Hong, Helicopters, Herrings

One of my favorite parts of traveling is walking through local markets and seeing what the local people buy on a daily basis as part of a trip to the market. There's always all sorts of interesting street food {and if I didn't have the most fickle stomach in the world, I might try more of it}, all sorts of dried things as well. Interesting to see what people buy as snacks.


Lantau Island is two islands away from Hong Kong, connected by two very large bridges. I love driving in new places, because you take in all the countryside, the people on the side of the road and all the vegetation around. Unfortunately I don't like to take pictures while in vehicles, so a lot of it is memories in my mind, but when I think of these places, I have my own internal memory pictures of moments I enjoyed and took in, just for me.


Fish is a huge part of an Asian diet. This doesn't just include raw or cooked fish, but also dried fish. In the markets, there are countless bags of dried little fish treats.


Went to a little village that is famous for its dried produce and is surrounded by canals of water. The canals lead to a larger body of water, where they have pink dolphins. {and probably countless other sea creatures}


As you walk through the village, this is a common site: baskets of different food items being dried in the sun. I didn't know what most of the things were, but tried asking when possible and when not, I just made up something random in my head.


I think the following fish is more for decorative purposes than for eating purposes {only because I don't see that it would go down that well... ouch.}




Returning from a day of fishing. I think one of my favorite moments this day was watching a woman transfer all of that day's catches into a bigger bucket {it's all live sea creatures that people can buy fresh}. She was grabbing sting rays and some other interesting fish. I tried to imagine what life would look like for me in a place like that. I would probably also go down to pick out a nice fresh sting ray for dinner. So normal for them, but different and fascinating for me.


The day we went to Lantau was on Easter Sunday. I have never not gone to church on Easter Sunday, so it was interesting being in a completely different country and culture for this country. And ironically enough, this was the day we went to see the largest sitting Buddha in the world. I was reminded continually of the grace of God and rejoiced in the fact that Jesus is very much ALIVE. And victorious.


We drove up to the top, but later my mom and I decided it would be fun to race up the 250 stairs and then run back down. That was a horrible idea. Maybe if it wasn't blazing hot and humid it would have been a better idea.

Lotus flowers unfurled.

We had a bit of adventure on the ship that night after leaving Hong Kong. There was a medical emergency with a young man on the ship and a helicopter evacuation was called for. We would have kept sleeping, but the lights of the helicopter kept shining into our window and it was incredibly loud. So we went out on the deck and watched. It was amazing to see how skilled of a pilot it was, because he couldn't land on the ship, but each time he approached, he had to simply hover to offload and load. A few days later we got news that the man was recovering, so I was happy to hear that.


And thus concludes a couple full days in Hong Kong. Next stop: Shanghai, China