped around and saw the “real” Hong Kong!
The most unique event was the trek to see Big Buddha. Matt lead the way to train, accompanied by me, my brother, and my sister. Jay (brother) and Brianna (sister) were joking about culture and enlightenment, and through all this, they came to a conclusion: If you eat at Jinbeh, you can cure cancer. Obviously not true, but a funny story from the trip.
Big Buddha is huge… but not greater than the almighty Starbucks! The picture gallery showcases a picture of the Starbucks located at the base of Big Buddha! We climbed the 300+ steps and took some pictures. We also got caught in a cloud, complete with heavy rain for about 10 minutes. We also had fun with our cable car companions. They didn’t speak English, and they wanted to take lots of pictures with us.
We had a good time in Hong Kong for a few days. Off to Beijing!