Day 32 and a bit: The trip home

Not much happened. Which isn't a bad thing on a travel day.

One final scalding-freezing shower, one final mopping up of the leaking-shower lake, one final breakfast with dodgy milk, and we were pretty well ready to roll. 

Whining and moaning aside, we've enjoyed our time at the Jia, and would happily stay here again. Overall it's a great hotel, handy, and the staff have been wonderful.

Keith and Leona's apartment is on Lantau Island, only a short distance from the airport, so we dropped in for lunch before flying home.

Our two and a half days of touring with them had given us a much better feel for and shown us more of Hong Kong than we could ever have hoped for. We are extremely appreciative about how much time and effort they spent over the past few days. Great friends, and it's going to be hard to repay the favour.

We did give them a bottle of Veuve as a down payment.

Their two cats, Gum Gum and Douglas Cat, gave Emma another cat-fix. Douglas Cat is a bit stranger-shy, but Gum Gum is an attention-seeking showoff, wrestling with his mortal enemy, the cotton bud, doing death-defying leaps trying to catch a feather on a string, charging up the wall to leap to the top of the bookcase. Hilarious.

The view from their balcony towards the airport gave us an indication of how bad the pollution was. The control tower is precisely three kilometers away, and we could barely make it out. We love the city, but the gunk in the air we could do without. HK isn't the only Chinese city we could say that about, of course, and the combination of HK, Beijing, and Shanghai has left Emma with a nasty choking cough.

Anyhow...

Our check-in was drama-free, and our flight to Sydney via Manila was uneventful, although the international airport at Manila International is like travelling back in time to the 70s. The 1870s.

If I was being kind I'd describe it as "basic". If being honest, "rundown". The staff were pleasant enough, and I caught a couple of them singing. It seems most Filipinos sing, which I find annoying. Not because they sing, but because they're all so much better than I am.

The transfer lounge was like a holding cell in a Turkish prison, but not as well appointed. But it had free Wi-Fi, which actually puts it ahead of Australian airports. I can live with the tradeoff.

The final leg was an all-nighter arriving in Sydney around 7.30am, and we all know how much fun they are. Emma managed about three hours sleep, I  may have done two. On the positive side the food was exceptional, which I don't expect from an airline, and we watched Madagascar 3, which is hysterically funny.

And that was pretty much it. No missing luggage, no cavity searches in customs, no smouldering hole in the ground where our house used to be.

It's now 9pm, and we're going to bed before the sleep-deprivation driven hallucinations become too intense. Tomorrow I'm back to work, hoping my body copes with the three-hour timezone change.

So before we suffer total neurological collapse: the trip was phenomenal, and while we could easily have stayed on holiday for another two or three - years - it's also good to be home. With our own mattress and pillows. 

In a few days I'll start adding pictures to the posts, fixing typos, and write up a summary. Right now it's time to sleep. 

Day 31: Handbags of Fury (Hong Kong)

Kowloon. Home of Bruce Lee and bargains.

The penultimate day of our holiday (sob), we fueled up with another breakfast in the Jia, with even dodgier milk in the coffee. Emma concluded she didn't need a coffee quite that badly. I persevered.

Our party of four (Emma, Leona, Keith and me) set off again to the other side of the harbour. Today we added to our transport experiences by including the MTR underground trains and the Hong Kong ferry. They have a brilliant ticketing system, the Octopus card, an electronic debit card travellers can simply pass over a reader at the turnstile. Elegantly simple and effective, and therefore unlikely to be adopted in Sydney anytime soon.

The train system was opened in the 1980s, and is very well maintained, looking as if it only opened within the last five years. The ferry looked ancient in comparison, which is most of its charm, of course.

On Hong Kong Island the new dominates the old. Once past the waterfront the opposite is true for Kowloon. Much of the oldness is a facade, in that the clothing, handbags, electronics and the rest in the shops is world-class, although the food is still largely traditional, and there are nooks and crannies that could be right out of the 1960s, and still plenty of street stalls catering to the locals.

We took the bus up Nathan Road past Boundary Road (as you might expect, the original boundary of Hong Kong: British Hong Kong this side, China the other), stopping in Sham Shui Po. Being China, step one was food, this time in a thoroughly unpretentious and non-English speaking Cantonese restaurant (although Emma and I might have managed to order with ample pointing, it was much easier and interesting with a native Cantonese speaker), with amazing prawn dumplings.

We wandered through a few street stalls, then split up, Emma and Leona looking for handbags, Keith and I checking out computers and cameras. The Golden Computer Centre was geek heaven on Earth, with two floors packed with all the techie-goodness a nerd could wish for: graphics cards, monitors, laser pointers, USB hubs, keyboards, alien implants -

Maybe not alien implants. Everything but, and at substantially cheaper prices than we get in Australia.

Emma and Leona have failed to find any clothes or handbags they liked, but had success finding egg custard tarts. Emma used this as an excuse to skip trying the snake soup. Where's her sense to Adventure! I ask? I was prepared to try it - 

Although I must confess I didn't argue the point.

Then to Mong Kok to buy a camera. Our six-year old Canon IXUS was playing up, apparently not helped by my dropping it on the balcony, and the entire trip we'd been planning on upgrading to an SLR, probably one of the Canon EOS series.

So I bought a Fujifilm EXR compact instead.

In the end we went for convenience over quality, and the step up from our current camera is phenomenal. For example the IXUS only had a 3x optical zoom, the EXR had a 20x optical zoom. Plus it's the latest and greatest just-released most amazing state-of-the-art compact -  and superseded within five minutes of leaving the shop. 

Late afternoon we had high tea on Victoria Harbour at the Intercontinental (you'd never guess this was once a British colony) with me snapping away like crazy with my new toy while stuffing my face with pastries and blackberry-flavoured iced tea.  Afterwards we walked along the Avenue of Stars on the foreshore.

The Avenue of Stars is essentially Hong Kong's equivalent to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Famous actors, producers and directors of Hong Kong cinema, many well-known to Westerners: Bruce Lee, Sir Run Run Shaw, Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li, Sammo Hung Kam Po, John Woo, Jackie Chan. The stars with their names set in the pavement, while the ones who were courteous enough not to have died before it was built have handprints set in concrete. On this measure Jackie Chan is the most popular star;  his handprints have been virtually obliterated by tourists over the years. 

A bit more shoe and handbag shopping, the most fascinating shop being a second-hand handbag shop for top end handbags, such as Prada and Chanel. The handbags are not only essentially as-new, many literally  are new, complete with original tags and wrapping.

Leona explained the women tended to fall into two groups. The ones on moderate incomes who saved up for an expensive handbag, used it for a short time, then sold it and moved on to the next. Kind of like a lease.

The second group were the ones who had their boyfriends buy them a new bag, only to sell it and pocket the money. This struck Emma and I as - odd. Instead of buying a new US$10-15,000 handbag and selling it for half price, wouldn't it be easier, not to mention more financially sensible, for him to just give her the money?

As I understand it the reasoning for a Hong Kong girl is something like this: Being given a handbag is all about love, which is good. Being given money would be about money, which is bad. And selling a handbag is fine, because after all now it's her handbag.

I'm not even going to pretend I really understand the reasoning. But I do find it fascinating.

Not having eaten for at least an hour it was time for dinner, this time at Nanhai No. 1, a restaurant on the 30th floor of the iSquare in Tsim Sha Tsui overlooking the harbour. The "overlooking the harbour" aspect was a bit of a sore point - Leona had tried to arrange a table near the window, the reservations staff bungled the booking, and then they tried to cover by lying about it. Not quite the service expected of a restaurant with a Michellin star.

Seating-hiccups aside, the menu was excellent: Peking Duck, spiced turbot, and amazing sesame seed balls the size of small balloons that had to be cut open with cooking scissors. A bottle of prosecco and bottle of pinot grigio didn't go astray either.

Our return on the ferry gave us a brilliant view of Hong Kong by night. Gorgeous, and a fitting way to finish the final night of our holiday.

Day 30: Lost in Honkers (Hong Kong)

Although I quite like our room, I'm not a huge fan of the shower. The shower head is great, but it goes downhill from there: the water temperature is very touchy, with a teeny-tiny difference between "skin-melting hot" and "polar bear cold". It also drains slowly, so we were ankle-deep in water within the first 30 seconds, and it leaks, requiring five minutes of mopping-up after each shower.

The Jia puts on a small buffet in the lobby, with cereals, fresh fruit, pastries, Chinese style buns, juice and coffee. The coffee is fine, but the milk tasted slightly off. Oddly enough the milk we'd bought and kept in our room overnight was also off. I think Hong Kong cows must have sour personalities.

Keith and Leona stopped by around 11am, and we took a taxi the long (scenic) way around the island to Stanley. There is still a great deal of untouched land in Hong Kong, which makes sense when you understand most of the island is made up of volcanic and granite rocks, and it seems most of slopes are around 45 degrees. Or steeper.

We wound our way over the hills into Stanley, an expat-heavy enclave on the south side of the island. It's basically one road in, one road out, so there aren't a large number of options for people in Stanley who wish to commute to Hong Kong.  It's not a drive I'd like to make each day - although, as was pointed out to me, the people who live in Stanley don't have to make the drive each day. Their drivers do.

After a stroll through the Stanley markets, and a quick look in a taoist temple, we had lunch at the Boathouse, drawn by the promise of frozen mango margaritas. These were followed by a not-very-Cantonese meal of Mexican quesadillas, Greek salad and New York style cheesecake. It was sorta kinda authentic Hong Kong food, if you consider expats an authentic part of the Hong Kong experience.

This is when the Adventure! and Danger! began.

We caught a taxi from Stanley to The Peak. It's fair to say that Hong Kong taxi drivers don't believe in driving slowly, and not prone to letting little things like sharp curves with 300 foot drops cause them to drive any less enthusiastically. 

Making things worse the ride to The Peak had more twists and turns than the one into Stanley, and our new driver probably would have considered our earlier driver a wimp.

Finally factor in that Emma doesn't like winding roads, especially in the back of a car, and even less after lunch and a few drinks...

Personally I'm not sure telling a taxi driver that he's a maniac is the best way to encourage him to ease up. It certainly didn't seem to help.

We made it, intact and vomit-free (although I was glad Keith had been sitting between Emma and me, just in case), and did the appropriate tourist "oohing" and "ahhiing" from The Peak - so named, as you'd expect, because it's the peak of the mountain. The name is uninspired, but fitting, so I suspect it may have been named by an Alaskan.

The tram down the mountain doesn't try to hide the steepness. There's a reason the seats require passengers to sit backs to the ground, namely to keep them from taking the ride nose to the floor. Great fun.

Back in Hong Kong proper we walked through Hong Kong park, our favourite feature being a spectacular aviary. It's a single massive structure, filled with birds (oddly enough), and with a treetop walkway to allow visitors a birds-eye view (pun intended). 

By now it was late afternoon, so we took one of the rail trams to the west end  of town. Hong Kong trams are cool: they're double decker electric trams, and they're dirt cheap ($HK2.30, or about 70 cents Aussie/US).

We had beers and wines in a bar on the water in Kennedy Town, managed by an Englishmen who'd been in Hong Kong for 20 years. Keith was delighted to discover two Germans sitting next to us were rail engineers, which was incredibly lucky as he'd just been talking about a new high-speed railway in China that had to cope with temperatures ranging from -40 t0 40 degrees C, and now had someone who could explain how.

Then dinner at a famous and totally unpretentious Chiu Chow style restaurant, featuring goose, beef, and seven stomach/twelve lung/ten-thousand brain (something like that) fish. Interestingly the restaurant was one of three side by side, all owned by the same family. If one is full the staff just shunt you to another one, and waiters have been known to bring dishes from one restaurant to another.

This was a great time to collapse, so after a HK$50 taxi ride - I mean AU$7 taxi ride - we returned to the Jia, getting ready for the next day of grinding torture in the shopping hell-hole of - Kowloon.

Day 29: Hong if you love me (Hong Kong)

Let's be clear: I'm not a morning person.

Because we had to get up at 3.15am I dreamt about oversleeping and missing our flight. After the 17th of these dreams I woke up, checked the time in a panic, and discovered it was only 2.30am.

Thus ended the sleeping. At least we'd had the good sense to crash out early. Some people on the bus had stayed up until after 11pm. 

The buses to the airport were organised by Princess as part of the Great Wall tour, and even included breakfast of a muffin, apple, nashi pear, a  carton of milk, half a ham and cheese sandwich and a yoghurt without a spoon. The fruit and muffin did not survive the trip to the airport.

Traffic at 4am was mercifully light, and we made it in about half an hour. Our guide told us stories about the new zero-alcohol laws for drivers. It seems when the cops set up the booze testing the locals come out with stools and snacks for a few hours of free entertainment such as watching drivers doing manic switches with their passengers, or locking their cars and running away (locked car = traffic fine, drunk driving = prison).

The local TV stations interview arrestees sometimes, and ask them why they drove while under the influence. One driver's answer was "I'm a scientist, and I wanted to see if driving drunk was dangerous. I proved it's very, very dangerous."

We were leaving via Terminal 2, but Princess had arranged for all the passengers' luggage to be placed at Terminal 3. We bailed to find our luggage, and found two out of three.

Uh-oh.

After 10 to 15 minutes of increasingly frantic searching Emma found our last bag tucked behind a few pieces of taller luggage. Relief.

Back on the bus to Terminal 2, wondering how we'd occupy the next three hours. Turns out there was plenty to do.

Booking in was easy enough, getting our cabin luggage wasn't. We'd forgotten to repack Emma's cosmetics into our main bags, and security told us we couldn't take them onboard.

So I had to take the offending bag back to Counter E at the other end of the terminal to check it in.  Apparently we'd exceeded our limit, so I'd have  to pay to check in an extra bag. Only I'd left my wallet with Emma.

Back across the airport, through passport control, then security, pick up my wallet, and return to Counter E. Yes, they take Visa, but I need to pay for it at Counter A. Next to security.

Once more I trudge across the airport, make the payment, and take the  receipt back to Counter E, through passport control, then security (the guy stamping my ticket for the third time looking at me like I'm an idiot), and finally rejoining Emma. 

Between the cold-weather jacket I wore into the airport, the rushing, the stress,  and an aircon system set to "melt" my shirt is fairly well drenched with sweat by the time I set off the metal detector. I have a great deal of sympathy for the guard who had to run the hand scanner over me. My Adventure! had turned into Danger! for her.

That was our last drama, fortunately. Hong Kong Express is an excellent airline. It's clean, everything works (we had an unfortunate and very long flight to Canada several years ago where the entertainment system packed up. Very, very long.), and most incredible of all, had flight attendents who came promptly and even treated us like paying customers, not annoying pests who were rude enough to interrupt their flight by asking for a glass of water.

Emma managed to sleep about half the flight, while I watched "Hai Mian Bao Bao"* on the Chinese kid's channel. 

Although Hong Kong is part of China, due to China's "One Nation Two Systems" policy it's still treated like a separate country. This meant that even though we were still in China we had to go through immigration and customs again. The line was terrifyingly long, but the process seemed to consist of a quick glance at visitors' passports, visitor cards, followed by a stamp in the passports, so we churned through the line in no more than 10-15 minutes.

We caught a taxi to our hotel, which was around $350. No need to panic on our behalf; I'm happy to say that's $350 Hong Kong dollars, which is around $50 US. Pretty much every time we'd see a bill we'd choke, then remember to do the mental math. Still catches us out.

The Jia Hotel is delightful boutique hotel on the east side of Hong Kong Island, a short walk from Victoria Park. Although it's only a street away from the glossy shopping centres it still has enough of the older shops and apartments to capture some of the flavour of old Hong Kong. Not "old, old" - most of the pre 19th century buildings are long gone - but old enough to have that pre-modern feel.

Around 2pm we crashed, hard. Two hours later we woke up, I turned to Emma, and asked "what country are we in?"

I was thinking Japan. Seriously. I had even less of an idea what time or day it was. It's been a long time since I was that disoriented.

Our friends Keith and Leona came to meet us that evening - he's originally from England, she's from Hong Kong, and they moved here from Sydney two years ago - and took us to dinner at Dragon King, a famous Cantonese-fusion restaurant with great views across the harbour towards Kowloon.

The meal was superb, a problem to be encountered again and again over the following days. Too much good food, nowhere near enough self-control. My belt is notched to the "contain explosion" setting.

It was tremendous catching up with them again, and we exchanged animated and alcoholically enhanced stories about what we've all been up to over the last couple of years.

They've been able to juggle work commitments for the next few days, and have offered to show us some of their favourite parts of Hong Kong. I hoped we might be able to spend a bit of time with them, but two full days was more than I could reasonably expect, and we were very appreciative.

On the way up to the restaurant we'd seen this brilliantly garish Japanese-style entertainment parlour for young people. On the way down we had to stop in.

I loved it. It was full of insanely coloured overbright machines crammed with stuffed toys and costume bling that the kids can win *if they just have one more try getting that stupid claw to fall in the right place*, high-speed basketball shooting machines, cheesy photograph booths...

Hilarious.

Then we had a walk to help dinner settle (it didn't work), wandering through Victoria Park, dodged a few joggers, and came back to our room.

Plans for the next day were to see more of Hong Kong Island: Stanley, The Peak, Shueng Wan and Kennedy Town at the other end of the island.

Little did we know that the next day would be more Adventure! and Danger! than we ever dreamed possible.

* "Spongebob Squarepants" in Mandarin. An experience every native English speaker should have at least once in their lives.

Day 28: Great. (Beijing, China)

Today's one of our big event days: the Great Wall of China.

Pretty exciting, unlike the air in the port of Tianjin, which was grey, overcast and so thick with gunk you could punch it. 

Great.

Our luggage had been collected the night before, so we had our final breakfast on ship and joined the Great Wall tour group in the Princess Theatre. Once again I was pleased to see how much more orderly the tour process was compared to our first cruise with Princess.

The disembarkation went smoothly, with the customs officials barely glancing at our paperwork, and were escorted to our buses by smiling tour guides just as it started to drizzle.

The weather may have been foul, but at least the people weren't.

Our guide, a young Beijing man named Kevin, kept us entertained and informed during the three hour drive to the Great Wall, with snippets from Chinese history, Chinese weddings (including his own wedding last year), information about Beijing, property prices, tales from his own travels overseas to Germany and Canada, and the joys of Asian squat toilets.

The latter is an ever-popular topic with travellers. We stopped for a "bathroom break" half way to the Wall, and there was a highly engaged discussion amongst the women on tactics for coping with Chinese toilets. Way too much information for the men, and I'm not going to recount the details. I and most of the males went back on the bus and left them to it.

As we skirted Beijing Kevin explained that the planners had built a ring road around the original centre of Beijing. As the city grew they added another ring. Then they added a third. Then a fourth...

They're now up to ten. Yowza. Big city.

I've heard population estimates ranging from 20 million to 60 million people, with official figures closer to the former. Instead of using suburbs to describe where they live the locals say "I live near Ring Road 4, north".  

While bypassing Beijing via Ring Road 6 then weather began to clear. We'd heard horror stories about Beijing air pollution, but there was very little haze. I suspect Beijing may have had a bit of rain to clear the air. Whatever the reason, we were grateful, and hoped it would still be clear on the Wall.

It was. Great.

Visibility was better than I could have reasonably expected. We caught glimpses of the Wall as we drove up, and the excitement began to build.

The next question was what the crowds would be like. I'd met a passenger who said on his first visit the buses were backed up several kilometers from the car park, and tourists gave up riding and walked the rest of the way, only to jostle their way through the crowds.

Being a weekday after a week-long holiday the heavy tourist period was behind us, the carparks virtually empty.

Ideal weather, no real crowds, and we were at THE GREAT WALL OF FREAKIN' CHINA!!!

We climbed up very, very step steps to the second level of the towers. Emma's knees were protesting, but there was no way she was going to miss out on this. When she was six years old China was still largely closed to Westerners, but she decided she wasn't going to let something  like that stop her from visiting the Great Wall. Another childhood dream achieved.

Being knee-problem free I was charging up the steps like a deranged mountain goat, feeling pretty exhilarated myself.

All pretty awesome.

Sadly we had to go - given more time we would have walked more, although considering at its peak the Great Wall was 6,000 km long we might be challenged to do it all in a day - and had lunch at a Jade Factory. Most of the food was authentic(-ish), and quite good (I was chuffed that Emma and I were thee only ones able to use chopsticks. We're so worldly.)

We watched them cutting the jade, a fascinating process which requires a higher degree of skill than I will ever have, and Emma bought a lovely jade pendant (it would have been rude not to, right?), then back on the bus for the final ride to our hotel near Ring Road 2.

Beijing was cleaner and greener than I expected, with lots of leafy boulevards, and green belts. It reminded us a bit of St Kilda Road in Melbourne. A St Kilda Road with quite a few seriously massive buildings, very modern, and about four times as wide as I'm used to. There's still a bit of old Beijing around the place, but it appears to be in the process of being squeezed out.

The Doubletree Hilton was also very modern, with huge rooms by typical Asian standards. Our only disappointment was that we wouldn't be able to truly appreciate it as we had a 7.40am flight to Hong Kong the next morning, and our bus to the airport was scheduled to leave at 3.50am. 

Great.

We'd love to have more time in Beijing, but not this trip. Given the fabulous day we'd had we weren't complaining. So lights out and asleep just after 8pm, then off on the final leg of our adventure. HONG KONG.

Day 27: Dilly Dalian (Dalian, China)

The port at Dalian looks grey, bland and rundown. Not the most appealing setting, but there's a shuttle into town, so we may as well check it out.

Once out of the immediate port area the cityscape changed. It was much newer and brighter than expected from the tourism images. Lots and lots of new, shiny buildings, with insane numbers of banks: Bank of China, Shenzen Development Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Minsheng Bank, Pudong Development Bank, Citic Bank, Yet Another Bank...

Clearly  there is quite a bit of money in China, most of it investment-oritented. That still leaves quite a bit for consumer spending, as we found out when the shuttle dropped us off at the Friendship Square shopping centre. The same high-end brands we'd see in Sydney, with the same high-end prices.

Now having said that there is some serious money in China, the average annual income is something like US$7,000, so obviously the average Chinese worker isn't lining  up to buy a US$5,000 watch from the BMW shop.

We had a better sense of how the typical Dalianese live as we walked back to the ship, taking some of the smaller roads. Main road: shiny. One block back: not so shiny.

Once off the main thoroughfares the quality of the buildings ranged from the older but serviceable to the seriously decrepit.

We stumbled along through a narrow alleyway markets. It was crowded and chaotic compared to what we're used to, but the we were impressed by the quality of the produce. You know the food is fresh when it's still moving - at least when it's a crate of crabs. Not such a good sign if the moving food is fruit and vegetables.

Road crossings in Dalian are as perilous as everywhere else in China. At one stage we had to cross six lanes of traffic just off a roundabout, withour even the illusory safety of a pedestrian crossing. It took us about five minutes and a couple of false starts before we managed that one.

Overall Dalian seemed like a serviceable and pleasant city, if perhaps a bit soulless. It was more interesting to visit that we expected, and I suspect it might be one of those cities that's better to live in than to visit - assuming you're above the average income line.

Back on the ship we had one final indulgence at the spa, which we picked up for about half-price in a "going out of businese end of tour"silent auction. Emma went for a pedicure and manicure, while I went for another massage.

Then I cashed in my poker winnings, picked up a set of DVDs the Princess videographers filmed on this trip - so we'll be able to bore our friends with hours of video as well as 2,000+ photos. 

By the time we sailed out the weather had lifted, and we could had decent views of the area around Dalian. Like most Chinese cities it sprawls in every possible direction, including into the ocean, due the magic of land reclamation.

We also spotted some animals swimming in the harbour. We couldn't work out what they were. Dolphins? Some sort of otter?

I fetched our binoculars, and Emma worked it out: people. There were three people swimming in the harbour. While the water in Dalian didn't appear as heavily polluted as Shanghai, I still expect their future children to be seriously at risk of being two-headed freaks.

One last dinner at the Santa Fe restaurant (love the fajitas, Emma loved the "highly nourishing" steak), where we chatted with two Canadian women we met early in the cruise and hadn't spoken with since, and then another early night, in preparation for disembarkation (sob) the next morning, and our trip to...

The Great Wall of China!

Day 26: Third time lucky? (Yellow Sea)

Emma put her neck out, which kept her on the inactive list for most of today. I fetched her a latte (she needed the coffee, I needed the exercise), and I left her in the stateroom while I went off to play poker

Yeah, this is another poker post. Because poker is Adventure! in its purest form.

Now having gone broke in two $60 poker tournaments twice before this cruise you'd think I'd know better. But I was determined to give it one last shot.

The usual culprits were there, so I was expecting the a string of dodgy calls that end up overturning the laws of probability. But at least Carmen, the strongest player at the table, wasn't on my right today.

Atypically I was dealt decent cards. I'd bet, some nong with a pair of deuces would call, I'd raise again, they'd call, and I'd win the showdown. 

After this happened three or four times I had a strong chip lead, and they began to believe my bets meant I had a hand, and started folding. 

Which is when I started stealing pots with nothing. Heheheheheh.

Eventually it was down to two of us. I figured I'd tapped my luck enough, so I agreed to chop, and we split the payout for $225 each.

I floated back to the cabin, did a little happy dance, and figured since I had money to play with I'd head back down and join a $1/$2 cash game until lunch. After an hour and a half I ended up in a big pot with a guy betting into me who thought his pair of 9s were good. My trip aces were better, So I won another $80.

$305 - $180 (3x$60 buy-ins) = $125 profit. If I keep that ROI up I'll be able to finance a lifetime of cruising with poker.

Yeah. Dream on.

We had lunch at the cafe, and my plans to go to gym slowly evaporated. Emma managed to finish the third of the "girl with the dragon tattoo" books, while I managed a spa. Later we dodged another formal night by having dinner with Carol and Wayne in the buffet.

I paid for the wine, of course.

Dalian tomorrow. It's the third largest port in China, but doesn't look like much of a tour destination based 0n the photos. But a port's a port, so we'll take the shuttle in and see what happens.