sorry it took so long.....

There seemed to be a conspiracy on the part of every hotel and computer between Shanghai and Maitland to prevent me from posting in the last week of the trip.

We arrived in Ottawa yesterday after our 19th and final flight of the trip. In the last week we were counting things down... our last overnight train trip (24 hours, hard sleeper from Shanghai to Guangzhou), our last bus ride (4 1/2 hours from Guangzhou to "Kowloon"...read "somewhere in the middle of the city, blocks from the nearest subway...."), our last foriegn border crossing (into the USA for a simple 3 hour transit -- over an hour of which was waiting for customs and wondering if we would make the connection--Nicky said Switzerland was just as bad-- it REALLY ticked me off after countless other border crossings to watch them fingerprint the passengers and take their photographs), our last trip to the Spaghetti House chain in Hong Kong (favourite of the younger set, this one happened twice in as many days on our return to Hong Kong-- and we considered a final kick at the can in the airport..) Then the firsts.... Our first Tim Horton's--(in the Airport in Toronto--sadly a badly set up one that had a constant line around the corner which made us and every other returning Canadian plus the entire ground crew of the airport wait for ages for their fix). Our first look at the house (sadly still full of our crap). Our first trip to Montanas (for lunch yesterday).....

Just to fill in the last week. We arrived in Shanghai and took the Maglev train into town from the airport. It is the fastest I ever think I will travel on the ground. The speed you are travelling is displayed at either end of each compartment and it hits a top speed of 430 km/hr which is sustained for about 4 minutes of the 8 minute trip. As you slow down you think you are crawling along after the speed section. You look up to find you are going at 180 km/hr. It is a fun ride if you ever go to Shanghai.

We did the Bund in our overnight trip to Shanghai before taking the train south. The Bund is a concrete boardwalk along the riverfront. The buildings lining the Shanghai side of the river are all protected old buildings from the early part of the 1900's. On the other side they are building a skyline which will soon rival Hong Kong. They are building 5 skyscrapers at once and I don't think the others are all that old. It is turning out to be quite nice because the architechture on the set of skyscrapers is interesting. It is a really nice walk with the juxtaposition of the old and new sections on the two sides of the river. We went to a restaurant and hung around the area until dark to see it all lit up. It was worth doing to see the lights but I can't stand that much humanity crammed into the same place I am in so we left quickly.

In Guangzhou we didn't do much of anything. I found a book in a drawer in the hotel room (it was a dorm room) and pretended I was Jane on vacation for the day. The kids fought over the Nintendo DS and read books too. Alan was our only restless member and he took himself off a couple of times to do things no one else had much interest in. We all felt we had been there before and done all the good stuff.

In Hong Kong we went to the Ten Thousand Buddhas temple,which was the only thing we hadn't done last time which appealed to us. It is a really bizarre place. You walk up the hillside and the path is lined with these life size cartoonish plastic gold Buddha statues. There are a couple of hundred different ones and it makes you wonder who made them. Are they produced in factories and if so, where are the rest of the runs? Where is the market for life size plastic cartoon Buddhas? If they are the only copies, it makes you wonder at the effort that went into making the set.

We are home now and back to our boring lives for a while. I am really glad we went and I won't wait as long before I travel again this time.