A major driver in our taking this trip was the low
airfare United was offering on this route.
At around $580 roundtrip, it is the lowest price I have seen in recent
memory (we are talking a couple of decades, at least.) We also decided to take a side trip to
Kunming to visit the “new” Hope office.
They relocated there last year.
Tuesday 1/9. Anne
had to be at church for the start of a new ESL term, so she didn’t get back
until around 12:30 pm. Eric came by a
little after 12:45 to take us to the airport.
While things look quite quiet on the roadways, there seemed to a lot of
people inside the terminal, probably the after-effect of Grayson, a winter
storm that hit us a few days ago.
Waiting in line to board, there was this gentleman who came in from
Cleveland, yesterday, but missed his flight and got rebooked on this one.
The plane showed packed on the United website, but left
with some empty seats (I am next to one).
They even pulled a couple of bags.
While we were sitting in the taxiway, the pilot came on to say he needed
to “talk to” HQ about the weight of the plane via satellite. A first for me in terms of reasons … We eventually took off at around 4 pm, about
an hour late. We will get into HK about
20 minutes later than scheduled.
My leg has been acting up a bit lately, so sitting still
is a bit uncomfortable. I do get up and
walk a bit when the discomfort gets bad, it seems to help.
Wednesday 1/10.
Dinner at HKG Tai Hing should have been straightforward,
but they couldn’t make a dish because of a busted range, and failed to tell us
until I asked. They ended up giving us
another dish, for free, but that meant a late departure for town.
Final of UA179 only had us in
a holding pattern for a short while.
Much better than our earlier trip to Hong Kong.
Accommodations in Hong Kong: Causeway Bay apartment
Thursday 1/11.
Idle time in HK.
Breakfast at Nam Lung, lunch restaurant in local area, Dinner Café de
Coral.
Bought various sundries for apartment and for
grandchildren.
Friday 1/12.
Tim stopped by the apartment in the morning and gave me a
shot of hyaluronic acid in my left knee.
It had been doing okay but he thought it was time for another one.
For lunch we went to Festival Walk to have lunch with the
Choys (Vivian’s parents) at Jasmine Restaurant.
They then took us on a car ride to various places in the Ma On Shan
area. We also visited the Tai Po
House. We first got to know them last
summer when they visited their daughter.
Dinner was with Tim and Whitney at the Parkview
Clubhouse.
Saturday 1/13.
I met up with Alfred at Festival Walk for breakfast, and
to catch up a bit. We talked from 9:40
am or so to noon. It was then a rush to
Central to meet up with Anne; we then headed over to Pizza Express on
Wellington Street to have lunch with the de Lysters.
French Toast and
Swiss Chicken Wings at the Swiss Café on Li Yuen Street West.
We went to Nam Lung for dinner, but had to skip a dish as
we needed to get to the Cultural Centre for a performance of Swan Lake by the
St. Petersburg Ballet Company.
Curtain Call by the
St. Petersburg Ballet Company.
Sunday 1/14.
This morning there were lots of people marching along
Caroline Hill Road. Not in protest, but
raising fund for the Community Chest, a non-profit organization. I thought we would take things easy until I
realized at about 1 pm that our flight was at 5 pm, not 7 pm (17:05 on ticket,
but recorded by me as 7:05 pm). So we
finished packing and went to the airport.
Our credit card gives us Priority Pass which allows us to
access lounges in many airports. Today we went to the Premium Plaza by Gate
1. It was a pleasant experience.
If one looks at the section of the plane we sat in, one
would conclude MU733 was packed. I
noticed when I went to the back that there were several rows of empty
seats. This, and the fact that there
were not paper towels in the bathrooms, confirm the China Eastern still has
quite a ways to go to become a world-class airline. The airport in Kunming is new, but we had to
park on the tarmac (so we ended up using stairs to board and to deplane.) As the bus got close to the terminal, I
noticed many unused gates. Perhaps the
airport isn’t all ready yet?
In any case, immigration was reasonably
straightforward. We (mostly I) had some
KFC before calling a taxi to go to the hotel.
It was a 35 or so minute car ride.
For less than 500Y we are in a large suite, on the top floor. The room has a lot of windows, and so far the
heater hasn’t managed to warm up the room sufficiently.
March to raise money
for the Community Chest, a charity in Hong Kong.
Driving from KMG to
the hotel, I noticed all these lighted slogans extolling the “Core Values” of
socialism. Sure enough there is a poster
in the hotel lobby saying the same thing.
A recent campaign by the government.
Some of the virtues are democracy, equality, freedom, and rule of law.
Accommodations: JI Hotel Biji Square (3 nights.)
Monday 1/15.
We found out this morning that several of the windows
were open. I do remember fresh air as
being very important to the Chinese. As
I type this Monday evening, indeed having the windows closed properly makes the
heater work much better.
Breakfast was at a nearby KFC. Michelle of HC came to meet up with us, and
to take us to the office, which is a two-bedroom apartment in a mixed use
building.
Lunch with the employees (we are talking 5 people here)
was at a Muslim restaurant. I was told
people like to eat at these restaurants because healthier food tends to be
served at these restaurants: better quality oil, no “fake” meat. Dishes tend to be spicy in Yunnan cuisine.
After lunch we stopped by XEG and Helen’s home, then went
with them to pick up their daughters from school. Dinner was at a restaurant that serves
authentic Yunnan rice noodles.
Our room is actually a spacious suite on the top (20th)
floor of the building. Given how quiet
the lobby usually is, we wonder why lower prices rooms were not available. A close examination reveals many
problems. The bathroom is a good
example. First, it is very small
compared to the size of the room. The
shower floor is separated from the main bathroom floor by a short row of
tiles. Either the drain or the slope of
the floor is such that water seeps out during the shower, making the foot towel
wet. And except for a short rack on the
shower door, there is no place to properly hang old clothes, new clothes, and
wet towels. And I hate dispensed liquid
soap.
Next to our hotel is a
market. In the morning it gets very busy
with live chickens to roasted ducks on sale.
We had dinner with XEG’s
family at a traditional Rice Vermicelli Restaurant. Ingredients are added to a large bowl of hot
soup to make the noodle soup.
This is the bathroom
of our hotel suite. There is quite a
ways to go before the room design can catch up to the west. Note the collected water puddle outside the
shower.
One of our objectives this trip was to visit a family
helped by HC. Turns out the head of the
co-op was out of town on business, so we would end up having a free day on
Tuesday.
Tuesday 1/16. X
called early this morning, and said the co-op head’s nephew, also a client,
would be available to take us around.
We left at around 10 am from the hotel. The location was about 100 km away, per
Google maps, but would take about 2:30 hrs to get to by car as much of it was
on narrow country roads. On the way over
we saw a van on the side of the road, blocking traffic in both direction. After trying for a while to tie a rope around
it to pull it out of the ditch, they decided to give up and call in a crane
instead. That allowed us to continue with our journey. On the way back, a disabled truck block
traffic again, and we took a risky detour onto dikes, luckily that got the job
done.
We visited two families, both have turned to raising pigs
as livelihood. The first guy’s approach
is close to being scientific, organizing the animals by age. The other is not as successful, but it is
clear how micro-loans are making a difference in lives of these people.
We were dropped off at the hotel and went to dinner at a
local fast food restaurant. X and his
daughters stopped by after the girls were picked up from school.
Traffic was stopped as
people worked to tow a van that had fallen into a ditch. They eventually decided a crane was needed to
lift the vehicle.
Approximate location
of the accident. There are quite a few
switchbacks on this stretch of the road.
And if the van had gone off the other of the ditch, it would have rolled
down a steep slope.
Pigs are ready for
market in about six months. These are
well on their way.
This is the building
where the pigs are kept. The inside is
surprisingly clean and smell-free.
Progress comes to
rural Kunming: one can see quite a few windmills. Of course the electricity may be bound for an
urban area. Here most rooms have a dim
light bulb for illumination.
This is the house of
the second family we visited.
XEG’s daughters have
grown a lot since we last saw them in the Beijing area in October 2013.
Wednesday 1/17. We
woke up a bit after 4 am to catch a ride (from a Chinese Uber-equivalent) to
the airport. X stopped by to see us off. Flight on Hong Kong Express, a low-cost
carrier, was quite pleasant. We ordered
the dim-sum breakfast, which was quite good (or we were quite hungry). Turns out we were the only ones eating, as
far as I could tell. So no-frills flyers
take no-frills quite seriously.
It was close to noon by the time we got back to town, and
we had lunch at the Food Court at Hysan Place.
For dinner we decided on this restaurant because it was not
crowded. It offered expensive seafood
dishes, which we skipped. We still ended
up spending more than US$50, the most expensive dish on this trip.
We managed to catch
one of the HK International Chamber Music Festival concerts tonight. The harpist Ceysson is the principal harp in
the Metropolitan Opera. The dry-cleaner lost his pants so he wore jeans –
complete with holes – for the event.
Thursday 1/18. Trip
was straightforward. UA180 was
reasonably full, this time Anne had an empty seat next to her. I managed a couple of hours of sleep, and
watched a couple of movies, including Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2, and a
Star Wars episode.
