Jian Du Hotel Yangjiang

This week we went to Lost City Water Park and on the weekend we went camping on Hailing Island. We rented two tents and slept on the beach after staying up late and cooking on the open fire.

Only nine days before we leave Mainland China for Hong Kong so we are in the 'get rid of everything' mode once again.

... Culture

-Friendly Faces

- People waving to us like we are in a parade

- Great transportation system

- Street Vendors

- My new soccer team

- All the friends that we have met

Next month we are going to Hawaii to meet up with my grandparents. We'll be on Oahu for six weeks. Then we’ll go back home for Christmas. I am very appreciative of my home, town and country now.

... mit einem Casino (dem Lisboa Casino, unten rechts auf dem Bild). Das hatte die einzige Lizenz. Inzwischen gibt es die Lizenzen (fuer viel Geld) fuer jedermann und Las Vegas ist hier (Wynn, MGM Grand, Venetian, Sands). In Macau wird inzwischen mehr Geld in den Casinos umgesetzt als in Vegas (welches sich inzwischen ja auch mehr als ...

... wasn't good enough to get more information. We walked around to the eastern edge of the bay, fording the stream and climbing on the granite boulders. Stuck in the boulders we found all sorts of strange flotsam. Shoes of every size, underwear, shirts, even a pair of glasses. Dan found a Barbie doll, too. That evening, and long into the night we played more dice and drank more beer ...

... would have it. The chinese were all over the place, swapping seats, up down, up down. However, due to being the only foreigners in about 14 carriages we gained celebrity status and soon attracted a crowd -smile a lot and say nice things about China. For about 6 hours we were pretty much in conversation (mostly the same ones) with people not only in our carriage but other carriages as well who had made a special effort to come and see us. One lad especially wanted ...

From Hong Kong, it was only an hour ferry ride to Macau, an island that is making a name for itself as China's Las Vegas. Casinos from Vegas have even opened branches there, and though they supposedly aren't quite as elaborate as in Vegas, they were quite impressive to someone who'd never seen Vegas! Long streets are in the process of being constructed on the wharf that are lined with sparkly new, old-fashioned ...

... Out of our price range if we still wanted to have money to gamble. We wandered back onto the floor and found the twenty-cent slot machines. Let's warm up there, we thought. Oops, no change. We tried to break some 100-pataca notes for tens. "Sorry, sir," the cashier told Dan. "Slot machines take Hong Kong dollars, not Macanese patacas." "Right," we said, backing off and putting our money away. We spied a cocktail waitress wheeling a cart amongst the ...

We took a bus to Taishan, a rather less vibrant town than Kaiping. Yoong was not prepared with information such as the name of her village, so had no luck finding her relatives, probably just as well, as they would see us as big dollar signs. We visited a little tea-shop, where we tried an oolong mixed with ginseng and bought some boleh - only two years old. If we keep it long enough it doubles ...

We have been out of the hotel for eleven hours. It makes sense to stay cheaply as we only come back to sleep - and watch a bit of TV. We have more information on Kaiping than any of the other towns we are visiting as it is well-known locally for its diaolou - concrete towers, mainly built by returning emigrants.

We took a bus to a village near Zili Cun, where they have promoted a large cluster of towers as a tourist site. The bus dropped us near a little eating house where ...

... at Z???, the border town on the Chinese mainland side of Macao, or Aumen as they like to call it. Almost immediately Micah went through Panic #1 as she left her wallet/book thing on the bus. We tried and failed to find out where it had gone to but by the time we had repoted it to the bus control office as missing, it reappeared in her bag where it should have been. After sheepishly sliding out of the office, we walked in a large square looking for signs to Macao and ...