Cathi’s last updated ended with our trip to Kalimantan on the island of Borneo where we spent 3 days in the jungle seeing Orangutans in the wild. It was better than the pictures . From there we flew to Singapore for 3 days, then on to Kuala Lumpur. We spent 2 nites in the middle of China town in a little recently refurbished hotel. Our room was small, but the hotel had a patio deck that overlooked all the action. We ate street food that was amazing, and had cocktails on the deck -watching and listening to the action below. It was quite a scene. We relocated to a spacious Ramada Hotel, and continued our touring of the city. The highlight was our visit to The Petronas Towers. From there we flew to Phuket, Thailand for 5 days of R&R. Our hotel was across the street from the beach that was hit by the terrible tsunami  in 2004. Other than taking a day trip to some islands off the coast, we just lounged around the pool.

On May 21 we flew to Chiang Mai, Thailand where Cathi’s good friend, Kitti Bush’s daughter has lived for the last 2 years, teaching English to elementary school students.  Lexxi, and her boyfriend, Stephen, were great hosts, setting us up in a wonderful hotel and taking us to local street restaurants and giving us tips on sites to see. The highlight of Chiang Mai was our trip to the elephant farm where Cathi and I spent about 3 hours feeding, riding, and bathing elephants. It was quite the experience.(see pictures by clicking here)

May 27we arrived in Hong Kong about mid day, got situated in our Airb&b apartment, and waited for Zach to arrive that evening. The next day, thanks to tips from our friends Belinda and Henry Ong (Henry lived in HK the last 4 years) we set out to see the sites. Also thanks to Zach’s travel experience and subway expertise we spent the next 5 days DOING HONG KONG. It was great having Zach lead us around the city and all the sites. On the last day we took a day trip to Macau where we did a little gambling and visited the ruins of St Paul.

June 1 we all flew to mainland China, to the capital Beijing. That evening we went out for drinks with one of  Zach’s friends, Nik, who also just graduated from the Wisconsin Real Estate MBA program. Well it so happens Nik was visiting a friend of his from high school who is a rising star in China. Mike Sui is hilarious. He does imitations and has made a number of video’s. His stardom showed as numerous young Chinese stopped by our table and asked if they could have their picture taken with him. The next day Nik joined us as we toured the Forbidden City,Tiananmen Square and Beihai Park. That nite we all went out with Michael’s father,3 of his friends, and a few other people for Sushi and LOTS of Sake. We had the time of our lives. ( and a hang over the next morning)  Today June 4th, we went to the Great Wall. It is everything you would expect and more. To think that parts of it were built over 2000 years ago, it is truly an engineering fete. To reach the wall we had to hike to a gondola then hike some more to get to the Wall. It was more awe inspiring in person then any photograph or film we have seen. Tomorrow we head to Xi’an home to the terrocotta warriors.

By the way, Face Book and Gmail are blocked here so our communication is limited.

ZWT
Bobby, Cathi (and Zach!)