More Belly Pics

Trouble in Paradise

We were hanging out at the beach today and Alanna and I decided to go for a walk along the beach. John was listening to his headphones. We were gone about 45 minutes or so, but when we came back our beach blanket was surrounded with people and there was a police man there. Someone had apparently taken our bag and walked off with it. The bag was sitting behind John but he had on his big headphones and didn't hear. There were people sitting around us but they didn't do anything to stop it I guess. One man motioned for John to look behind him which was when he realized the bag was gone. I remember reading something about how the Chinese will just watch petty crime happen and not do anything about it. So most likely they saw someone take our bag, waited until the guy had left and then alerted John to the fact that it was gone. Maybe it just happened really fast though and no one had time to think to stop the thief. We lost our cell phone, the camera, about a hundred and fifty dollars and the key to our hotel room. The police called our hotel because the hotel printed their name and the room number on our key, which is really a bad idea, but Emily (who is also here, but was at the hotel sick with a stomach bug) went and got our passports and the rest of our money to keep in her room. When we got back to the hotel the first thing they said was "hello, you need to pay for the key you lost today." Jerks.
Anyway it could have been worse, but it wasn't a great day. I'm ready to go home now. Thank god our passports weren't in the bag.

New Stuff

Our new feature on this blog is leaving your owns posts without having to sign in. So anyone who wants to comment about a picture can do it easily now. We have also added Pac-Man, weather, and converters to play with.

Sanya

The DaDongHai beach area is full of excitement. The Sanya beaches are full of Russians as Hainan is the closest island resort to Russia. All the shop signs and restaurant menus are in Chinese and Russian. The Chinese fruit vendors even yell at you in Russian. Because we are obviously not Chinese, everyone talks to us in Russian until they realize how confused we look. We haven't figured out how to make captions on our pictures yet, but if you look through you will see a rent-a-snake, a very vigilant lifeguard, some Mr. and Mrs. Universe contenders and Russian lady determined to get a full body tan. There is also a good Chinglish sign and then pictures of the Sanya sunset and our friend Emily and I under our umbrella on the beach.

Hong Kong- New Year's Eve/New Year's Day

Hong Kong Victoria Peak

Hong Kong Tai O/Llama Island

Tai O is a little fishing village in the southwest corner of Lantau island. We took a bus there and walked around a little. It was a cold and windy day and the smell of old fish was pretty intense. The village is famous for shrimp paste, so we bought all our friends and family some for souvenirs. You should be able to smell it when it arrives in your local post office. There were some interestingly stuffed sea creatures, like the shark and sting ray. There was also many little puffer fish with plastic google eyes glued on to make them look even sillier. It was not a nice day and the wind was freezing so we caught the next bus out.
The pictures of Lamma island are from a different day, actually the same day we visited the buddha. We met our friend Alanna and took the ferry out to Lamma. The coasts are packed with yummy seafood restaurants and little shops, but the mountains in between coasts are all hiking trails. We arrived on one coast, hiked up and over the mountain to the other coast and ate at a seafood restaurant before taking the ferry back to Hong Kong island. From there John and I took another ferry back to our hotel on Lantau. Just to clarify things for everyone, There are two big islands which are Hong Kong and Lantau. There are also lots of little surrounding islands that are accessible by ferry. Kowloon, also part of Hong Kong is attached to mainland China.

Hong Kong- Big Buddha

This was our first full day in Hong Kong. We took a bus out to see the BIG BUDDHA. The buddha is visible from plane when flying into Hong Kong. It is the largest seated, outdoor, bronze buddha in the world. Like all bus rides in Hong Kong it was a skinny winding road up and down mountains. John felt sick and I fell asleep and missed all the views. We arrived before the monastery opened, before the crowds, and walked down a cobble stoned path lined with shops. We didn't see the buddha and thought about asking where it was, then turned around. We had about an hour before it opened so we walked up the wisdom trail. In the pictures it is the many large tree trunks split in half with the heart sutra written in Chinese on them. They are arranged in a figure eight, infinity symbol pattern. By the time we left the monastery was open and we wandered around there for a while before catching the next bus to Hong Kong island.