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Well everybody, after another 2 hours flight, I've made it to Hong Kong. Let me tell you, I'm so tired I don't know what to do. I know this is supposed to be a vacation, but I don't want to miss a thing. The flight was pretty cool on Dragon Air. Only thing is, all the flights serve Chinese food. We arrived in Hong Kong a little late. 5 P.M. I'm so used to flights being late, it didn't even phase me. I was a bit tired of the whole customs and immigration thing, though. The weather was perfect. In the 70s. We were met by our tour guide "Glory." He was a bit peculiar. The driver was again, amazed at the amount of luggage we had. We didn't get the stares we had in the last three cities. Great! Now, this makes me feel like a real tourist. Hah! We get all our stuff loaded on the tour bus and we were off to our hotel. Oh my goodness, this had to be the best hotel of them all. The Langham Place Hong Kong. Reminded me of a boutique hotel. The rooms are gorgeous. Too nice to be sharing with a woman. I'm exhausted but had to take a few moments out to take photos of the room. The bathroom was mostly glass. Absolutely gorgeous. The view wasn't bad either. After all of that, I decided I'd like to get a good night's sleep for the touring tomorrow. Showered, washed my hair and called it a night.I know I needed it, as I woke up 12 hours later. After breakfast, Glory had arrived to shuffle us off on our tour today. Our first stop was the Aberdeen floating village. We'd took a boat ride around this fishing village. Many of the people here are fishermen. We rode around the harbour, the guide on the boat would shout out what type of boat we'd be passing. "Houseboat, Fishing Boat, Engineering Boat, etc. The drive was extremely long to Victoria Peak, which is the tallest mountain on Hong Kong Island. The views on the way up were spectacular looking down on the harbour. Living on the peak is very expensive. Some of the properties were gorgeous. We drove Deep Water Bay and Repulse Bay. We finally reached the top. This was the ultimate view. I took millions of pictures. Gosh, I thought, "I could live here. Maybe become and Expat." We spent a while here. There were plenty of vendors here. We all could not believe it. There were vendors selling embroidered T-Shirts and all kinds of souveniers. These were the best yet. I'd taken more pictures and was asked to take pictures of other tourists, so I joined in by asking them to take pictures of me. Everyone was quite friendly and spoke English. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Stanley Market. This is a huge mecca of shops. Some indoors, some outdoors. I stopped in a shop owned by an Indian woman and her husband. She had beautiful batiks and linens. I purchased a duvet cover with matching pillow covers, she'd supposedly made herself. With not much time left, I frantically retraced my steps back to the stop where the bus was to pick us up. I absolutely hate to be late. Glory had optional tours available at an additional cost. But there were no buyers. He did pick up a few people from our group to take them to his friends' restaurant. A group of us headed over to a tailor and spent a couple of hours there. I felt this guy was a bit over priced. No, not a bit but extremely overpriced. I was glad to get back to the hotel. This was a wasted couple of hours. I chose to head downstairs to get some dinner in the restaurant. I ordered the buffet. This was absolutely the best choice. There's tons of food to choose from. Chinese and/or American favorites. There was even crab legs, crawfish and oysters on the half shell. I tried this salad dressing that was delicious. I had to get another salad. The maitre' d, Roy, was the best. He always remembered that I liked my Coke with no ice. I had to give homeboy a commendation. Then I headed upstairs to surf the net. It was free in this hotel. I surfed for a few hours and called it a night. I really loved talking to you all. Keeping in touch. I miss everyone. My last day in Hong Kong. I started it with a huge breakfast. I shouldn't say huge because I can't possibly eat all the stuff they have on the buffet. But I had a full day ahead of me. Ellen decided to take a chance and hang with Marcella and I. We got ourselves together with passports in tow. We headed over to the Holiday Inn first. I'd read about the German Bakery in the basement of the hotel. We stopped to talk a couple of minutes to a couple of sistas from the US. I forget where they were from. They were enjoying their trip also. We headed on into the hotel and found the bakery. The desserts looked so good, it was hard for me to decide. So, I finally broke down and got the Black Forest Cherry Torte and a slice of the cheesecake. We then headed over to the Mongkok subway. We were given the wrong directions first, but then we got the right directions. We did so much walking. My poor feet were tired and we haven't even gotten to the mall. Bought tickets and we were off. The ride to Luohu Shenzhen was only 40 minutes. Some Chinese lady just stared at me eating a slice of my cake. I thought maybe she wanted a piece but I wasn't sharing. We got off and again were steered in the wrong direction. The traffic director sent us to the office to get a Chinese Visa but we were informed that we already had them in our passports and were sent to the same line we tried to get in, the first time. After clearing customs. We were all happy to have a couple more customs stamps in our passports. We headed out and into Luohu Commercial City, the mall with 1,500 stores. I'm telling you, I could have stayed in this mall allday. I wanted to visit the tailor here, but time was limited. Had to get my shop on. This mall has every kind of store there is. I wasn't looking for any clothing as I know, there's nothing in China to fit me. We were stopped by shop owners pleading that we come into their store. I asked one gentleman if he had Coach purses. He hurried us into a store, I assumed owned by his friend. The lady had us to sit down. I gave her the picture and she got out her book. We'd sat there for so long, I was getting discouraged but she told me that the purse was coming. I'm like, to myself, of course, "coming. Where the heck is it coming from?" She insisted that I be calm and sit down. At least this is the way she motioned her hands. While we were sitting another girl rattled off a hundred different names of designer purses. I told her I didn't want anything else. Finally, the purse arrived. It was inside of a brown bag and was also inside of the coach white fiber bag. I told her this is what I wanted, but I had to do the bargain thing. I hate doing that, but just like when you're buying a car. Stand up and be prepared to walk. That gets them every time. Next we were headed towards finding shop # 3219 (as recommended on the Journeywoman website) to find a special scarf Marcella was looking for. This woman was hard core though. I can't remember if Marcella talked her down or not. Ellen thought about it and thought about it, until finally she decided to go back and get the carry-on bag with wheels for her daughter, from the purse store. I think she was happy with her purchase and the bag was very unique. Hen we headed on over to the Jian Fu Mei Massage Center, shop # 4028. It was spacious, comfortable and clean just as described on the Journeywoman website. The two-hour massage was $25 and the girls insist on you giving them a $25 tip. They had lockers to put our stuff in. The girl from the purse store, was very annoying by this time. She'd stood there until we told the cashier what length massage we wanted. Then she says, "I be back in two hour." I'm like, "for what?" Anyway, we proceeded to get our massages. We were led to the locker room and given these dingy little pajamas. They were clean but looked as though, they were once white. We had tables all next to each other and I was in for the worst massage ever. These three little tiny Chinese girls came in and proceeded to beat our asses. I mean every time I hollered in pain, my masseuse would mock me and giggle. She snapped my neck from side-to-side, pulled my neck from it's socket, bent my arms back as far as they could go, beat me on my back, pulverized my legs. They kept offering us tea after each beating. Poor Ellen started to snore. Marcella and I laughed. My masseuse started massaging my head. I know this girl was lying her ass off. "Oh, your hair is so beautiful." I wanted to tell her to just shut up. I was in pain. Then the last torture was, these girls climbed up onto the table and proceeded to walk on our backs. My masseuse started digging her toes in my left butt cheek. I screamed in pain. She says something to the other two girls, they all giggle and she then says, "you tight here." She probably told the other girls, "oh, you got big ass, I need to apply more pressure." After those two hours, I had to go to the bathroom. I couldn't go any further. The bathroom was crusty, though. There was a wet washcloth. I hope I wasn't supposed to dry my hands with that, because that wasn't happening. We were ushered back to the locker room which was kind of crowded now, to get dressed and pay our dues. I will never pay to have my ass whipped ever again. We got outta there and that little gnat from the purse store was there, again. I pretended not to hear her as she kept muttering things I may want to buy. I ducked into a store where I saw honey for sale in the window. I know I'm never supposed to take food back home, but until I'm caught, the heck with it. It was very inexpensive also. I wanted some of the Chinese Red Wine, but she didn't have any. We headed out, as I felt Ellen was really ready to get back to the hotel. Her leg was hurting a bit. I could have stayed here until about 11 P.M. The last train back to Mongkok was at midnight. We got outside and the air was filled with smoke and flying debris from something burning. We didn't particularly enjoy the smell and the flying ashes, but that didn't seem to worry the natives. We made our way back to the subway and did that whole customs thing again. Should have waited at least another hour or so before going back. 6 -7 P.M. is rush hour here. We purchased our tickets back and boarded the train. Standing room only. Ellen lucked up on a seat when we were almost back in Mongkok. While standing I noticed the information board. It read, "no food, drink or smoking on the train. Violaters, will be ticketed." I though to myself, "Hmmmm, that's probably why that old lady was staring me down when we were coming to Shenzhen. She knew I wasn't supposed to eat on the train." Duh! Can't take us black people anywhere.We made it safely back to Mongkok and at this time the streets resembled Times Square in New York and Rush Street in Chicago. It was shoulder-to-shoulder people. There were food shops selling so much stuff, I was afraid to even look in the windows. After seeing all kinds of dead, cooked who knows what hanging in the windows, I decided to stop looking. I was hungry but not for this. After walking miles we got back to our hotel. I was so tired, I told Elllen, I was staying downstairs to eat my dinner first. I wasn't going to try and go up and then come down later. I was exhausted. Roy came and said, "Coke, no ice?" I said, "yes, thank you." He's very nice. He bows slightly before he leaves the table. He knew I was getting the dinner buffet. It was fantastic. Everything you could imagine. And that delicious salad dressing. The restaurant was very crowded tonight. I'd stuffed myself and headed on up to the room to call it a night. I had to get my suitcases together for that 16 hour flight back home.All-in-all, this was an absolutely fantastic adventure. I'm so glad that I was able to make this trip as I may never cross this path again. I must say, we slipped in and we slipped out. We arrived after the terrible snowstorm that gripped China unlike any snowstorm ever and we got out right before the virus outbreak and Olympic unrest. But I recommend this trip for anyone! I don't think I'll be eating Chinese food for a long time!
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