international

first post in a different country! hope you guys all had a good christmas and....i think its been the new year in all the time zones now....if not then oh well. happy new year! though im often mia from this blog im hardly ever off of the internet for long so its been weird being internet deprived for the last couple of days. time to catch everyone up. i figure it's easier to write about my trip in intervals rather than do a whole long post when i get back...id probably forget and leave out a whole mess of details though im sure ill still do that now. okay so day 1

dec. 26
flight at noon but had to wake up around 8 to get everything together and get to the airport. the wait wasnt too bad but the lines to go through the security checks were pretty long. from there everything was a breeze. our flight was off schedule about half an hour but im pretty sure thats just because people were taking a long time to put their carry ons away and such. for those who have not been on an airplane with me, i hate flying! take off is okay but landing.........not fun. so its like a 14 hour flight or so to hk but after about 8-9 hours we started to experience turbulence. in the beginning it wasnt too bad but it continued on and got worse...and worse.....and worse..... and of course i felt sick to my stomach at that point. so sick that i threw up twice on the ride. to make matters worse, we faced so much strong winds that we actually had to make a pit stop in taipei and refuel.........so thats 2 landings just to get to hk. from there we had to transfer planes to bangkok so another landing. by the time we finally land its around 1 in thailand and....well i was just glad to be off planes. took awhile to get our passports checked and when we went to get our luggage, it was not there.......................yeah so we had to go and report it. our tour guide told us later on that the hk airport is partially on strike and so about 80 bags from our flight did not get transferred to our plane to bangkok. by the time we got to our hotel it was past 3 in the morning and all i wanted to do was collapse in bed. so i did =)

dec 28 (time difference throws me off still.........not entirely sure what happened to the 27th.....oh well you get the drift)
grand palace
ate at the tallest building in thailand

okay so i cant give you a day by day description because i dont remember what order we did everything but thats okay right? lets see rode on an elephant. saw a tiger show. oh so yesterday we were brought to this zoo/animal show place. so we saw a crocodile show and a tiger show. and right afterwards, our tour guide brings us to the zoo restaurant where we're served crocodile soup and crocodile kabobs.................very very unsettling. yeah i couldnt stomach eating any of it.

so today is.....the 1st in hong kong. got to hk yesterday afternoon. ate with my mom's old friend and we saw the fireworks show here in hk. gotta admit it was pretty simple and wasnt too great but the crowd was pretty funny. every couple of minutes, the crowd would start cheering and it was like a chain reaction throughout the entire area. good experience i guess.

today ate with one of my dads old friends but not before seeing damon's family! surprising to look up (at the computer station i must admit) and see him there but that was pretty cool. hk is crowded! lots of places to shop but after awhile the stands seem to all sell the same things. as meng put it, my mission is to find the north face store. so far, fail. but i still have a couple of days before heading off to mainland china. we'll see. sorry thats a lot of writing and no pictures but ill be sure to upload them when i get the chance......yeah those who read this might just have to check facebook for pics. anyhoo gotta get ready to go out for dinner soon so more later.