So I accomplished a life goal today. I was in two places at once! (AND I time travelled) Me and Scott boarded our airplane from Hong Kong to Tokyo at 9:45 am on Sunday, August 9, 2012. Then we traveled for about 18 hours and arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii at 7:30 am on Sunday, August 9, 2012. We were in two completely different countries at the same time the same day!- Two places at once! Anyways, me and Scottie are now back in our beach bungalow safe and sound. I was so excited about this idea that I was a time traveler that I decided to post it with my fellow bloggers, and once I decided to do a blog post I figured I should wrap up the last of our adventures in Hong Kong, so here goes!
These are a bit out of order, but fun things nonetheless. 
1. The Thursday before me and Scott went to Macau me and my sister Sunnee went adventuring in Kowloon. Kowloon in on the mainland, so it's not an island like Lantau where Sunnee lives, or Hong Kong island, but it is connected to the others by bridges, the MTR train, and ferry. And best of all you don't need a visa because it is part of the special Hong Kong district! We took the MTR to Kowloon and then asked a taxi driver to take us to "The Walled City Park", which I had read about in a Hong Kong tourist book and wanted to see. He said he knew the place, and promptly dropped us off at the back door of a temple. Thanks dude, thanks. We were a bit confused, but decided to go inside the temple anyways. It was beautiful, with all of the intricate carvings, statues, paint, ect. The best part about it though was that it was very much still functional. Most of the temples in China and Thailand that I have been to have some pilgrimage visitors that came to worship, but most are busy taking pictures with peace sign fingers and posing like the statues. Here it was quite the reverse. The tourist was the minority, while the worshippers bought incense, clanged it together, knelt praying on pillows on the ground, and then lit the incense and offered it up. It was really a beautiful place. But after a while we had had our fill of the place, walked past the many fortune tellers on the way out, and decided to try one more taxi driver. 

This is part of the skyline when taking the ferry to Hong Kong island, which we did before taking the MTR to Kowloon. 

More of Hong Kong island skyline. This one is closer so you aren't as distracted by the gross smog. 

At the temple we took pictures with our zodiac signs! I am a horse- if you couldn't tell by my pose- "Popular and attractive to the opposite sex"- Yeah I am! 

Sunnee is a snake. Her zodiac sign is I mean.

The temple, the more empty middle section is for worshipers only. 

Some of the intricate carvings and paintings. 

A young boy offering up incense. 

It smelled fantastic! 



2. This taxi driver seemed to know where we wanted to go, drove us about three blocks, and happily collected the easiest money he had made all day. The Kowloon Walled City Park used to be a walled city, in the area of about 6 acres of land. It was at first a military fortress, and then deteriorated into a ghetto. It got so bad neither the British nor China wanted to claim it, and so the ghetto little city got worse and worse because no one was policing it. Prostitutes, gambling drugs, and I believe the pamphlet even mentioned something about giant rats (or, for those Princess Bride fans out there, "rodents of unusual size). Anyways, it was supposed to be knocked down several times but there was resistance because so many people lived there. In fact, by the time the Hong Kong government officially declared they were knocking it down in 1987 there were over 33,000 people living there! My parents live on five acres. The most people we ever had living there was about 11 and it felt crowded!!! Now the Walled City is a beautiful park with a few memorials, photographs, and the remains of some of the outside wall. 


A window into the Walled City Park in Kowloon. 

One of the many gazebos by a pond in the gorgeous park. 

Excitement! 


Sunnee is even more exciting! 

An aerial photograph of the walled city park taken in 1972. The super close, shorter buildings are it. 

Sunnee at the original gate to the walled city, flashing some peace signs. 

3. The Tuesday before me and Scott went to Thailand me and Sunnee took her children, Kale and Hazel to Noah's Ark. You read it right! Two ferry rides away from Sunnee's apartment is a full scale replica of Noah's Ark that is a museum. Apparently there is a group of Christian researchers based out of Hong Kong that built the museum. It was... not quite what we were expecting. We paid to enter and then spent almost an hour wondering around this huge full scale model of the ark (built how they interpreted the instructions from the Bible) and couldn't find a single worker or any of the museum rooms on the map! Eventually we did find most of what we were looking for, but it was rough going. The exhibits had a huge range from children's education on music, language, art, water, and just about everything, to 3-d movies on saving the environment, to exhibits and movies about Christ, and the modern day search for the ark. I'm sure many of you read the articles in 2010 about a possible large wooden boat found up in the icy mountains of Mount Ararat. Little research has been done because it is so hard to reach, and it is so frozen into the mountain and ice. But it was interesting! I loved the giant life size sculptures of animals they had in the garden coming out of the ark doors. But my personal favorite will be shown below... (you will know it when you see it...)
Entering!! 


THIS IS IT. They set up a life size 'Last Supper' painting with mannequins as the apostles and Jesus, then the guide proceeded to tell us, in broken english, that "some of the Apostres stepped out to bathroom, so you can make a picture"(Apostres= Apostles). I couldn't believe it! This would NEVER happen in America! I'm not sure if it was blasphemous or not, but we took some GREAT pics, and I've never laughed so much in a museum. 

Hazel actually has her feet up behind her, laying on her belly. 

A toast! 

Just another biblical day with an ark and a huge industrial bridge next to it. 

Just so you can see how huge this thing was, all of those animals are life size statues, and this is only 7/8 of the boat pictured! 

Family pictures. 

Can you tell five differences between this and the last one?

Me and Hazel, with our completely matching outfits (white tops, white hair flower she took out, gray bottoms, white shoes). 
These are the last reports of our adventures in Hong Kong- at least for this summer! We want to give a special shout out to the entire Bishop family for doing so much for us over the past month. Especially Kale for letting us use his bedroom ;). We are going to miss them! 
So about three weeks ago me and Scott decided to look at how much it would cost to go on a weekend trip from Hong Kong to a different country, which would be the second country (outside of the U.S.) that Scott had visited. When we were looking our top two options were Vietnam and Thailand, however Vietnam required a Visa, which we were nervous about getting in time. Sooooo, we booked tickets to Thailand two weeks before we went! We figured we want to visit all over Asia and it is much cheaper to fly from Hong Kong. 

 So last Thursday night we flew to Bangkok!! I had visited Thailand when I was 12, to pick up my brother Tait from his mission. I traveled around for about a week with my mom, dad, brother Colby, and Tait. I had researched what we were going to do in Thailand, and so when we arrived we were feeling pretty confident and excited. Then we went to exit 8, where they were supposed to let us buy tickets for the airport express bus to our hostel. And they smirked and told us that that bus was canceled a year ago. I was worried, because the same website where I booked our hostel had given us the instructions about the bus, so I was hoping the hostel existed. But we took a suspiciously expensive taxi ride, and our hostel did exist. However, at the hostel they were having a hard time finding out reservations, which turned out it was because I had made our reservations for the week before. Needless to say, Thursday night seemed very foreboding for the rest of our adventure. But Scottie was pleased at his first hostel experience, it is the most people he's ever slept with in a room!! 

 Friday we went to see the Grand Palace and some other temples in Bangkok, a full 10 minutes walk from our hostel. The Grand Palace was gorgeous, we were amazed at the detail and small pieces that made up the intricate designs, and how well kept everything was. As we were walking away Scott actually said, "The only problem now is that we probably won't see anything cooler than that while we're here"(boy was he wrong!). After that we paid a crazy 3 cents a piece to cross the river and see Wat Arun, or the Temple of Dawn, which was another buddhist temple that was crazy ill-kept. We climbed to the top of the temple, about 75 steps, very steep and narrow like a ladder, and wondered about how we could never do this in America because someone would fall off and sue like crazy!! The last temple of the day was Wat Phro, which was the Mamma bear of the temples, because it was medium well kept and redone. More so than Wat Arun, but less so than the Grand Palace. That evening we ate at a restaurant where our waiter sat down about 8 inches from Scott and watched us eat, laughed at how spicy I thought things were and said the few English words he knew ("Obama!" "You from where? The U.S.?... Or England!"). 


These are tuk-tuks! They have three wheels and will drive you around like taxis! So cute!


The entrance to the Grand Palace. 

Scott's shorts were immodest because they showed his kneecaps, so we had to rent these pink pajama type pants from some street people. Also we were afraid of pick pocketers so he is wearing my purse! 

Some intricate details at the Grand Palace. 

Grand Palace. 

Grand Palace. 

 Grand Palace. 
Grand Palace. 

 This is the 3 cent ferry, with Wat Aran in the background. 
Wat Aran. The Temple of Dawn. 

Details of the not so well-kept temple of dawn. 

Scottie going up the super steep stairs. 

 Top of Wat Aran. 
A giant golden buddha in Wat Phro, inside a temple. 

 The mother of pearl feet of the giant golden buddha. 
Details at the Mamma bear Wat Phro. 

Saturday we booked a tour through our hostel to see Ayuttaha, a city of ruins about an hour outside of Bangkok. They drove us to about five different sites, and they would let us wander around for about an hour and then go to a new site. Ayuttaha was the capital of that part of Thailand along time ago (Thailand then was known as Siam), and the city was burned by the Burmese army. Most of the ruins we visited were temples, and some were in better shape than others, but it was beautiful. It was also amazing how they let you touch and walk around or climb on most of it, which was cool. And it was also also amazing how people would leave their trash all around these sacred and ancient places, which was not so cool. For driving us around all day, lunch included, we paid about $15 a person!!! 

First stop at Ayuttaha. 



They have statues of Buddha everywhere where you can pay 20 baht (about 60 cents) to stick a tiny golden aluminum type paper on him). People are literally paying to refinish these buddhas! 

A giant Buddha that is only partially covered in the golden paper you can buy. 


At our second stop there is a buddha head that was once carved in a tree trunk, and is being slowly covered by the tree every year, it may not exist in 10 years! 






These ruins were seriously gorgeous! Overgrown and kind of creepy beautiful, it would be perfect for some kind of action shoot out movie. 


 The third stop was a giant laying Buddha statue by a lack and what used to be a temple. Last year all of Ayuttaha flooded so high that this statue was had one leg completely covered in water! 

The fourth stop was called the 'golden mountain' temple. A gorgeous white temple that is mostly still intact! 

 This is the view from the top of the Golden Mountain. Thailand is like most of suburban America in that it is flat and spread out. It seemed even more so coming straight from Hong Kong where everything goes UP and is very close together. 
 The fifth and last stop was this place, so gorgeous! 






Sunday we did another tour through our hostel to the River Kwai. I had another heard of this, but Scott had seen an old Western type movie earlier about this place and so he really wanted to go. During World War II the Japanese took many conscripted workers, and prisoners of war, they started one half in Berma and one half in Thailand to build a railroad that would meet on the River Kwai. About 115,000 men and women died building this railroad, mostly from malnutrition, diseases, and mistreatment from the Japanese overseers. So we drove about 2 hours outside of Bangkok to see the cemetery where these prisoners were buried. Then another 20 minutes to see the River Kwai and a museum about the railroad (a total joke of a museum that had old guns, 90's tee shirts, and buddha shrines). Although the museum was a disappointment (the only disappointment of any our tours actually), next door two men were letting people take pictures with a baby cheetah (or leopard, or jaguar, we weren't quite sure what kind of big cat it was). You paid 100 baht (31 baht= 1 dollar, so this was about 3 dollars) to feed the cheetah ;milk and medicine', which we were pretty sure meant milk mixed with some kind of drug. But we paid and I got to hold the baby! It was sooo cute, and I don't even like cats! The next stop was that we actually rode a train on the railroad those poor men built, and we got to see some of the beautiful tropical Thailand countryside. Then lunch (again, included in the $23 price for the day long tour). Then we stopped at an Elephant Camp, where me and Scott rode an elephant (with a guide), and got to feed a baby elephant! Scott's favorite part was feeding that cute baby elephant. The last stop of the day was the Tiger Temple. This was originally a monastery, and then someone brought the monks there a tiger that had been poorly treated. The monk took in the tiger, and other people started bringing him injured animals, which in turn attracted more animals. It is now a monastery, temple, and animal refuge and preserve. The Tiger Temple is only open to the public for about 3 hours a day, and the tigers are the main attraction (obviously). We got to take pictures with the adult tigers who were napping (the temple claims that the tigers aren't drugged, we were unsure), take pictures with a 'baby' (HUGE) tiger, and take pictures with a monk and adult tiger. On the way out we looked at the three bears they had, which were in a small concrete box/cage, which was pretty depressing because the tigers were eating barbecue chicken, getting walked, and generally living the high life. 




The bridge over River Kwai. 





Baby Cheetah and me! It loooved that 'milk'. 


The 'Death Train', 'for foreign tourist only' as our tickets said. 


Farms in the Thai countryside- so gorgeous! 

 This wooden bridge is the actual 'Bridge over River Kwai' bridge that the movie Scott saw was based off. 



 Us on our elephant ride through the jungle! 

 The elephant camp!
 This is the baby elephant that they were trying to hide from us but our tour guide found. 
 Look at that happy face! 

 The Tiger Temple! 

 I am like Simba, with my lion pals on a rock overlooking the pride land. 

 A happy family!


Monday we only had a half a day before we flew out, but we booked yet another tour through our hostel to see the floating market! Damnoen Saduak is the name of the floating market, and the area where it is located. We drove an hour to get there, then rode a long tailed speedboat to get to the market. The speedboat was scarier than anything else in Thailand. Scarier than potential pick pockets, falling off an ancient temple, accidentally entering a temple with too short a skirt, bargaining with street vendors, unsanitary food, having to take your shoes off when you go in the hostel, ANYTHING. People just throw trash and sewage and food in the water there, so if that skinny wobbly boat tipped me into that gross water not only would my camera be dead, there would be no recovery for me either, I told Scott to leave me there if I fell in. Seriously. Anyways, besides the nasty water the market was neat! It has become pretty touristy, so the real locals come at about 5 am to buy their food, and the tourists come at about 7-8 am to buy souvenirs. There are stalls to buy things on the side, or you can buy things from the people in the boats. You can even rent a boat to float around in and stop at some of the stores on the other side you can't reach from the main road and they will bargain with you. It was chaotic but bright and beautiful, a photographers dream! We spent about 2 hours there, then returned to our hostel and got to the airport and back to Hong Kong with no difficulties! 
 How people live in the country river. 

 Damnoen Saduak. 
This is the road near our hostel. 
Scott has proclaimed his love for Thailand, and we have discovered we love traveling and adventuring together. Thanks for reading, only a few days left in Hong Kong!!

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