slow start

We've officially been on our Asia trip for over a week now, but we're off to a slow start. We didn't expect to stay in Hong Kong so long, but by the time we were able to get our Chinese and Vietnamese visas, it had already been a week. In the meantime, we got travel vaccinations, I sent off one last grad school application, and we did some final shopping for our trip. In some ways, we were still preparing for the trip, not really on it. On another level, it didn't even feel like we were traveling, since Hong Kong seems to be more Westernized than Japan. We watched American TV almost every night, we ate at Pizza Hut, and we enjoyed being able to speak English everywhere. It was actually a good transition time.

Now, we've had a bit of a hold-up. Yesterday, we crossed the border into China, hoping to catch an overnight bus to a place called Guilin. But after a couple hours walking from bus station to bus station, we think we found out that there were no seats available until the 21st. The Chinese New Year is in a couple days. When we found out we would be here for that, we were pretty excited...but we didn't know how much it would affect our plans. We eventually got train tickets for tomorrow, so we are just spending a few days in Shenzhen while we wait. We are half expecting that to happen a couple more times before we leave China. Oh well. It's keeping us relaxed anyway. :)