Date Night

Friday, September 10, 2010 marked a milestone. It was the day I had the best date of my life. We had fun, we laughed and we went home thinking that we would grow old together. But to get to this point, it took my Aletha and me about 22 years.

We have never taken our one-on-one time seriously. We enjoy spending time together with McKenzie as a family. The problem is, that left little time for me to enjoy just Aletha’s company. Even though McKenzie is 10 years old, I can count on my fingers and toes the number of times Aletha and I have been out alone on a date.

When we came to China, it got even worse. McKenzie had no friends here and we knew no adults we would trust to watch our child for the evening. 10 months into our stay in China, McKenzie got invited to spend the night with a friend. We jumped on the opportunity to spend an evening together.

Lucky for us, there are many restaurants within five minutes of our apartment. We chose one that I had eaten at alone while McKenzie and Aletha were in the US, The Blue Marlin. The main draw was that a live band started playing at eight o'clock whereas most restaurants did not start until nine. And you know us old-timers need our sleep, so this made all the difference in the world.

Aletha put on a new dress that she had custom-made here in China. The dress fit like a glove and had a very unique collar line. She even wore my favorite earrings. Once again, I would walk in beside the prettiest woman in the room.

From the time we sat down, I felt things were different. We were acting like two silly teenagers on vacation. We laughed, smiled and took pictures of ourselves with our pocket camera. I'm sure everyone in the room thought that we had only been in Shanghai a few days.

I can't remember the last time when my sense of humor had such an effect on her. Tonight every joke I told harvested a giggle out of her. She sat next to me and insisted we take pictures together. In every picture, we either smiled naturally or pulled off some silly looking face.

When the music started we took turns trying to sing with it or dance to it. Mind you, we never left our chairs, but that did not stop us from embarrassing each other. For the two hours we where there, it felt like we were the only people in the room.


When we left for the night, everything that had ever bothered us before seemed to melt away. I stopped thinking about all the bad things in my life, and I only focused on how much fun I was having.

It seemed that I had forgotten how to have fun with my wife. We spend so much time together dealing with all the stress and issues and we forget to just love each other. It has taken me 22 years of dating to figure this out, and I do not want to go 22 seconds having forgotten this again.



Aletha,

You are my favorite and my only. Thank you for the wonderful night. I hope I never forget again that we are supposed to have fun together.


Love Always,
Jason

Sliver Mine Bay

From the pen of Jason.....

Hong Kong 2010, Part 3 of 3

We woke up early on our last day in Hong Kong. Our flight was scheduled to leave in the afternoon; we made plans to visit a small beach on the back side of Lantau Island called Silver Mine Bay. The 40 min taxi ride took us over the mountains. During the steepest parts, the driver had to putt along in first gear just to keep from rolling backwards. We passed by a set of ski lifts. These ski lifts take you up to a mountain peak, site of the Po Lin Monastery and home of the world’s tallest outdoor seated bronze Buddha.

When we arrived in Silver Mine Bay, we headed straight for the sandy beach front. We were very disappointed to see just how junky the place was. Trash and litter was everywhere. The workers had already set about to pick it all up, presumable before the tourist awoke. Besides the eyesore created by the litter, it was a beautiful place. The sandy beach was at the head of a small harbor. It was surrounded on three sides by substantial mountain peaks. Off in the distance, you could see other smaller islands. Parked to the side of the harbor was a set of small fishing boats flanking a larger sail boat. McKenzie was getting hungry and she reminded us every 15 steps. We headed out to find a place to eat. We walked to the local hotel and found out we just missed the end of the breakfast service. We headed back to the ferry terminal area, and had decided we had seen enough. We were going to catch a cab ride out of there and hit one of the restaurants near the airport. As we approached the taxi area, we saw a most beautiful site, the golden arches of McDonald’s. The Waters’ troop is very adventurous in all aspects of our life with the exception of what we eat, so the vision of an American restaurant chain was a wonderful site.

For the most part, it was everything you would expect. Any American would instantly recognize most of the menu items. They offer different kinds of tea plus several more fruit and fruit drinks options than you have ever seen in the US but we easily ordered a few biscuits and some pancakes. The breakfast was just what we needed as it allowed us to focus back on adventuring instead of leaving early for the airport.

A visitor’s sign showed us a path that led to the actual abandoned silver mine and a set of water falls, both within a 45 min walk of the taxi stand. I did the math in my head and decided if we hurry, we could make it to the top, and still make our plane back to the Chinese main land.

We left Micky D’s with a full stomach and a better attitude about how the day would turn out. We followed the signs up the trail. The “trail” turned out to be a walk through the village streets, across yards, through people’s gardens and sidewalks literally inches outside people’s living room windows. Everyone was very friendly always smiling and nodding their heads. A few people tried to communicate, but mostly they wanted to stare at the two beautiful fair skinned girls that were my companions, while the girls wanted to befriend every lazy dog we passed. One dog turned out to be very protective of his chicken leg, even though he had no intention of eating it. This had no effect on Aletha. As she tried to pet it anyway, I made my way around him in a huge wide semi-circle.

The path we were taking was designated as The Honk Kong Olympic trail. It was set up during the Bejing Olympics, but other than that is has no other significance. I mean, the trail is a 5 hour plane flight away from the center of the Olympic city!

As we passed a few gardens, we made note of some beautiful flowers, some interesting vegetables and a real banana tree. McKenzie wanted to pick one, but I wouldn’t let her. They were green and someone else’s harvest and I did not want to get between a farmer and his cash crop.

The path eventually led us to the edge of the jungle and past an old, well engineered out house. The clever people had figured a way to pipe water from the local stream into the top of the water closet without using any kind of pump; gravity alone was responsible for getting the water into the tank, and then responsible for pushing anything that a person left behind down the hill, presumable into the ocean below. From the looks of the house, it had not been used in a long time.

As we headed on, the jungle started looking more and more like, well a jungle. Trees were covered in vines as thick as your arm. Some trees had limbs that grew straight down back into the soil to make a new root. I was waiting for the screams of Jane as she ran from a grinning Tarzan with the thought of love on his mind. Instead, we started to hear the sound of a trickling water fall.

The first section was barely more than a small brook rolling over boulders, worn smooth after centuries of being exposed to the current. The sound was like medicine. Months of listening to traffic and car horns were slowly being replaced with sounds made by the Lord himself. My mind wandered to the last time we were in the mountains of North Carolina.

We were growing anxious to see the real water fall, so we pushed on. We made our way to the viewing area and the falls were gorgeous. They fell about 40 feet across a flat black rock face. The water then crawled its way through a section of scattered boulders looking for any place it could squeeze through so its trip to the ocean would not be delayed. We searched around at the base of the falls. Small pools of water were everywhere. McKenzie and I found a few that contained minnows, but the real find was one that held a crawdad. This daddy was different than any I had seen. Its body was normal, but its claws were extremely long and thin. To my eyes, they seemed too fragile to be any good. We poked and prodded around trying to catch it, but this fellow had gotten real good at hiding in the small amount of water he was housed in. We never did get our hands on it, and we finally left to explore else where. McKenzie left to make mud pies, while Aletha went to talk to the only other person we had seen this far up the trail; a pleasant British women who had been in Honk Kong most of her adult life. The real pull was that she had two mongrel pet dogs with her. I wasn’t sure who enjoyed playing in the water and dirt more, McKenzie or the pups. Both had gotten pretty filthy in just a matter of moments.

We spent quite a while at the falls. In fact, we spent too long. The watch told us we would not be able to push on to the silver mine. With the long walk down and the fact that cabs were few and far between in this remote spot, we decided we had to high tail it out of there to catch our plane. From that point on, our time in Hong Kong was over. We had a great set of days there. Our best memories had nothing to do with all the famous Hong Kong landmarks (except for Disney). We got the most from getting off the beaten path and spending time in some small, unknown corners of the island. I can’t say enough good things about our visit. We would go back in a minute if the chance presented itself.

Octopus for Dinner

From the pen of Jason.....

Hong Kong 2010, Part 2 of 3


It was dinner time. Problem was, we had just left the Pirate’s Cave, and all of the restaurants were on the other end of Cheung Chau Island, a little spot of land of the coast of the main Hong Kong Island. We made our way back to where our first ferry dropped us off. When we came over the rise, we could see that our boat was nowhere around. We approached the only boat at the loading area and the old gent behind the wheel held up 5 fingers, 1/6th the cost of our ride over. That’s just the way it works around here, you never know when you are getting ripped off, so always assume you are.

This time, we were not alone. A small group of older Chinese people were riding also. I made McKenzie go to the front of the boat so I could get a couple of pictures. I guess her blonde hair was too much, because one of the gentlemen gestured to show he wanted to pose with her. McKenzie obliged. Since coming to China, she has handled her near celebrity status very well and it has hardly gone to her head. They posed together for several shots, and the others seemed to really enjoy how graceful McKenzie handled the request.

When we got to the landing, we made our way towards the restaurants. Cheung Chau Island is known for its seafood, so I wanted to try it. There were several restaurants where you could choose from a list of creatures, still alive and swimming. They had a whole array of fish, eels, shrimp, turtles and some creatures that looked more like bait to me. One rather popular item reminded me of the little bugs you see crawling around the barnacles on the face of a seawall, except these were about 3 inches long. We decided to eat off of the menu instead.

Aletha ordered shrimp, while McKenzie and I got noodles. Mine was a seafood noodle dish so it came covered with a scoop of seafood parts: a tentacle here, a shrimp there, maybe a few clams and a squid just for good measure. Everything was delicious. The tentacles were a little tough and chewy, but quite good.

We had apparently been on the island long enough for Aletha’s animal charm to float around, because a scrawny cat came up to our table looking for some scraps. They of course fed it little pieces of everything and it seemed very gracious. It hung around until Aletha snatched it up by the nap of its neck to see if it had been nursing. When she put it back down, it left us alone.

We had about an hour before the fast ferry would return. Aletha wanted to visit some of the stores, and I wanted to go to the ocean side of the island, so we spilt up. The walk to the ocean was very short. The ocean side had a long sandy beach surrounded by a shark net. As it was late in the day, no one was swimming. I turned to head back and saw a sign pointing towards the ancient cave drawings. A quick glance at my watch told me I did not have time to see them. I’ll put that on my list should I ever make it back to this small dot in the middle of the ocean.

While I waited around for the fast ferry that would take us back to Hong Kong Island I watched several small fishing boats return with their catches. I saw a couple of rather large grouper hauled in, but nothing more than that. The sun set just behind the mountain peak on the other side of the harbor as the ferry returned. It made for a fantastic end to a great day.

To the Pirate's Cave

From the pen of Jason.....

Hong Kong 2010, Part 1 of 3

This adventure starts when we get off the fast ferry on the island of Cheung Chau, one of the many islands that make up Hong Kong. I had read about a cave that was rumored to be the hiding place of the infamous pirate Cheung Po Tsai, and that was the first place McKenzie and I wanted to go. We have figured out that in China, grade school kids know more English than adults, so we asked a few of the children where the cave was. We were pointed to the western end of the island. It would be a long walk, so we looked for another way to get there.

We ended up finding a local with a flat decked boat. He knew enough English that we were able to negotiate a price of 30RMB. We hopped aboard and were off. The ride only lasted about 10 mins. The wonderful view of beautiful tropical blue water was often ruined by piles of floating garbage.

When we reached the small protected harbor on the end of the island, we quickly hopped off and hit the trail. The trail was mildly steep, but was easy to walk at a good pace. The trail quickly took us away from the populated area. We were getting out in the middle of nowhere when we rounded a corner and met a man sitting on the side of the trail selling odds and ends.

At first, it was real strange to see him in such a remote place selling water, flashlights, sea shells and such. He spoke no English, so we mostly ignored him and continued to the cave. He was persistent trying especially hard to sell us a flash light. He followed us around the corner to the entrance to the cave. Aletha and McKenzie headed in first.

The entrance was straight down and you had to carefully crawl down 15 feet. That is when it dawned on me why this guy was tapping my shoulder again trying to get me to buy a flashlight; it was completely dark in the bottom!

He held firm to his price of 10RMB, so we paid it and headed in. It kept going straight down to the point we had to use a ladder. In all, it was about 25 feet deep. As we carefully walked through, you could hear the ocean waves crashing on the side of the hill trying desperately to get in and fill the cave with water. McKenzie spent her time with the flashlight looking for left behind pirate’s treasure as Aletha and I stepped carefully in the dark, hollering at McKenzie to shine the light in front of us.

The cave continued straight for about 30 feet. Without the flashlight, you could not see a thing. I was started to regret being so cheap and only buying one light for 3 people. I mean, 10 RMB is only about $1.30.

The exit of the cave required us to slither through an opening only about 18” wide. If not for my firm 6 packed stomach, I may have gotten stuck. We could now see the sunlight shining through the exit. We emerged slowly allowing our eyes to adjust from complete darkness to bright sun light.

When we popped out, we were on the other side of the point, on a shear rock faced cliff, 40 feet above the ocean, overlooking a small harbor. The only sign of people was the path that headed down to the edge of the water and around the point on the far side of the inlet. I tried to enjoy a few romantic minutes with Aletha, but that was disturbed by the flash light salesman. He was back, but this time to give me money! He gave us 4 of the 10 RMB back in exchange for the flashlight. So instead of selling us the light, he rented it to us with a small deposit to ensure I did not run off with it.

We were all as excited as kids on Christmas morning. This was about as real an adventure as you can get. There were no guard rails, warning signs, tour guides or anything else to force us to be safe. We could have easily slipped and fallen to the bottom and been in real trouble. This is something we have noticed throughout China, safety is second and living for the moment is first. It does allow us to enjoy things close up, but can be a little eerie at times.

What's Next in Hong Kong

Hong Kong...Who would have thought two teenagers in love would end up in China... 14 years of marriage and being together more than half our lives....This is what it gets ya....Can't say we were entirely happy about coming to China, but boy has it been an adventure....