Back to Day 1 Back to Index Day 3
Friday, July 26, 2002, CST
Day 2, Departure from
We spent a few hours this morning walking around, and had a
pizza for brunch. It had rained overnight, and I cruised down
We checked out of the hotel at 11:30am, and headed to Ocean Terminal to board our ferry to Guang Dong (Jiujiang), in Namhai province. We had to go through another entrance agent, similar to the airport, and the experience was the same. After a hilarious ride up and down the elevator to nowhere, we boarded our ferry, the Gao Ming, of the Chu Kong Speedboat line, to He Shan. This is an Australian built catamaran, which cruised at 40 Mph (Turns out we are not taking a hovercraft.). The ticket was HK$180, for economy class airline style seats, but we upgraded and moved to the VIP room, which had couches and better air conditioning. As we passed under the Tsing Ma bridge, it started to rain, and we were glad this ferry did not have any outside seating.
After a few hours, and 80 miles, we arrived in He Shan,
where Grandpa’s manager from the lab,
We entered a toll plaza, and took a 4 lane road for about 20
minutes, past fields, factories, and fish farms. It was rather dark, from the
rain clouds, and raining steadily, but not too heavy, the entire drive. After a
while, we turned down a small one lane road, into a cluster of small brick
buildings. There were only a few inches for our small bus to clear, and
pedestrians had to make way for us, as we passed through the narrow streets.
Eventually, we ended up at the village temple, where a group of men were
gathered outside the entrance. One of
them was the village head, and he was carrying the genealogy book. A quick
lookup, found the family line, and with this, he was able to start the tour. We
wound down some narrow alleys, and between buildings, until we came upon a
doorway to the house where Dai Bok (Uncle John) was born. No one lived in the
house any longer, and it was closed up. Later, we encountered the man who last
lived there, and he offered to open it up to see, but we declined (Grandpa was
hungry and wanted to get to dinner). Down some more alleys to show us the lotus
ponds, and some newer houses that were recent additions to the village. While
on the way to another temple, we found out there were 600 people living in this
village, all named Hall. After this experience, Michael decided “we weren’t in
By this time, it was close to
The rooms were nice, and reminded us of
Back to Day 1 Back to Index Day 3