China/Hong Kong: Ferry to Zhu Hai, China
The ferry over to Zhuhai from Hong Kong was uneventful, although we got some neat pictures of all of the bridges connecting the islands that make up most of Hong Kong.
Our arrival in Zhuhai had us stuffed onto a bus, then to an aquatic farm of some sort loaded with fish. And a show where they grabbed two hapless members of the audience (well ok only one of them was hapless, me! *scared*) to help participate in the wedding show. Eeep! What followed actually wasn't all that interesting, but as our first taste of China, it was very interesting. No detailed explaination of what was going on at this facility, no signs, nothing except to wander around after lunch.
Lunch was our first encounter with the food on this trip; we'd be getting essentially the same meal for lunch and dinner the next 5 days. Free range chicken is delicious, the meals were pretty good, but eating similar things 10 times gets pretty boring. It's all the more torturous when you're passing by a delicious smell from a cart on the street and you can't have any, because you're already so full you're going to burst!
We headed into Zhu Hai itself, where we visited a memorial park to Dr. Sun Yat-sen complete with decorative carved rock formations and a flower garden; then another garden, then off to a show at a recreation of a summer palace of some sort. It probably would have been more interested if I understood more than a hundred words of cantonese... *sigh* (aka, oops!) The show had elaborate dance routines as well as simulated cannon fire and actual horses; I think it was about the Mongol invasion or something, but I couldn't understand remotely enough to tell. The palace, sadly, was visited as the sun was setting, which menas we couldn't see much. They had a huge carving called the Big Dragon Ink Stone we walked by that was very elaborate, unfortunately it was extremely difficult to photograph in the failing light.
