Our final day in mainland China and we are finally adjusting to the time change. We got up around 7:30 and were down for breakfast a little after 8. Today we have nothing to do until 11:30 when we meet our guide in the lobby to collect our immigration packet for Blaize. We chatted with some of the other families and you could tell everyone was just clocking time until their paperwork was done. We have people from our group who are flying home late tonight/early tomorrow depending on how you look at it, others flying out tomorrow (Thursday) and one flying home Friday. Other families in the hotel are flying home Saturday. I bet it is just a continuous cycle of people through here and I am sure a new batch will be arriving as soon as we leave.
We ate and went upstairs to get everything packed and ready to go. We tried to get Blaize to take a nap but he was having none of that. The time finally came and we hauled our bags downstairs and met our guide where we got the all important “brown envelope” with repeated instructions to NOT open it. We said our goodbyes and loaded into a van that will take us south to Hong Kong.
The ride was uneventful and it was neat to watch the landscape transition from hills around Guangzhou to the flatlands the further south we got. I think we all dozed off for a bit and I woke just as we were getting close to Shenzen, a border city between China and Hong Kong. Our driver stopped to use the restroom right before the border and then we got in line to cross into Hong Kong. When we did this the last time, we had to get out of the van, go through customs and wait for our driver on the other side. It was nerve racking as we had no idea how long we’d need to wait, it was dark and virtually nobody spoke English. It all worked out last time but we were hoping for a smoother experience. It was as smooth as could be this time and we didn’t need to get out of the van at all and cleared China and then entered Hong Kong within 40 feet of each other. It was a short drive to the hotel from the border and we checked in to our last hotel on this trip.
It was around 3PM and we were at the airport with nothing to do until our flight tomorrow at 11:40AM. After we got settled and were pretty sure we were as prepared as we could be we decided to venture into the city and see the Avenue of the Stars. We walked to the airport and bought return tickets on the HK Airport Express to the Kowloon station. About 20 minutes later we were in Kowloon and then we took the free shuttle to a hotel close to the harborfront. The driver must really like his job and he wrung every bit of performance out of his bus as he could. We walked down to the harborfront and I only was hit up to buy some watches 4 times. LOL. This part of Hong Kong has some aggressive sales people. We were bummed when we got to the waterfront as the Avenue of Stars was under construction. I was hoping to get a picture with the Bruce Lee statue but it was not meant to be. We walked around for a hour or so and then made our way back to the airport.
It was getting late and we wanted to grab some dinner and settled on a restaurant in the airport that had nice dual language menus. We ordered and while waiting for the food to arrive, Blaize started crying. Ironically enough one of the other families from our travel group was eating there before they boarded their late night flight. They heard Blaize crying and recognized it from earlier in the week. Ha! The food was awesome and a good price so it was a win/win. We went to our hotel and hit the hay with dreams of home filling our heads.
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