Year of the Yat: November 2011

A good bit of people looking at this blog either know Jay Broadwell, or at least know that we have a friend, and that one friend is Jay Broadwell . . . In any case, Broadwell came to visit us here in Hong Kong and we were SO thrilled. However, we were terribly delinquent in our picture-taking while he was here, BUT Jay snapped a few shots with his iPhone, and thus you are actually getting Jay Broadwell's perspective of Hong Kong. (This may help you orient more, as James' pictures are thus usually 'taller'... j/k!).

Basically, all we did was eat... and eat... and be merry. Awesome times. One of the many delicious meals we had was at the Jumbo Kingdom Restaurant. This is a huge boat that has different restaurants on each floor. We were advised to eat at the Top Deck, and thus, we did. Here is a picture of the boat:

Impressive no? To get there, you have to take a ferry to the boat:

Less impressive, I know... but a means to an end. Once we got on the boat, James and Jay looked at the menu for about 2 seconds before ordering the biggest, most ridiculous platter of seafood on the menu. Think I am exaggerating? I give you Exhibit A:

And yes, that is my head between a huge lobster, shrimp, oysters, and a crab. What you can't see are the mussels on the other side by me. Enough food? Yes. Did we eat it all? Shamefully, yes.

Here's a picture of us by the sign leading up to the Top Deck Restaurant. Fun fact, my grandmother actually ate here 57 years ago!

After eating a ridiculous amount of food, the boys decided they need ANOTHER massage (yes, they had one the day before...). So, we texted a buddy of ours here and asked for a recommendation for a good massage parlor. He suggested a Thai Massage place, which sounded great to all of us.... until we went in, set up the massages, and then looked at the pictures on the wall of people getting Thai Massages. Unknown to us prior to that point, a Thai massage basically consists of a small Thai woman practicing Karate moves on your body while testing your body's ability to mimic play-dough. Hilarious... and a bit scary.

They put us all in one big room, and they provide these lovely outfits for you to wear during the "massage" so I actually got to watch James and Jay get physically abused by two petite women for an hour. This was probably the most fun I have had in a long time. The women would find a spot on Jay or James that particularly hurt and would dig their elbows, knees, entire bodies in. Each time, they would turn to me and grin as the boys yelped. Luckily for me, I had the aforethought to tell my lady to take it easy on me!

Same day, as if we we had not already eaten a huge feast, we went to a friend of ours' restaurant here in Hong Kong. It serves THE BEST peking duck:

They carve the whole duck at your table. I can't watch, but it is pretty good. (Amazing, James adds. First they serve you a slice of duck meat with a slice of crispy skin which you eat with a BBQ-type sauce wrapped with some greens in a very thin flour tortilla. Then, they turn the rest of the duck meat into DUCK LETTUCE WRAPS. Ridiculous. We also had some fantastic sweet and sour prawns, among lots of other food! The service was so good - at many points in the meal the waiters were fixing our individual bites for us (no lie) and one actually fed Jay. Hysterical. We had to thank our friend Olivia, who I'm sure assured we would have a great experience).

Then we rode the ferry back over to our side of the island to call it a night.

The next day, we woke up and watched LSU beat Alabama, which always does a heart good. After the game, James took us to his favorite Szechuan Place. Szechuan is Chinese for SUPER FREAKING SPICY OMG. Not really, but really. I had tea:

Beautiful right? Not a bad looking couple either, eh?

Jay's beer was served in a bowl. Not sure what that was about, but Jay managed:

We ordered a lot of food (Chili dumpings, Soft-shelled crab, and the like), but the hottest/spiciest was the Spicy Prawns:

Yes, most things at the restaurant are served in a bowl full of chili peppers. I couldn't finish my prawns, although it did taste amazing... until you can no longer feel your mouth because of the pink peppercorns, which are illegal to be imported into the United States. We were sweating so bad, the waitress suggested bread for the table. ha!

Then we showed Jay the view from the Peak:

Hong Kong really is pretty. Then we went back to our apartment to pack for Hong Kong. Jay liked our small living arrangement:

We made it to Macau and had dinner at the restaurant at our hotel. They had fettucini alfredo.... I almost cried. Literally, almost cried.

The boys enjoyed desert without me, as I had to rush off to my mani/pedi. See, Jay booked the hotel with his fancy schmancy AmEx card and got all of these upgrades, including $100 credit at the spa, which he graciously let me use!

Oh, and the hotel had a rooftop pool.... nice!

Well, this was a first:

Since Jay booked the room, I ended up as Mrs. Tiffany Broadwell. Good thing James isn't the jealous type, because that was my spa credit in there and I was getting my mani/pedi.

Chillin' in the hotel, waiting on our cab.

We took Jay to see the sights in Macau. Here are the St. Paul ruins!

Jay, being more adventurous than I, tried Sea Urchin fish balls from the street vendor. He said they were good... but I'm doubtful...

This was inside the rectory of one of the churches - pretty!

Inside the church!

Pretty flowers!

A buddhist temple:

The ceiling at the Venetian, the world's largest casino... where Jay won bunches of money, gave me heart palpitations, had 2 Asian women betting with him and screaming at him, the dealer even told him he was crazy, and we all HAD A BLAST!

Coffee!

The Venetian also has a river inside it where you can take a gondola ride. The gondola paddler (official name anybody?) also sang opera.

Earlier in the week, we took Jay to the Chi Lin Nunnery:

In this picture, you may notice the background to our blog! And Broadwell finally decided to make an appearance in one of his pictures!

The grounds at the nunnery are beautiful.

And finally,I leave you with this:

I will never forget Jay coming to visit. We had an absolute blast and some of the most fun we have had in Hong Kong. It is so fun to see a familiar face in a foreign place. Love you Jay!

Here we are in the People's Square in Shanghai!

Our first stop in Shanghai was the Shanghai Museum - pretty cool, REALLY OLD stuff:

Then we went to SUPEC (Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center - I think) to check out their HUGE 1:500 scale model of the entire city. RIDICULOUS.

OMG Papa Johns. Need I say more? Things we cannot wait to eat back in the States: Mexican food, white meat chicken, cheese, breakfast food that doesn't contain noodles, a homemade turkey sandwich, oh, and James REALLY wants a steak!

This was the first church allow to reopen after the Cultural Revolution

A pedestrian street in Shanghai. The shopping on this street was all over, from very high end to the GAP. Live models in the windows and funny only-in-Asia activities like dance troops in the middle of the malls advertising a charity and people coming up to us with pictures advertising fake Rolex watches and the like.

I like to believe we weren't the only Saints fans in Shanghai that day - but we did represent!

A lot of the older buildings show the combined European and Asian influences.

Did I mention funny, only-in-Asia moments? How about a huge crowd around an ancient guy on rollerskates :-)

Here we are at the Bund, with the view of the "new" side of Shanghai. Shanghai is really fascinating because the side we are standing on (and where the earlier shopping street was) has a very old, colonial feel where the other side is one of the most modern, forward-thinking business centers in the world. You can tell by the picture how bad the smog was our first day there. Evidently, it's much better after some clean-up before the 2010 Asia Word Expo, but its still B-A-D.