China Day 21

Today was a wonderful day full of interesting things.

When I woke up, Bowen was still not back from Macau (although I wasn't completely sure that's where he was.. and I didn't know whether overnights were acceptable in China-non China relations, this is a crazy place) so Val and the rest of the crew headed to Qi Gong practice in the park like every other morning. Today is Master Wei's last day with us here in Hong Kong though so we had a special practice complete with healings and other interesting little treats for the senses..

Bowen showed up in time to also enjoy these things, and I couldn't help but wonder where he'd been hiding himself away. I knew that Chris had gone with him, but Chris didn't show up this morning (which I thought was unlike him - and since I like to make up fantastic stories in my head of running from Chinese spies and whatnot, I enjoyed my little imagination adventure to myself until I got the real story) so I wasn't sure if he stayed.

After our interesting morning of getting all of our problems fixed (Thanks to Master Wei) and all the interesting inner thoughts that come with those experiences, we headed back to the hotel and eventually made plans to go to this beach that Zach had been after us to go to for a couple of days. The bus ride turned out to head right past all the places I had gone yesterday on the tour (minus the giant buddha) and was very pretty and fun. We didn't make it to the beach until about 2 or 3pm and it was only warm enough to disrobe for Hong Kongs entertainment for about an hour.

We must have made a pretty interesting sight sitting in our little Hawaii circle, complete with open mostly empty Pizza Hut box, ipod with speakers blaring, scantily clad women (well, really just me), tattooed men (once again, really just Zach), and complete lack of racial homogeneity (my favorite). As such, we were getting lots of blatant stares, which I find highly amusing. I eventually figured out that the Chinese find it inappropriate to lounge on the beach in a bikini and a long sleeve shirt. I kept having older women walk past me staring at my ass - I was sitting down so it was even more conspicuous than it would have been, but since they were stopping and staring right in front of me it was pretty easy to notice. I mean, I WAS wearing a bathing suit!! It's not like a brazilian bikini or anything!!! The ass is plenty big to cover all controversial areas!!

I shouldn't be surprised though since they didn't even take their shoes off on the beach, walked up to the water and seemed surprised that it was wet, and that it moved on it's own. They stayed completely covered up and thought that we were quite possibly the strangest group of people they'd ever seen. Kinda like every other place we go.
It's good stuff.
So to make our guilty consciouses feel better about skipping out on the Taoist festival, we headed over to the Kuan Yin temple on the far side of the beach - a nice blond woman had scolded us on the bus saying that we'd "better get some culture while we're here.." Look lady (rook rayree). I think we've had more culture in 3 weeks than you've probably had for the whole time you've lived here. I think we can handle a few hours on the beach without having to learn something.

But yeah, we were feeling guilty and headed over squealing about extra-credit.. we're easily amused.

The temple was pretty cool, but was definitely over shadowed by the fact that it was getting mighty cold to our Hawaiian blood pretty quick. We all took many pictures to prove we were there, along with pretty sunset pics and me doing some ear nibbling (love those big lobes! How appropriate that she's the Goddess of Happiness..) before we headed back up to catch the bus back.
On the way back we stopped in and had a hot chocolate/coffee in Hong Kong proper and I bought a wrap for Hailey. We were doing lots of talking about tomorrow night being Thanksgiving and scheming about having dinner and going to some Jazz club that Zach and Val had found the other night. Apparently Val has some special surprise for us that she's going to unveil tomorrow night, too bad I'm horribly impatient with surprises! I love them and hate them completely.


We finally made it back to L'Hotel and proceeded to have bubble bath theater and leg shaving night. It was a ridiculously good time int he purest sense of the phrase. Probably of the the funniest things I've ever seen is Bowen showing Val how to properly take a bubble bath. It was great.
My legs were unfortunately anti-climatic for everyone but me. Nothing like a constantly clogged razor to dampen everyone's fun. Also, it just took forever... BUT my legs have never felt so silky smooth ever. I quite enjoyed myself and took a celebratory bubble bath myself (plus I had to finish the job). I wonder how long I'll think it feels nice before it gets too scratchy or itchy. It's been a long time!