After months of convincing, planning and waiting, finally we got some North Dakotans to come visit us! And they survived! See, it wasn't so scary after all right? (except for the plane ride for Ma). Ma and Pa Stone arrived looking awesome after having been up and traveling for over 24 hours.
Their first day here I made them do a lot of walking as we explored the mid-levels escalators, tried to check out the antique shopping neighborhood (except none of them were open for the day yet at 11am, sigh), took a streetcar all through downtown to see the hustle and bustle, walked through the Hong Kong Flower Show. Their good behavior was rewarded with the famous Under Bridge Spicy Crab (as featured by Anthony Bourdain on one of his various travel/food shows). A big crab, fried instead of steamed and loaded with piles of fried garlic. We ordered mild, which was still pretty spicy. The table is a complete mess by the end of eating this.
Because their first day wasn't enough walking, the second day we went to Hong Kong Disneyland, a little for them because it is fun to see another Disney in a foreign country, mostly for the kids, and a little for us to get one last visit in on the day our annual passes were expiring to really get our money's worth out of them. And I actually convinced my mom to go on a roller coaster! She wouldn't go a second time though.
The next day we double decker bussed it out to Stanley for some shopping at the market and the scenic yet hair-raising ride. Hold your breath when passing another bus on these winding roads!
After the weekend the kids headed back to school and I took the 'rents to the biggest busiest temple in town, the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin temple, along with it's pretty garden walk.
And just one MTR stop further down is the Nan Lian Gardens....
That evening Aletta and Paul arrived to join in the Asia tour fun. You can see Aletta proudly supports her boss's companies (she runs the office, not a sandwich artist...) and checked out Subways in two countries for research (Aletta, submit your trip expenses for reimbursement).
Now that we had our full tour group it was time to go to our favorite breakfast place, the Hokkaido Dairy Company, to start off a busy day of Hong Kong's greatest hits. Aletta and Paul could only come for a week so this tour guide really packed it in. We headed over to the Peak Tram after breakfast, but it was out of order for a couple of days for routine maintenance. Boo. So instead we took the bus up the winding winding winding road to the Peak. It was quite the ride and we all agreed we'd cab it back down.
Then the Star Ferry across the harbor back to the Kowloon side (the tall building is the ICC, which is on top of the same mall as our place). I love the bottom pic of Victoria Harbor, the Aqua Luna (famous boat with the red sails) and the Star Ferry all together.
Time for a rest? No! Time to go to the Ladies' Market for HK souvenir shopping.
After some recuperation time back home and dinner with the kids, the grown ups stayed up late and went for drinks at the Ozone Bar, the tallest bar in the world (or at least it was, maybe still is? Seems like Dubai probably would have beat it by now). It was a cloudy evening so the views weren't 100%, but it was pretty cool to sit on the open roofed patio and watch the clouds stream in as they went by. I swear we had a group picture, but now I can't find it, so here's Aletta whooping it up on her own.
The next day PE was off from school and he got to join us for a ferry ride out to Lamma Island. The ride there has nice sea views and giant cargo ships. Lamma is small and has more of a local fisherman's atmosphere.
After dinner that night the ladies went for nice foot reflexology massages while the guys went to watch some horse racing at the Happy Valley Race Track.
Thursday was time to introduce them to dim sum at my favorite dim sum place next to my work building. It turned out to be a big hit and even my dad was successful with chopsticks.
We had to burn off all the dim sum with a hike up to see the 10,000 Buddhas monastery. There are about 10,000 steps and these expressive monks along the way. And some monkeys at the top!
While all this touring was going on during Wednesday and Thursday morning, our amazing travel agent Paul was busy trying to salvage the second half of our itinerary. We were supposed to leave for Hanoi, Vietnam on Thursday afternoon for four days, but the airline notified us they were canceling the return trip and booking us instead on a flight that wouldn't come back in time for the ND-ers to catch their return flight. After multiple phone calls and about four hours on hold (no exaggeration), they finally canceled and refunded the plane tickets. Paul worked his magic and found us last minute tickets instead to Bangkok (Royal Jordanian Airlines, who knew?) and a great hotel deal. So here's us all in the last two rows of the airplane on a late night flight excited that we still got to take a side trip. Bangkok or bust!
