First outing in Hong Kong was to the LDS Temple…but the taxi driver said this was “not a temple, only Chinese have temple, this is a church”

Chi Lin Nunnery in Hong Kong was very peaceful, although we never saw any nuns while there

Did some souvenir shopping at the “Ladies Market”

The people in Hong Kong hang dry their clothes right outside their apartment window

My roommate and I at the 12 story church building where our conference was held

Streets of Hong Kong are busy

Cool Asian boat at the Hong Kong harbor

Old fashion double decker tram only costs about $0.30 to ride, but it doesn’t go very fast and makes many stops along the way and is crowded on a Saturday afternoon

Hong Kong Park is right in the middle of the city, but you wouldn’t be able to tell once you were surrounded by the fountains and trees

Unique teapots on display at the Teapot Museum located at the Hong Kong Park

Aviary at the Hong Kong Park

My friend who was in our ward in Texas, flew the 10 hours or so from Saudi Arabia to attend conference

My 2 friends who I got to join me from the Philippines

Kalani is a very compassionate, easy going, funny and lovable

She loves to sing and had a singing teacher for a couple of months and now is in an International Girls choir

She loves attending the International School and has had some wonderful and fun experiences at the school

She loves to play with her friends and brother…and make silly faces while taking photos

She is growing up too fast

She still misses the United States and the family that we have there. And getting stung by a box jellyfish wasn’t great either

But she also loves the perks of living in the Philippines

Happy Birthday to our wonderful girl

Tiananmen Square; we didn’t cross the street, so this was what we saw of it in front of the Forbidden City

Part of the Forbidden City. This view reminds me of the Disney movie Mulan

Behind the Forbidden City is Jingshan Park. It offers a fabulous view of how huge the Forbidden City is…9,999 rooms total before a fire destroyed some of them

A pedestrian walking street full of stores. Many familiar store were seen

Down a side alley of the pedestrian street is the “Food Market” where people can eat scorpions, starfish, seahorse and other items…yes, Matt ate some scorpions after they were deep fried

Around the corner from the scorpion area is this souvenir alley full of people and trinkets

We had time to do a little bit of shopping at this 4 story “gray market” where you bargain down and should only give the vendors 30-50% of their asking price. Matt got a couple of clothing pieces, Kalani got a pair of gloves and I got $20 knockoff Ugg boots that Kalani wears

We ended our first day watching a 45 minute acrobat show. It was the most amazing show that we had ever seen with a variety of talent and tricks

First stop of the day was the Great Wall of China and we had perfect visibility

We took these “ski lifts” up to the wall

We wished Kalani a Happy 10th Birthday on the Great Wall of China

To get down from the wall we rode this “Luge”.

We got to go see the 2008 Olympic park

Our last stop for the day was to the Summer Palace which has a ton of artwork since everywhere you looked there was some kind of painting, carving, mural, etc

This massive stone marble boat has held many functions and is just beautiful

The water around the summer palace still had some ice at certain areas

We started off the day by going to the “Dirty Market” to look for a painting and other souvenirs, and we weren’t the only people there

We visited the aquarium where we saw Beluga whales and heard the loud noises that they make

The sea lion, dolphin, whale show was also pretty cool

Of course we had to visit the zoo to see giant pandas in their home country

And we ended the day by visiting a silk factory where we learned about the silk process

We got to ride a Rickshaw through an old neighborhood and tour a traditional “Hutong” courtyard home

We stayed at the Shangri-La China World Hotel and had this view

Motorcyclist have warm gloves and blankets attached to their motorcycles to keep warm while driving

The BEST Chinese food we have ever had was in Beijing and didn’t cost very much. The servers take down orders on these devices that look like a walkie-talkie or cell phone (this is our tour guide Iris)

I don’t know if they block the doorways year round, but while we visited all of doorways had some kind of “blanket” to keep the cold air out

Last photo with our tour guide Iris, who we highly recommend

We left at 4am and slept for a while in the car. But, when we were awake there was some beautiful scenery as we headed toward Donsol.

After 12 hours in the car the kids just wanted to hang out by the beach and especially on these hammocks. And luckily there were other kids from Kalani’s school at the same resort (Elysia Beach Resort) so they all had someone to play with.

We got down to the pier by 7:30am to try our luck at spotting a whale shark. Peak season is from March to May, so we were a week or so early. The weather was bad and we didn’t have any luck.

We then headed to Legazpi to try our luck on that side of the region, but because of the weather, we weren’t allowed in the water. So we drove an hour to our second resort “Misibis Bay“.

We spent some time swimming, playing table tennis and then everyone had a chance to play a video game.

Since we already paid to have a whale shark excursion at a location, we woke up early to try our luck again. And we had a beautiful view all the way to the pier of the Mayon Volcano.

Matt and I got in the water twice to swim with a 12 foot whale shark. It may have been the same whale shark, but we were the only ones lucky enough to swim with it in the 2 hours we were on the water.

And while we were supposed to be looking for whale sharks, we couldn’t help but enjoy the view of the volcano.

After our whale shark experience we wanted to spend some more time in Legazpi, so we rented ATVs and headed to the lava wall of Mayon Volcano.

We took a small hike up to the 2006 lava wall of Mayon Volcano…then Matt took the zip-line down, but the kids didn’t want to try that so I walked down with them.

Apparently our day wasn’t exciting enough since Kalani got stung by a box jellyfish in shallow water. The resort had vinegar on hand (and I also had my own bottle that was used), the doctor was on sight and stayed with her for a couple of hours.

She got stung on her leg and feet, but her arm was the worst with a tentacle wrapped all the way around her arm when she came out of the water. So one hand is scared and swollen for the time being.

We left the Bicol region around 7am and again enjoyed the beautiful view of that area of the Philippines. 12 hours later we were at home nursing Kalani’s wound.

We arrived at Mulia Hotel around midnight. Only a 4 hour flight from Manila and the hotel was wonderful.

Our view of Jakarta from our hotel window

Happy Chinese New Year…year of the Horse. Our first stop of the day was to a Chinese Temple “Vihara Dharma Bhakti.” There were so many people there and the air was full of smoke from the incense

We spent time at Sunda Kelapa seeing huge wooden boats and then taking a 15 minute boat ride with this older gentleman

Next stop was to “Old Town Jakarta” where Matt was approached by a few teenagers asking him questions for a school project

In “Old Town Jakarta” there is a European feel since the Dutch where here. You can rent these bikes with matching hats for an hour and ride around the square

We bought this painting off the street from the artist (middle) on our way to another attraction

This Cathedral is built directly in front of the largest Mosque in Southeast Asia

Istiqlal Mosque is the National Mosque of Indonesia (3rd largest mosque in the world) and we were told President Barack Obama visited here in 2010

People still enjoying their time at the mosque after the Friday noon prayer

Istiqlal tower as seen from within the mosque grounds

Holding the National Monument…maybe she can get us some of the gold off the top

A late lunch at D’Marco where our tour guide is part owner. We enjoyed all of the food that she had prepared for us and these are the “dessert pizzas”

In the evening we went to Grand Indonesia Mall where there were “Chinese New Year shows”

Also at the Grand Indonesia they have this music/water show that lasts about 5-10 minutes and was pretty fun to watch; and it was right next to Baskin Robbins ice cream

We drove out of Jakarta for our next adventure. In some areas beggars are sitting between the lanes of cars

Taman Safari was our first stop of the day where we were able to feed animals from our car window…guess he didn’t want to feed the zebra though

There were lions, tigers, and bears (oh my)…plus many other animals we could see up close from the comfort of our car

We found a komodo dragon in it’s own country at Taman Safari

Predator vs. Prey. We were in the reptile exhibit during feeding time.

Driving to our lunch appointment we were able to see the traffic that everyone talks about in Indonesia. It was the worst traffic we had ever seen; people were sitting here for a couple of hours waiting.

We had lunch up in the mountains, but it was too cloudy to enjoy the view. After lunch we bought some souvenirs and the other vendors would not go away

Our last stop in Indonesia was to the Flower Garden

The kids could have spent another hour or two here enjoying the garden. They really liked doing this maze