We are in our hotel room in Hong Kong ready to catch the flight to Newark in the morning.  It has been an adventurous as the guides take you to the train station in Guangzhou and basically leave you there and you are on your own at that point.  We had never taken the train before, so it was an experience.  Everything was new!

Here is the crew waiting things out in the waiting area.

True to our normal experiences (3%), we were brought Ali’s passport with her U.S. Visa in it just a few minutes before it was time to start boarding the train.  We are getting so used to this stuff that we really were not even beginning to sweat yet!

Abby has about had enough of the picture taking, I think.  The smile is all gone, Tay!

Finally, after clearing immigration and customs, we were on our way to the train!

Everyone was in a pretty big hurry because we were told there was not a lot of available space for luggage.  Since there were so many of us, we went ahead and took all our luggage with us, which meant that we had to store all six pieces that we had on our own.

We found our car pretty quickly and everyone jumped aboard.

Everyone had their seat mates, except for me.  I got to sit with the guy with body odor.  Nice…

We always new were we were on the trip because the sign at the end of the car told us.

Of course, it was in Chinese.  But, for anyone thinking about the train, look at all the space up top for luggage!  We had NO problems finding room and getting everything stored quickly.

Once we got to Hong Kong we had another issue.  Most of the people with us were taking taxi’s out to the airport, but that was pretty expensive and there were a lot of us to try and fit.  So, I had looked at both a train option and the bus option.  We started for the bus and then changed my mind and decided to take the train.  Then I talked to one of the guys at the ticket counter and he said you had to take a bus to a different train station, which seemed like a hassle.  So, I went back to the bus (double minded).  It was a great choice.  You go to the bus terminal and get on the A21 bus that says “Airport” right on it.  It was $4 per person, it was a double-decker bus, you got a beautiful view of downtown Hong Kong from a great vantage point, and you had Wi-Fi the entire way.  Took probably 45 minutes to get to the airport.

We got to the Regal Hotel, which is attached to the airport, and we had to book two rooms because of how many people we had.  I wasn’t really comfortable leaving some of the girls in a room by themselves, so I talked to the staff and they gave us a King Suite with two additional beds.  Worked out very well.

Ali was a little hungry in this next shot.

We leave at 11:30 tomorrow morning for Newark and will get there Thursday afternoon around 1:30.  Then, we have an appointment with Dr. Levitin on Thursday afternoon around 4:00 and the procedure to remove the granuloma will probably be early Friday morning.  Then back home Friday night!  We can’t wait to be back in the USA!!

Cameron