On to Guillin

We trully enjoyed our only full day in Hong Kong yesterday. As it continued to rain, we decided to eat at the hotel's chinese restaurant, and it was quite good. Had a crispy chicken similar to the one we had our first day in HK, but this one was cooked in rock salt. It was very moist and tender. A bit more difficult to eat as they simply cut a half bird in sections leaving all the bones on. We also had a seafood sweet & sour soup, curried vegetables (which was the only dish we could have done without), a stir fried noodle dish plated and served tableside, also very good, and a real surprise -- a scallop and other seafood beautifully wrapped inside a Japanese eggplant and baked. It was a speciality of the restaurant, and we were told it was in the Shanghai tradition of cooking. for dessert we had a hot tofu which we were surprised to discover was tofu pudding exzactly like we buy in Seattle, but without the ginger sauce they serve in Vietnamese restaurants. Instead they serve it with brown sugar. Very tasty. We also shared a bean paste and coconut pudding that was firmed like a gelatin. Karen and Donna didn't care for it, but Merrilee and I liked it.

After dinner we enjoyed a glass of Taylor 10-year old port in the lobby bar while listening to a piano and singer doing western songs together. Not too bad. the bar was pusinging their dessert buffet and would not sell a single dessert to us, so I returned to our room to bring down some chocolate we had there. It went well with the port.

Today we have to leave our luggage outside the door for pickup at noon, and we leave by bus for the airport. As has been the case in every city we've visited, China Spree provides a full sized bus for the twelve of us, giving us a lot of room to relax and enjoy the ride. We arrive in Guillin tonight and have a full day there tomorrow, leaving the following night. As we still have several hours before we leave, we're going to visit the flower market and bird park again. If it's not raining too hard (it is raining lightly at the moment) we'll also take a walk to the jade market, about a 30-minute walk away.

I'll try to post again from Guillin. Also, ignore the posting date and time. It is actually 8:55AM on 5/29. My computer is still on Seattle time.