April 7th Vincent and I had a 5:30am wake up call so we'd be ready to take our taxi to the airport. I can't explain the excitement that I (and I'm sure Vincent) had getting on the plane and leaving JiaDing for a little while. It's a nice town we're in but it's small, and lacks really any english speaking people. So going somewhere new for what we thought would only be a week was really exciting to us.
We were met at the airport by a driver for FRD and he drove us the hour scenic drive to the race track. At first I was really excited to be near water, it was a refreshing breeze, and the scenery was great - at times I was tempted to have the driver pull over so I could jump out and take some photos, but I resisted the urge. We finally made it to the FRD office for a few hours, Pete drove us around to show us the track while drivers were out practicing. Even though I haven't been to the Shanghai office, I was excited to see the environment Vincent works in.
Vincent decided not to go into work the first full day in Zhuhai and thought it would be nice to walk to "the lady of the sea" statue. We did see her on the way to the track, but not paying attention to the actual distance... so we set off for what Pete had said would be about a 45 minute walk. Despite the extreme humidity on our walk when we first set out we continued since the day was nice and warm (much different from what we left in Shanghai).
As we walked we took some photos of a normal day of locals in Zhuhai.. along with some other neat things.
These look like ordinary row boats, but the person using the ores stand up... I thought it was neat
On any given day you can catch a lot of people along the 10 k waterfront we walked fishing. I'm not sure what they are fishing for here (at some points they were pulling oysters and shrimp from the water)
As old as these boats are - I was quite drawn to them. They remind me of an old painting.At this point we had been walking for nearly 3 hours and starting to get tired, sore (well I was sore and growing some massive blisters on my feet) but we were determined to make it there on foot.
Another large fishing area - boats, nets and people filled the water line getting ready for a day out in the water.
One more break and another 35 minutes to go before we reach our final destination. While I was resting, Vincent took my camera for a walk around "Lover's Road". The main road in Zhuhai that leads around the water front. The board walk for the most part was well maintained and many statues filled the lawn.
We finally made it. Over 10k and four hours of walking, 7 breaks, two bottles of fruit juice and a truly great day. We made it to the statue. I'm not even sure what the actual draw is to her - it seems like at any given time the paths around her are crowded with people. But at the same time, she is quite lovely.The walk was probably my favorite part of Zhuhai. Vincent and I spent a lot of time reading throughout the days - and would go to "The Old Junk" at night for dinner, hang out with other foreigners and check our email since Pete's apartment didn't have internet access.
We were hoping to get to Hong Kong the first week and get back to Shanghai as soon as we could, but Easter changed our plans since the consulate was closed for the long weekend we didn't end up going until Tuesday, and got to the head office a half hour too late to get our visa submitted that day - so we had an extra day to explore what Hong Kong had to offer. I did enjoy the city more then most. It was clean, relatively more quiet (considering the amount of people) then the other cities we've been to, and it was just more inviting.
Our hotel was in Kowloon - off of Hong Kong Island, and we stayed on the 24th floor.
This is a view of Kowloon from our hotel room.
The corner of the block our hotel was on. We went for a night walk after eating before heading back to the apartment to relax since we had the entire next day to site see we knew we'd be walking a lot.Waking up we decided to check the internet to see what Lonely Planet suggested we did. We found a few shopping centers and looked around a little bit, then took the metro to the tram that would take us to the top of Victoria Peak.
The Tram ride was relatively short, considering it went to the top of the mountain, the reason is that the tracks go straight up. At times it felt like we were climbing the first drop on a roller coaster.
We spent a few hours on top of the peak, just walking around enjoying the day, view and amount of plants around us (when you're in busy cities all the time - its almost a treat to experience wild life).
Once we returned to Zhuhai - our days were the same as before, relaxing during the day - and evenings were at the Junk.
Our last day we went back to Zhuhai International Circuit, and I spent most of the day taking photographs of the guys on their fast bikes. When we were approaching the track,... I mean we were seconds away from me being ready to start photographing, one of the bikers hit some rubber dust stuff (I don't know the technical term..) and spun out. All Vincent and I saw were feet in the air. The crash was pretty epic and note worthy, and the selfish part of me wishes we had made it in time to photograph. But the guy was okay - only a big bruise.
Now I'm back in Shanghai while Vincent is in France working at LeMans.
