taiwan

i'll be honest and say by the time we got to taiwan, i was so tired of carrying around my heavy tote bag with my camera in it that i largely ditched it in favor of a tiny wristlet with money and keys in it.. so there aren't a whole lot of pictures of taiwan.

we stayed at bobo's new house. katie had moved out on friday and we showed up on wednesday.

jaime and joyce made me little cards :)
the first day we went to 101.
in case you never make it there.. this is what it looks like from the top on a cloudy day:
the color of the glass makes it look kind of interesting and ominous inside the observation deck. the whole floor looks like this and has little displays against the wall. one tells you about the top 10 tallest buildings in the world.
if you go upstairs, you can look out through the bars and pretend you're in a giant wine glass as you hear the wind whining through them.
if you go downstairs, you can see how sparkley the damper is.
don't know why but this air aquarium is my favorite thing in taipei main station. i find it every time i walk through there. in reality, there are just some random plants in there and there's a hole you can kind of stick your nose in. but the sign is hilarious and the air does seem kinda fresher than normal.
this is lianwu from the market. people kept telling me it was out of season, but it wasn't. thank goodness. it is so yummy and only in taiwan. couldn't find it in china or HK.
best danbing in the whole wide world.
typical scene at the kuo's. i love that it even includes mr. kuo's favorite notepad and his glasses.
we took a whole bunch of pictures but they're all on other people's cameras.
this is when we met up with alex and his new girlfriend, emily, at shilin night market.
beer on the street.
lunch with my old coteacher, augusta.
and her sweeet 8 month old baby, naomi. she sat in my lap until our food came. her newest game is throwing stuff on the floor and having you get it for her.
this was the morning we left. we overslept, took 4 minute showers and were in the car on the way to the airport before we knew it. look how big joyce is! she doesn't even look like the same kid.
and that is the end of the trip pictures! all of the ones i didn't post are in this album on facebook.

guangzhou

kind of have mixed feelings about our time in guangzhou. we looooved the hotel, but we didn't really see any of the city. faj got us a room at the mariott with hotel points he's accumulated. we got in late, around 8, checked in and they told us we had been upgraded to a business suite since faj is a platinum member. so we walked in to this:

i have a weakness for fluffy beds with many pillows, so if it was up to me i would have gotten in bed at 8pm and not gotten out until checkout at noon the next day. but we forced ourselves out to get some random noodle dish in an alley before heading back.

then i took a bath. and the house in round rock has no bath tub, so this was my first bath since december 2009 at gram's house. it was lovely.
i felt kind of like a ragamuffin every time i was in the lobby dressed in shorts, a t shirt and sandals when everyone else was in power suits.
our flight the next day was at 4, so we only had time to check out and eat lunch. i guess technically we could have done a lot more if we could have forced ourselves out of bed any earlier than noon. spotted this super chinese packing job on the way.
german food at bistro something.
ladies and gents restrooms.

and those are all of the pictures of guangzhou.

hong kong

if you live here, you can take the tram to your house every day.

this is the view of downtown hong kong island from victoria peak. a little foggy. i'm choosing to believe it isn't smog because hong kong is so wonderful.
this is jane's neighborhood near the central line. it is suuuper fancy.
and there's a little market down the street in the mornings.
this is the laser light show you can watch from the avenue of stars, where we were.
this is a bad picture but i was trying to capture the memory of these juice stores. you can get whatever blend of juice you want. and for 10 HKD which is like a dollar and 20 cents.. how can you go wrong? it's delicious, you watch them blend it in front of you, it's cheap.
dim sum at this place anthony bourdain went to in hong kong. that's shrimp wrapped in a rice noodle and tsa xiao bao, bbq'd pork inside a rice flour bun, which are my favorite things.
this is the gondola ride to the mountain with the buddha on it. it's a 26 minute gondola ride over all of those mountains and a bit of water.
see the buddha?


and that is hong kong.

i am sooo sleepy. andy and i went to first thursday in austin which is when a bunch of stores and restaurants on this one very walkable, cool street are open late. it was just chilly enough to walk arm in arm, but not quite glove weather.

yangshou

yangshou was the only place in china we went to that wasn't a giant city, and we were really glad we went because it was beautiful and peaceful.

it took me a long time to figure out what those weird looking trees were in the picture above. they're giaaant bamboo. like 40 ft tall bamboo. at the top, it just droops over.
the mountains are made of limestone.
this is the sketchy PVC raft-boat.


guillermo asked to take a picture with this group of people
and then the entire tiny island of people we were docked on wanted to take pictures with us.

time for bed!

shanghai.. better city, better life.

oodles of noodles.

we did laundry in every city but this is the only one that had a pole so you could hang it up high.
the only dorm we stayed in with 6 beds. i think there were only 4 of us in there though.
this is haibao, the mascot of the world expo. he was literally everywhere you looked, so we had to give in after a bit.
there are entire stores of matching couples clothing.

i thought this was the expo.. but it's really just a little tiny part of it. the expo itself was in a giant venue off on its own. we didn't make it because we didn't know about it the first night and we didn't have enough time the second day. but people said the lines were looong. actually, one woman told us that you could pay a chinese person to stand in line for you all day and then you come claim your spot once they get to the front 4 hours later.
the skyline at the bund.


goodbye shanghai!