8 Months This Once

Grandma is here!  Trying out some Chinese noodles at a restaurant near our hostel. On March 11 we went to the airport to meet Grandma!  She will be with us for about 3 1/2 weeks travelling through China and Nepal! We waited quite awhile at the airport for her and finally she came around the corner with a big smile, she was glad that we were there to meet her after the long journey she had by herself.   That night there was a dumpling party at our hostel where we got to sit with a bunch of other travellers and learn how to make Chinese dumplings, then eat them - it was fun. On March 12th we went to see the largest carved stone Buddha in the world, called the Leshan Buddha! The Buddha is all stone, carved into a mountain just over where 3 rivers (Minjiang River, Dadu River, Quingyi River) meet. It was built to protect and watch over the boats where the 3 rivers joined because that area was dangerous and they thought the Buddha could keep it safer.  Th...

Zhangjiajie was our first stop in China after Hong Kong. We thought we were going to a small town but it was actually a city of about 1.5 million. This was still one of  the smallest cities we went to in all of China. We arrived there at about 9:30 AM from Hong Kong. We took a night train to Zhangjiajie,  and when we got there we went straight to our hotel, via police escort. The police were trying to give us directions but with the language barrier it was hard, they finally just told us to get in a tiny little golf cart and took us there! As soon as we got there we saw that there was a cable car that went across the city and up to Tianmen mountain. Turns out that the cable car station was basically right across the street from our hotel. We were happy to sit in our room for about 15 minutes because it was very cold in Zhangjiajie, and our rooms were very warm. Since we didn't have a lot of days in this place, we went up to Tianmen mountain right after that. ...

Hong Kong On March 4 we left Vietnam and took a plane to Hong Kong. We arrived at 10:30pm and then took a city bus to the city. It was a double decker bus and we got the top front seats, it was so amazing how many lights there were. Enjoying the front seat view of the city from the double decker bus! Some of the cool neon lights Neon lights lit up the whole city.  The government even asked everyone to turn the lights off at 12:00am so that people could go to sleep because they found that the light pollution was making people not sleep well. We were all excited to see the city but not sure about the room we were staying in. It was in a sketchy building called Mirador Mansion and the room was 9 square meters! We stayed there because rooms in Hong Kong are so expensive but the ones at the "mansion" cost a decent amount. It was a very tight squeeze but luckily we were only in the room when we went to bed  and we were only staying there for 2 nig...