Last day in Guangzhou

Today marks the last full day we spend in Guangzhou. It’s been such a great trip and whole experience that we will never forget, but we are SOOOO ready to come home. We have to take the train tomorrow to Hong Kong where we will spend one night before flying out on Friday.

I’ve been packing and it’s almost midnight and I’m exhausted so I’m going to let my pictures do most of the talking tonight. We went to the Buiyun Mountain about 20 minutes away. They have a cable car that takes you up this huge mountain and then you can spend time up there on paths and with a great view of the landscape and far off city.

There is also a bird sanctuary where you walk through this enormous area outside that is like walking through a jungle only there’s a steel cage surrounding the whole thing. You can’t really see it though unless you look hard because it’s so high up and so large in area. It’s not the most conducive place for a stroller though. There are hundreds of stairs. I’m tellin’ ya….If I have not lost some pounds on this trip, I’m gonna be shocked. The amount of walking and stairs we’ve done in the past 2 weeks is unbelievable.

At one point, before going into the enclosed area, we went to the scenic overlook and there was this teenager climbing up on the railing. I about had a heart attack……though I managed to snap a picture first…..because there was about a thousand foot drop on the one side of him. Oh my gosh, seriously?!!!

Then there was the bird show. The bird show was very……..um, boring. But it was made better by 2 things. First was the fact that Barb and I couldn’t stop laughing at the guy running the show. He had about as much personality as a rock. He would bring out a bird, it would do a trick, he’d bring it back. No smile, no ‘voila’ arms up high, nothing. He just stood there, didn’t say a word, and waited til the bird was done. It was hilarious. I was getting some serious church giggles.

The other thing that spiced it up again was, of course, my hubby. Never a dull moment with this guy, I swear. There was music playing loudly on a speaker throughout the show. It was Chinese music until all of a sudden the song, “Islands In The Stream” with Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton came on. Well, Jay must have thought it was karaoke night at the local bar because he started singing…..loudly. This was a small, small, little outdoor theater area and there was only us, Barb and Mark with the kids, and Mark’s parents, and then about 10 Chinese people…….all of which stopped watching the bird show and started watching Jason. Ya know, I never really realized just how catchy that song is…..or maybe it’s just because we haven’t heard music we know for weeks…….but the rest of us just couldn’t help ourselves and before we knew it, Barb and I were singing along too. I think Mark was probably getting into it as well, but he was mostly getting pictures of Jason…….who was now holding his hand up like it was a microphone. Oh my gosh, I’m laughing as I write this because the poor bird guy just kept bringing out his birds and having them do their tricks. At one point during the song, I looked up and the parrot was adding numbers……good stuff, letmetellya……sorry we missed that one. Between this and the ape incident the other day at the zoo, word just might spread that these American guys are a bit crazy.

Okay, so now I wrote more than I expected…but I couldn’t go to bed without telling that story. So….that was our day. We went to dinner together at Lucy’s for our last night together and then Barb and I went to buy a new suitcase so we could get all our stuff home that we bought here. I just finished packing it and I think I should have gotten a bigger one.