Hello Hong Kong! Goodbye China?

We got up and got ready to catch the train for Hong Kong.  I tried to pack my bag with the new souvenirs, but there wasn't room for everything, so I left a pair of pants that were too big anyway since I've lost so much weight.  We got the suitcase packed, but it took both of us.  The train was uneventful with pretty scenery.  

We had to process through immigration twice.  From mainland China to an administrative area of China, we processed immigration twice.  The last time, I got a little paper square for entering Hong Kong.  They didn't even staple it in.  I had to keep up with it and staple it in when I got home.  Getting a taxi to the hotel took a little work, too.  By the time we got to the hotel, it was 11:00 p.m, and I was really beat.  I was also starting to feel some twinges in a tendon in my right foot.  My companion was wanting to walk along the waterfront, and we were right there, but I just couldn't do it.  This time, she didn't go out without me.

We got up the next morning and had breakfast downstairs.  Fancy restaurant with multiple choices, but the Holiday Inn in Xi'an was better - both the room and the food.  We got the room for the view of the harbor (which was non-existent) and proximity to the Kowloon West Train Station (close enough we could have walked if not for the bags).  We checked our bags in with ALLWAYS, a company that does luggage from the hotel to the airport.  Our tour guide called and came to walk us to the tour bus - which was waiting for us at the Holiday Inn a few blocks away.  Maybe we should have stayed there!  It was a nice tour, but I was underimpressed with the guide and the way the tour was put together.  I don't think this was because I was tired and hurting a bit.  She was a conspiracy theorist who believed the "rock people" of Xi'an (the Terra Cotta Warriors) aren't real.  She did tell us that Hong Kong increases the size of the islands by cutting the tops off some of the mountains and adding shoreline or connecting islands.  I looked it up, and that is, in fact, how Hong Kong increases their area.  Soon after passing the police station that was in one of the Rush Hour movies, we got to the cable car.  We had opted for the crystal car, and we had a skip the line pass.  It was a very nice ride, though it was cloudy.

Our first look at the Big Buddha was pretty hazy.

Once we got to the top of the cable car ride, while we were waiting for everybody else and having our break, ALLWAYS called me and said we had not left our luggage for them.  I had to send them a copy of the receipt I got for our bags.  They went to the wrong hotel.  After the mild panic, it all worked out.  They got it and took it to the airport.  After the "free time", we all met and stood at the public bus stop waiting for our turn to board a public bus to the fishing village of Tai O.  We took a boat ride around that little harbor and up into the waters around the houses.

We were told that the sewage just gets released into the water.  But don't worry because they only eat the fish that are caught in the China Sea.

On our way back up the river, another boat crashed into us.  I never had that happen before.  It didn't cause any damage, and we just pushed the boats apart and carried on our merry ways.

The people on the draw bridge enjoyed watching it, though.

We walked around the little alleys of the village for a while.

And I found some dude fishing - on the river - where the sewage just gets dumped.

Right before lunch.  I passed on the fish, but everything was very good.  

After lunch, we were given more free time to wander the area.  Those of us who had already wandered pretty much all of it stayed in the restaurant and chatted.  Then we left the stilt-building part of the village and lined up at another public bus stop to go back to the Big Buddha.

There's a promenade going up to the Big Buddha that has statues of various Chinese mythological figures.

We finally made it to the Big Buddha.  It's pretty impressive.  Far too many stairs for me to take with my foot hurting and the limited time we had before we had to leave to catch our plane.  I must come back to Hong Kong.  I really want to climb those steps, spend more time around this area, and see other things that I wasn't able to do this trip.

This was my last good look at the Big Buddha on the way back down the cable cars.

We made it to the airport, retrieved our luggage, and got checked in for our flight to Taiwan.  My companion and I said our goodbyes in Taiwan, where we caught our respective flights to our respective homes.  All in all, an excellent trip, and as expected, I had a flare soon after I arrived home.  Not quite enough to need a walker, but it came close.  I was still flaring when I saw my dermatologist, who decided to tentatively diagnose me with Psoriatic Arthritis.  Finally, after about 30 years of various symptoms (starting with my hands), over 10 of those years negatively impacting my ability to walk, I may actually get a diagnosis that explains my inability to walk, my need to stop playing the keyboard/piano, and problems with hand coordination, instead of just diagnosing and treating pain.  While there's no cure, there are real treatments that do more than just manage symptoms.  Wish me luck getting an appointment with a rheumatologist!

A Giant Brown Panda and Chinese Hamburgers

We got up this morning, got ready to go, and had the breakfast buffet again.  I'm liking this hotel and this city.  But, today, we're leaving the city.  It's a significant distance from town because we wanted to go to the Qinling Four Rare Animals Science Park, which houses the Giant Panda Research Center, but the hotel told our driver we were going to the Qinling Zoo.  So, our driver was waiting, and we headed out, arriving at the zoo.  When we went to buy tickets, it didn't look like what we were looking for.  So, through the translator app, I asked the lady what tickets we needed in order to see the brown panda.  She said we needed tickets to a different place in a different suburb, and she gave our driver the address of where we actually wanted to go.  Turns out, our destination was on the other side of Xi'an, but our driver didn't even complain.  He just headed out.  We finally made it to the park.

We got our entrance tickets and our tram tickets to the top of the hill, where we started the long, slow, fabulous trip down.  Obviously, we started with the giant pandas.  There was a giant black panda out in the yard sunning itself.

Then, there was a shuffle toward an interior room, and this is what I saw.

Hello, Qi Zai!!  The Qinling Mountains is the only place in the world that has this color variant.  All other giant pandas are black and white (when clean) except for the one albino panda that has been seen.  In the Qinling Mountains, there is a mutation that causes some families of pandas to be brown instead of black, and Qi Zai is the only one in captivity.  He is also the reason I wanted to come to this science park.  After he ate whatever was in the little metal bowl in the corner of that room, he made his way outside.  I was at the rail for this exit.

Soon after he came out, I made my way to the front of the enclosure so I could see him face on.

I just love the way he lays back and drops his crumbs on his chest.  I've been known to do the same, Qi Zai!  I do the same!  It's pretty much the same mechanism as the golden monkeys in Uganda do, but the golden monkeys sit up and eat faster.

He just looks so happy going for the next bamboo!

By this time, he's gotten very tired.  Eating is such hard work!

Isn't that just the prettiest face with that little tongue sticking out?

After getting that nourishment, he walked over to the opening in the wall to converse with his buddy.  It's now time to visit.  His buddies are giant black pandas.  Qi Zai is that only brown panda in captivity.  They are separated by a grill in the hole in the wall between the enclosures.

Look at that huge paw!

By the time Qi Zai went to sleep and I left his enclosure, most of the pandas were sleeping.  I did like that this center didn't let anybody harass the animals at all.  Not only could you not throw things or stuff, but in the baby center, somebody whistled as if they were trying to get the panda's attention, and a docent made them stop.

The center is called the Four Rare Treasures Animal Park, but they have more than four rare treasures.  The rarities are the giant panda, the golden snub-nosed monkey, the crested ibis, and this guy, the takin.  The takin is also known as the "gnu goat" because he looks like a cross between a goat and a gnu.  This is a golden takin, and they live exclusively in the Qinling Mountains (like the giant brown panda).  In fact, all four of the rarities are found primarily in the Qinling Mountains that surround the park.

But they didn't only have the four rare treasures.  In the aviary, they had the common crane

the black stork

the asiatic black bear (AKA the moon bear because of the moon shapes on his chest)

the red-billed blue magpie

and the red panda.  I just love these guys!  They had two in this enclosure,

The last animals on the way down the hill was the golden snub-nosed monkeys.  I had never heard of these guys before, and we were initially confused because they looked nothing like the golden monkeys we had seen in Uganda, and those monkeys only lived in the Virunga Mountains, not even surviving in zoos when captured and relocated.  These were very different.  They had two different enclosures.  This enclosure seemed to have a mother and four children

while the other enclosure seemed to have a few family groups.  They have sharp teeth

and lovely long hair on their backs.

After seeing all the animals, we went by the souvenir tents at the entrance/exit and picked up a few things, then I bought some waters for us and the driver, and we headed back to the hotel.  We wrote our post cards to the kids at home, rested for a minute, and got directions to the post office from the concierge.  All these times we had gotten lost trying to get from the gate to the hotel, we could have just used the walking subway under the old town!!  How did I not know that foot traffic is underground in the old town of Xi'an??  Just go to the next block and take the stairs downstairs!  This would have been sooooo nice to have known when we first got here!

So, our stop was #3, and the concierge said we wanted to go to #6 for the post office.  So we headed out.  The plan was to mail the post cards and come back to the hotel, so I left my camera in the hotel.  Once we got down there, we found that the Muslim quarter, where the market we had heard so much about, was at #9, so we went on to the Muslim quarter.  Therefore, the rest of my pictures were taken with my phone.  As soon as we came up, we saw this.  I love the quilts they use on scooters throughout China!

As we entered the Muslim quarter, we saw the drum tower.  The drum tower marks the end of the old town and the beginning of the Muslim Quarter.  I hear it's one of the most bustling markets in Xi'an.

Drums line the entire building.  We didn't go up, but you can see drums on the tower.

Soon after entering the Muslim Quarter, we saw a chocolate museum.  Let me say that again - a Chocolate Museum!!  The first chocolate sculptures in the museum were from the Terra Cotta Warriors.

Then, there were musical instruments, foods, and other sculptures

Once you complete the museum, you enter the store - or should I say stores!  And there were samples!  Therefore, there weren't as many pictures as there should have been.  Ultimately, it wound through multiple stores that weren't related to chocolate and dumped us back out on a street, still in the market.

When we got hungry, we decided on having Chinese Hamburgers.  We had heard they were an experience, but weren't given any more information.  In Chinese, the sandwich is called rou jia mo, and it's delicious!  The meat is simmered for hours with spices and then just before being served, it's chopped into mince with chili sauce, with or without minced onions and peppers.  After everything is minced up and mixed, it's put in a steamed bun that's almost like a pita bread, but steamed, called mo.  The place we got it from had waterproof square pockets for eating, and they put a little extra juice in it.

It was to DIE FOR!  Chinese hamburgers will go on the list for dinner rotations at home!

On the way back to the subway, we walked through this plaza that had the cutest benches.

We went back to the hotel and got ready to leave for Hong Kong the next day.  It's an all day train.  I think I want to come back to Xi'an to explore the town more and have more of the food.