Savvy Travelers

I'm being sarcastic. And the story is coming...but we're HERE!!! In Hong Kong, at least. We'll spend the night and fly out to Kunming, in Mainland China, tomorrow.

The flights weren't nearly as bad as we anticipated. We flew Cathay Pacific from San Francisco to Hong Kong, and the food was actually quite good! There was also a great selection of movies. We arrived here about 3 hours ago, at 6:30 am Thursday. After making our way through Immigration and Customs and then baggage claim, we made our way toward the taxi station. Several guys had been walking around asking if anyone needed a cab ride, so when one man approached us, I said sure. BIG mistake.

Scott and I have traveled enough to be aware of tourist pitfalls, but we fell right in today. The guy took us to a totally different door to leave. Scott and I kept looking at each other but followed him anyway. Long story short....the driver charged us $200 for what should have been a $100 ride or less. He made us stop at an ATM on the street to get more Hong Kong dollars when we told him we didn't have enough to cover the astronomical fee he was charging us. And he also dropped us off at the WRONG hotel! We are staying at the Intercontinental, and there are two here in the city. But we had told him which street our hotel was on. We didn't realize we were at the wrong one (we actually didn't even know there were two) until we were checking in and they couldn't find our reservation. So we had to get our luggage and pay for another cab ride to the other Intercontinental Hotel.

The other sad part is that we had received some great recommendations of activities to do while here. Stanley Market, the beautiful view at the top of Victoria's Peak, a ferry ride, laser show, etc. But unfortunately, it is pouring today. And strong storms are moving in tonight.

So being that it's 9:30 am here and we have the whole day to explore, we're trying to figure out other fun things to do. We're not going to let this rocky start to our Hong Kong stay get us down. :)

We just skyped with Carter, and he seems to be doing really well. He did get sad yesterday a few hours after we left, and at one point he said, "Mommy and Daddy come back" while running to the front door. But after my mom sat with him on the stairs for a few minutes and validated his sadness (thank you for this tip Erin!!), he was good to go.

Your prayers are being felt, for sure. We feel calm and peaceful about everything (well, except for losing $200), and I expected to be much more anxious. We're loving all your sweet comments, and it's been so touching to receive words of encouragement from those of you we don't even know. Thanks for investing in this journey with us! We'll get to Kunming tomorrow afternoon, and I'll post an update then.

Much love,