Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Hong Kong and Kunming. January 9 – January 18, 2018.

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.

 I managed to get through HKG security with these coins in my pocket.  Not the most reassuring thing …

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.

 These are recently born piglets.

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.

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