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Posts Tagged ‘macau’

We spent a week in Macau with Gordon and Maureen Kerr.  Super nice folks who were kind enough to open up their home to us.  Ruhi spent most of the week working with Gordon on a film project and I spent a lot of time in cafe’s and restaurants using free wi-fi to get some work done.  They actually have wi-fi at the Kerr home, but I like exploring too.

After dinner we headed out to Tin Sui Wai to stay with Jack.  Once again they were most hospitable as we re-packed all of our things before our 3:30 ferry to Shekou.  In fact, we were taking the ferry from Tuen Mun to Shekou, a route I had always wanted to take.  It is a better route to Shekou than the one from Hong Kong mainly due to it only taking 30 minutes, the ferry being practically empty on every route and the price being only $45 HKD.  If I had lived in Tuen Mun or Yuen Long instead of Tung Chung I would have probably gone to Shenzhen more often.

We arrived in Shekou and waited at the ferry terminal’s cafe for Ruhi’s friend, Bill.

Bill and his fiance Ting Ting helped us check in to a cheap hotel near the Shenzhen West train station followed by a meal at a local Dong Bei style restaurant.  Man it was nice to eat some Chinese food in China again.  Case in point:

After that it was time to crash for the night.  With not too much sleep the night before it was well deserved and much needed.  Here is a view from the hotel room:

On the 9th (our wedding lunaversary, btw) we had breakfast at the hotel after sleeping in and then made our way to the train station with Dan and Ting Ting.  They helped us find the luggage shipping desk where we checked our 3 large suitcases all the way to Xi’an.  Since we were going to Shandong for a week first it would make sense to have the bags waiting for us in Xi’an instead of lugging them all over the place.  Just 500RMB ($73 USD)  to ship 90KG (198 pounds) half-way across China.  Not too bad.

The Shenzhen West train station was nice and small with not much traffic.  Also, since it was the first stop on this route and right after the October holidays it was pretty empty.

In fact, for almost the entire trip we were the only two people in the soft sleeper car.  We had our whole compartment to ourselves.   The dining car was right next to ours so we would go there to eat our meals or do some work in a more comfortable environment.  It also gave us the opportunity to chat with some of the staff and learn a bit more about how Chinese trains operate.  Since this particular route wasn’t one that foreigners usually went on (slower than the other Shenzhen-Jinan route and it isn’t a popular tourist train route) we were interesting to them as well.

27 hours after learing Shenzhen on the 9th we arrived in Jinan on the 10th.  Unfortunately we JUST missed the last bus to Binzhou, but it ended up working out in our favor.  We got a bite at KFC while I called Jenn and asked her to book us a cheap Jinan hotel through ctrip.  5 minutes later we had our confirmation number SMS’ed to us and we were on our way to a 150 RMB / night business hotel with free internet.

It turns out that KFC coffee drinks are a bit on the strong side because I had a hard time getting to sleep.  It was tricky dragging myself out of bed at 7:30 AM so that we could catch our 9:30 AM bus to Binzhou.  The bus was 2.5 hours long and they were playing the LOUDEST videos in the universe.  I used my ear plugs and it was still too loud for me.  It was vibrating directly through my skull.  After some fitful sleeping we made it to Binzhou around noon and my time to check out the 11th All China Games was about to begin!

It has been about 10 days since we left Haiti.  My dad reminded me that I haven’t blogged in a little while (I have created a monster) so here is a catch-up entry to keep everyone in the loop.

The last day in Haiti (9/21) we did a quick drop-by at CAFT for one last interview.  Then it was off to the airport where we checked in for our flight.

This whole time we had been traveling on non-revenue passes either through my father or Ruhi’s uncle, but fortunately the listings were for business class.  Of course, if there were no seats available in Business class we could easily get bumped down to economy, or even not get on the plane at all.  A few of the flights were close, but we managed to not only get on all the flights between Haiti and Hong Kong, but got to fly Business Class the whole way too.  I can’t tell you how awesome it is to fly business class across the Pacific.

From Haiti we flew to JFK in New York for a small layover.  Then another leg from JFK to LAX where we were going to stay with Trina, Ruhi’s sister.  Originally it was going to be for just a day, but due to the nature of Ruhi’s film project she needed more time to spend with her editor.  We rescheduled our departing flight for Saturday the 26th.

This meant that I had a couple more days to take care of some things.  I ran a bunch of errands to Ross and other stores for supplies, and even got to meet up with Tam and Faye, who were both still in L.A., but will be moving to Beijing in December.  Here is a picture of me trying on a jacket at Ross.

Our flight out was great, of course.  (Business Class, remember?)  We hung out at Narita for a few hours while waiting for our Hong Kong flight and when we arrived in HKG we were greeted by Jack and Joanne.  We’d be staying in Jack’s spare room out in Tin Shui Wai for the next day or so.

Due to the October holiday a train ticket was close to impossible to secure, so we decided to spend a few more days in Macau with Gordon and Maureen.  A week, to be precise.  After a day of packing up my 5 huge suitcases into some post office boxes for shipping to Xi’an, we headed to Wan Chai to get some supplies (I got a lens cleaning cloth for my camera), watched “Surrogates” at Pacific Place, and then caught a ferry from Shun Tak to Taipa.

While in Macau Ruhi will be working with Gordon on their film project.  This is a different project than the one she is doing for the Mona Foundation, in case you weren’t clear on that.  Our plan is to stay here until around the 7th or 8th and then head to Hong Kong.  Spend one night there and arrange shipment of our boxes and then go to Shenzhen to catch the train to Shandong where we will attend the All China Games in BinZhou.  A lot of our plans depend on what day we can get a ticket, of course, so we’re playing it a bit by ear.

After Shandong we’ll head to Beijing for a day or so to meet with clients and project-related peoples.  Then it is off to Xi’an around the 19th, just in time for Ruhi’s birthday on the 20th of October.

I can’t wait to finally settle down for a while.  I need to rest after this year of constant traveling!