Nine Dragons

I know it's a lot of pictures!  But I couldn't decide which ones, so I just posted all of them.

The next morning we woke up early.  Very early.  Like 4:30am!  I guess it could have been worse.  So we basically sat around the hotel for a few hours watching cartoons.  Then we decided to go out to get some breakfast.  

Nate asked the hotel people where there were some good local shops for breakfast.  They looked at him like he was crazy.  They said they don't recommend going to certain places.  He thought that was funny, and did exactly what they told us not to.  And we found this shop.

It was perfect.  We got some yummy buns and bread and took them back to our hotel.  And we got to walk the streets of Hong Kong!

Then we took the bus.

Does he look hot?  That's because it was freaking hot!  That part was no fun.

Taking the trolley to The Peak.

Views.

Looking at seals.

More views.

This was the mall area at the top of the mountain.

Inside the mall trying to cool off.

Then we ate noodles for lunch at Mak's Noodles.

Can you believe we had a bowl full of hot soup on a hot day?

Me neither.  But it was fun.

Dare had beef noodles.

More views from the top.

This was just before a Chinese guy was forcing his son to stand by G for a picture.  We were quite the spectacle there.  Mostly because of the amount of kids, not as much because of the blonde hair.

Then we took the Star Ferry.

Don't be jealous of my hot husband.

We got some icy drinks.  Asian style, of course, so they had little gelatinous chunks in them.  Doubt many of you would be a fan, but we loved them.

Then we took the MTR.  This picture is horrible, but I wanted to show how crowded it was.  It's amazing how many people they can squeeze on those cars.

Going to the night market.

I took this picture because I thought it was funny that they put toilet paper rolls on the tables for napkins. Then I noticed the people in the background pointing and smiling at us.  That pretty much happened with everyone we passed by.  I'm glad I got this shot of it.

Yummy.

Night market.  I really wish we had more energy by this point.  It would have been fun to stroll around and shop more.  But we were exhausted.

Mads falling asleep in the jade shop.

Walking home.  At this point we were really wishing we didn't have so much walking to do.  Mads was sleep walking (what a trooper!), the girls were barely hanging on, and Nate carried G.  But we made it back to the hotel.  Then Nate and I went out to get dinner.  We got egg sandwiches and a strange macaroni thing.  It was a very weird food day.

I'm really glad we stayed an extra day in Hong Kong.  Hopefully next time we can enjoy it without jet lag.

Next stop:  Our new home in Jakarta!

Dashboard

I just thought this picture looked so cool edited.

Don't Drink the Water

First look at a foreign country.

We have waited a long time for this. So this was a big day for us.

More luggage shots. This time we didn't have helpers, so we enlisted the kids. I think we rolled around 4 carts in that airport.

Side note: Mads found Hong Kong coins within 15 minutes of being there. I swear that kid has a built in metal detector. No, it's just his crazy skills.

We decided to store our luggage at the airport for this leg of the trip. It was expensive, but worth it. So once we got our luggage taken care of, we went out in search of some sort of transportation. We didn't have to wait long before a man approached us, and asked if he could drive us somewhere. Even though he spoke English, he didn't have a uniform or badge on, and all the warning bells were going off in my head. But he seemed nice, so we went with it. We followed him outside and he told us to wait by the curb while he went to get his "big car". He pulls up in a van that you see middle eastern criminals drive in movies. In my head, I saw kidnappings, drugs, and bullet holes. It was small, tan for camouflage, and curtains in the windows. Did I mention this guy was Indian? Again, the warning bells were going off. But at this point, we had no other immediate prospects for a ride to our hotel, so we went with it. I look inside thinking that I could sort out the car seat situation. I realized quickly that this van was not meant to hold car seats. The seats were practically laying down, and there were no seat belts. I guess I knew this was coming moving to Asia, so I tried not to stress about it. I just had the kids pile in...

Since it was so hot in Hong Kong, he had the air conditioner on full blast. It kept leaking water on us. And it was pretty dirty inside, and it had stickers all over the interior. I can't remember what they said now (dang it!), but they were funny like English usually is in Asia. Nate chatted with the driver, while the kids rolled around in the back. G dubbed it the "tippy car". The position of the seats, and no seat belts meant for a lot of flopping around in the back seats. In the U.S., we would never ride in a van like this. With a stranger. That dripped dirty water on us. But here, we just smiled and chalked it up to experience. We wanted the kids to have an open mind, right? Turns out, the guy was nice, super efficient, had a card and his own little business, and he was even able to give us a receipt. He offered to drive us around our whole time in Hong Kong. We ended up calling him to drive us back to the airport.

I regret not getting a picture of the van from the outside. It was a pretty funny situation.

The ride from the airport was about an hour. Everyone was pretty tired because of jet lag, so the amount of tumbling in the back went down.

I took these pictures from the car...

Loved the mountains.

Apartments.

Cool dude riding a bike. I would fall over with all that extra weight.

Cool little street. And another look at the dirty van.

Nate wanted to get in on the picture taking.

I liked the speed limit sign. I think that's what it is anyway.

It was hilarious to me that we pulled up to a super nice Hong Kong hotel in that van. I really wish I could interview a worker there and ask them what they thought. The contrast of our van next to all the other cars at the hotel is indescribable. And then! And then a white family, with five kids, starts climbing out. I can't stop cracking up right now thinking about it. They probably NEVER see kids, let alone a family with 5. I know they had no idea what to think of us. But they were super nice and helpful. There were workers everywhere. Which I'm learning is the norm in Asia.

View from the hotel window.

We got to our room, cleaned up, and slept. Then we woke up in late afternoon, went to get some food...

...then slept some more. This was at a store that was attached to our hotel. So we pretty much never left the hotel that day. We got tasty bread, fruit, chips, and fruit juice for dinner. Nice dinner, eh?

We Lost Monday

Psyche! I said Hong Kong was next, but I wanted to talk about the airplane ride, of course.

My pictures got all out of order. It sucks, but I don't care enough to fix it.

We got to the LA airport around 10pm. It was a long day. Everyone was ready to sleep for about 14 hours straight, right? Well, it didn't happen like that, but it wasn't too bad. We all got our own TV, which was so nice. Everyone was in heaven except for G.

He is used to watching movies with people. I don't think he wanted to watch his own. So here he is, listening to his own, while watching Mads'.

Everyone slept pretty good. I'm not including myself in that statement, but I didn't expect much. It was alright. No tears. No fits. No throw up. What more could you ask for? I brought a million things for the kids to do if they got bored, and they did NONE of it. I'll know for next time that if they have a TV, they are good. It was dark most of the time though. Maybe if they had light they would have done some other activities.

This was before we got on the plane. We had the best meal of teriyaki chicken ever. I'm not sure what made it taste so good. Maybe because we were starving, and we had only had Disneyland food for the last 4 days? Either way, it was the best meal of my life. And everyone thought so. We liked it so much that we would go to LA just to eat at the rice bowl place.

The kids were mesmerized by this um... thingy. I don't know what to call it. But the marbles would go around and around along different paths. Brilliant idea to put it in an airport.

Another plane picture. I didn't hear from the girls almost the whole trip! They were perfectly content to manage things for themselves.

All in all, it seemed pretty easy for an international flight. We'll see how it goes next time when it's old news.

After All

We finally went on the ride no one wanted to go on but me. I had to wait until all the family left. I forced my family to go with me. Yeah, you know what it is. I won't sing the song, because then it will be in your head the rest of the day. I'll just say, it's a small small world.

I guess they were looking into the sun. It's G's face priceless? Man, I love that kid.

Mads hated the ride. It cracks me up. Even when he just saw the pictures I posted, he said, "I hated that ride. Why was it so long?" Not the family favorite. I guess they expected the puppets to start on fire like they did in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I'll admit, that would have been pretty awesome.

Then we made some massive pixie sticks. It was fun.

It's not that much sugar, so we had more cotton candy to even it out.

Not really, but I would have eaten cotton candy.

I made them eat them right away because I didn't want them to take them on the plane that we had to catch that night.

So pretty.

We did a lot of sitting around that morning. Disneyland was C R A Z Y. There was a lot of left over crowds from the movie premier (Pirates of the Caribbean) the night before. And there was some kind of wacky goth convention. There were strangely dressed people everywhere. So we left. We sat around on the benches outside of Disneyland, ate our sugar, and enjoyed each other's company.

Then we decided to try California Adventure.

The boys rode on the Carousel while Nate and I took turns with the girls on California Screamin'. That's a cool roller coaster!

They look happy. Happy they aren't on the carousel that is.

I think that was the first of 96 carousel rides.

It was Mother's Day! So I had Nate take a picture of me with the kids. They are cool dudes. I'm glad they are mine.

And I'm glad I got to see my mom for Mother's Day. I haven't been able to tell her I loved her in person on Mother's Day for quite some time. And Nate's mom too! I'm so glad she came. Even though I didn't actually see either of them on Mother's Day, I saw them the day before, so I'm counting it.

We had so much fun on this trip. We are so happy we got to stay in LA for a few days. And that was just the beginning! Next up... Hong Kong!