Day 122 - Monday 2 September - HK to Yendon

Monday 2 September

So we came to Tulla, and by the time we gave (only) 3 nativities to the quarantine people, we had missed the bus.  So we changed money (some more interesting currency they wouldn't take), had coffee, and got the next bus.

Morning mist in the valleys

I waited at the station while David walked to Tim's and came back with his car.

The house was so cold that we had to light the fire straight away, then start unpacking and sorting.  It will take a while.

It was a great trip.  We saw and learned so much, and I don't think were run off our feet.  And we are still friends.

Day 121 - Sunday 1 September - Fukuoka to HK

Sunday 1 September


 Because it is now September, we could celebrate Tomoki's birthday, which is right at the end of the month.

Baachan and Jiichan came for lunch, and to go to see Tomoki's sumo competition.  We received updates as we travelled.

Then Taiki came with us to the airport, and we were off on our final flights.

We had been advised that there was a delay of about 30minutes with our first flight to Hong Kong.  This was a bit of a worry, because we only had  70mins until our connecting flight.  But when we boarded the plane, we found that we had been upgraded to business class - rather posh.  There was so much leg-room, but the armrests were permanent, so I don't know how it would be trying to sleep.

 

The new bridge from HK to Macau, is 55km long, and has 3 bridges, 1 tunnel and 4 artificial islands.  It is not open for private use, but you can go by bus.

We were ready to scamper off to try to find our gate, but at the end of our air-bridge were a number of staff ready to collect people with short turn-arounds.  We were stickered, then played follow-the-leader through the chaos, and safely made it to our gate.  However, there we found again that there was a delay.  There have been major political protests in HK recently, and many have targetted the approaches to the airport.  They told us once we were aboard that staff were having trouble getting through the crowds, and so we were flying one person short. 

Day 120 - Saturday 31 August - shops and gardening

Saturday 31 August

It was a sunny morning.  We went to Book-Off-Kids, then Nafco, then Daiso, our 3 favourite places.  Steve and Kaori went out for lunch, but all was well because it wasn't bedtime.
 

 After lunch, I worked with Steve in the garden, re-planting the pot garden, then tackling the fishbone fern that was overpowering the gardenia.

 We started packing up.

Day 119 - Friday 30 August - Yufuin train

Kaori popped her head around the door at 7:00 to say that she had been able to book train tickets for today, and we would need to leave in 1hr.  Trust the boys to sleep in today.

We walked to the subway, then got a bus from Yakuin to Hakata.  We were in plenty of time for the 9:30 train to Yufuin.  Tour groups are haunting us, and today was no exception.  A bunch of Chinese filled the carriage, spending the whole 2hrs in and out of the buffet car.  We were lucky to get a spare double seat opposite the 4 adult tickets Kaori had bought, so there was space for everyone to have a seat.
 

 All the rivers were very full and running fast

 We passed a train museum

 

Yufuin is obviously a tourist town at the end of this special, high-windowed train trip, though the line goes on to Oita.  We had ramen noodle soup for lunch,

 then walked up the main street, looking in the shops, and stopping for a while at a playground.
 

Our next stop was a small animal park, where there were goats, red squirrels, ducks and a few other species.  Further along the road we saw fish in the river, and then we came to the lake, where we had afternoon tea.  

We retraced our steps, stopping at the playground again, and eating icecreams, and Kaori was able to get us places on the earlier bus back to Fukuoka, and we had a bit of finger food dinner on the way.  

Still it was 19:00 before we got to Tenjin, and was quite dark as we hiked back up the hill.

Day 118 - Thursday 29 August - Fukuoka home

Thursday 29 August

We did very little today.  For some reason, Steve stayed in bed all day.  I realised that the reason my laptop hadn’t been working yesterday was that its power cord had become detatched, so it was just out of battery.  So I sat at the table all day, and colour-coded my finances spreadsheet, and other people did their own things.