The Forbidden City was like all of Beijing under a great deal of renovation (you can see a little on the edges of the picture). They are furiously getting ready for the 2008 Olympics which will be hosted in the Beijing area.

Tienamin Square.

This will give you an idea as to how the busy little market streets looked. Yes, that is a bicycle rickshaw, and you can still hire them to take you around when you've had it with all the walking you inevitably end up doing.

and going. Guess who we saw again while we were walking on the wall. Though we had left our new friends back at the first hostel, we ran into Misha while we were walking on the wall. The other two had hiked to distant towers that Misha, Joy and I did not make it to. We enjoyed each others company while we waited for them to make it down.

and going,

It keeps going,

Our trip was full of trials. China has very little infrastructure for tourism yet. It took about thirty minutes from arriving at our second hostel for them to understand that we had made reservations over the internet, but they were well worth it when we finally got to see such magnificent sights as the Great Wall, seen here streching out behind my radient wife.

From left to right our new friends Misha from Holland, Roger from Canada, and Amanda also from Canada (but unaquainted with Roger until the ferry) were instrumental in getting us through the first day in China. Amanda had the forsight to get a little currency before we arrived (we were all borrowing from her until we found an ATM), Roger had a Lonely Planet that had a map of Beijing, and an address for a Hostel (as well as some words written in Chinese), and Misha spoke a little Chinese (he was moving to a small town close to Beijing). I guess that Joy and I weren't much help, but we did provide safety in numbers as we wandered for what seemed to be hours through the small dark streets (almost alleys) of Beijing trying to find the hostel. This picture was taken after we finally made it there. We quite happily shared this room, by this point we had built a bond through our tribulations.

The ferry was very nice. It was almost like an economical cruise.

We took a slow boat to China! The ferry took about 25 hours, but was much more comfortable than we expected. We enjoyed relaxing in our room, watching DVD's we rented onboard, and sleeping in our gently (if at all) rocking bunks. If only the rest of China had gone so smoothly! When we arrived we took an "express" bus to Beijing. It was faster than any other transportation we could have taken, but it dropped us off at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere with everything written in Chinese, people surrounding us "the strange westerners", and no ATM to be found to get the proper currency. Luckily, we were not alone. We had met some other travelers on the Ferry, and all together we managed to get by!

Kevin, his roomates, and their girlfriends enjoyed a wonderful dinner with Joy and I. You actually cooked the meat on the table and then wrapped it in a lettuce leaf filled with spices at this restaurant. It was delicious! Kevin really showed us a good time while we were visiting Korea. He's truly a good friend. Thanks Bro!

An elegant woman (on the left) in an elegant tearoom.

The national folk museum was beautiful on the outside as well as being extremely educational.

Unfortunately when we went to the largest palace in Seoul it was raining.

We encountered some really beautiful stuff in Korea such as this ceremony we happened upon at one of the temples

While we were in Korea we stayed with our friend Kevin from San Angelo. He's teaching English over there and has many friends that are also English teachers. We felt almost at home amongst so many westerners, and although I don't know exactly what he was thinking Kevin's actions seem to imply something along these lines. He's the one holding up the fork and ketchup, if it wern't so westernized there perhaps he'd be holding chopsticks!

Sorry for the wait

Sorry for the wait for the next blog, I haven't found a computer that will allow me to upload pictures for a while now. I hope to change the meathod I use to update the blog so that when I do find a good computer I will be able to update a lot very quickly. It may not be as pretty though so I appologize ahead of time. Anyway until then just know that Joy and I are having a great time. We've been to Korea, China, and Japan since I last updated the blog. We are currently in England. I hope I will be able to upload pictures soon, until then sorry for the wait!

Hong Kong is one the most complex cities I’ve ever experienced. I had expectations of a sprawling city completely covering the island that I knew Hong Kong was situated on. Once more my preconceived ideas were shattered by reality.

The first indication that my ideas were misguided were when we got out of the airport and were surrounded by beautiful green mountains. The double decker bus ride into the area where we had booked our hostel was no less stunning. The landscapes of Hong Kong are obviously similar to the inspiration for the antique Chinese paintings we have often run across, where the mountains, rivers and coasts are always much larger than the houses, people and boats that mix seamlessly into the backdrop. Hong Kong, even with it’s enormous buildings and huge population still seems to be harmoniously set into nature.

When we arrived at our hostel, we exited the bus into the Hong Kong of the movies. A crowded bustle of people engulfed us and immediately began trying to sell us a room in what seemed to be a hundred different guest houses in the same building. We had already booked a room in a guesthouse at the Mirador Mansion building, but even telling the hustlers over and over that we already had a room didn’t faze them. They tried to direct us to the wrong elevator to get us to the floor with their rooms, and lied telling us things like the New Garden Guest House (where our rooms were booked) was the same as the Lilly Garden Guest House (another of the countless guest houses in the building). When we eventually did get our room we didn’t know what to think about it. It was nice because it had it’s own bathroom and window looking out from the 13th floor, but it was also incredibly small. When I lay down on the bed my head touched one wall and my feet the other, and the bathtub was so small Joy couldn’t even sit in it comfortably.

We explored the area around our hostel, which I can only describe as Honk Kong’s seedy underbelly, before we found our way to Honk Kong Island. The Island is the wealthiest place I’ve ever been. There are so many tall buildings that they collectively mask their own magnitude. One of the tallest, eighty-eight floors, blends in with the others so well that you don’t realize that if you saw it in another city it would make the other buildings look like termite mounds (I think the tallest building in Seoul, Korea is sixty-three floors). It was also incredibly clean, almost sterile. We walked around for about an hour before we realized that there actually were restaurants around us, but they were neatly hidden inside the buildings. There were no obtrusive signs cluttering the beautiful exterior of the pristine buildings.

We eventually found our way to a restaurant, Hong Kong park, and up on the peak (an area that on clear days allows a view of the entire Island). It was not a clear day so all we saw was Fog. It was appropriate, we didn’t realize it but we were still only seeing Honk Kong from a haze. We did not experience the true Hong Kong until we met up with Raymond and Jessica Tang.

We met Raymond and Jessica while we were snorkeling in Cairns. They were vacationing from their hectic lives in Hong Kong and just happened to sit in front of us on the boat out to the reef. When they found out we were going to Hong Kong soon they exchanged email addresses with us and gave us their phone number to contact them while we were there. They were part of a club in Hong Kong that provided them with many discounts in dining etc. around town, and offered to let us use their discount for a five star hotel in Hong Kong (a benefit they obviously had little use for since they had a flat). It was a wonderful offer, it would have been about sixty dollars a night for a one hundred eighty dollar room, but even sixty seemed out of our budget. In hindsight we probably should have taken the room, considering what we stayed in.