Thursday was our last full day in Taiwan so we packed it all in…once again ha ha. We got up super early to head to the temple and do baptisms. The temple president had to round up random people to help out because they only do baptisms once a week on Saturdays. It was so sweet of them to all show up and give us the opportunity (one of the men helping out is from Gunnison, Utah). They were also really excited to have us there and they were bummed that they hadn’t known earlier. Otherwise they would have taken us out and showed us around.
After doing the baptisms, they had us go to their church office building for an interview. They decided to do a piece on us for the church news over here in Taiwan! Then they set up an appointment with the sister missionaries for them to give us a tour. It was so generous of them.
After the temple we went to the Taipei Zoo! It was a complete blast…they had lots of cool animals…waaay better than the Hogle Zoo. Davit was supposed to meet us there at the zoo, but we never found him. We were way sad. We stayed at the zoo for about three hours then headed out to Taipei 101. 101 is the second tallest building in the entire world (a building in Dubai is the tallest). It’s really cool because it’s the only tall building in all of Taipei so it really stands out. We were going to go up to the top but supposedly the view for the night was really bad d/t the weather and we didn’t want to spend the money on it if we couldn’t see anything.
Christina, Christina, Sophia, Hayley & I headed back to the area around our hostel to get some dinner. We ate at a Taiwanese restaurant and had some delicious food! I had some coconut curry and the other girls had this delicious curry casserole! (sounds weird but it was really good). After dinner we decided to stop back at our hostel to drop some stuff off. When we walked up Davit was sitting there on a scooter! We were SO happy to see him! We had been looking for him all day and we felt bad that he skipped class and drove 4 hours to come see us. I guess he showed up late to the zoo (at around 3) and sat and waited for us for two hours! He even paid to go inside and walked around trying to find us. He finally left when the zoo closed and missed us by like 10 minutes. Then he spent two hours trying to find our hostel and then waited at our hostel for 3 hours till we showed up! I couldn't believe it! We felt so so so bad. Most cultures would have given up and left after searching for an hour but Davit searched and waited for like 8 hours. I really love that guy. We all went out on the town shopping and playing around. Then we wanted to find some good dessert for our last night. Davit asked this random guy if he knew of anyone places so the guy escorted us to his friends place like four blocks away. It was amazing. Some of the best dessert I’ve ever had. The guy was kind of weird though. He was very touchy and kept hugging me and rubbing my head. Davit said he just kept saying beautiful American girls over and over again lol. At this same place this little high school girl just walked up to us and started talking in English (the Taiwanese love practicing their English). We met her and all of her friends. They were so cute.
After dessert Davit, Christina, Mike, and I watched a movie then we had to say goodbye to Davit for real. He was so sad to leave and left me the sweetest message this morning saying goodbye. I would love to go to Indonesia someday and visit him.
Today we got up early and packed up to head out. We all did some presentations for the trip (yes we actually have to do some work here) then our drivers picked us up. We had kind of a cool experience with this driver. At one point he slowed down and pulled off to the side of the road at one of the Beetlenut shops. Beetlenuts are from a tree here and they’re addictive, stain your teeth, and cause oral cancer. There are little shops throughout every city where girls dressed in scandalous clothing sell them. We immediately got kind of annoyed and upset that he would stop at one of these places on the job, especially with a bunch of girls……..but then he came out with a huge bag of water bottles, one for each of us. This is exactly what I love about Taiwan sooo much. I'm always constantly suprised by these people. Naturally being in a foreign country most of us are somewhat skeptical of the people and always assume the worst…..but every single time, the Taiwanese people prove us wrong by doing some act of kindness or generosity. Ugh I'm going to miss them.
We made is to the aiport safely and we’re currently waiting for our wonderful 14 hour flight. It’s really hard saying goodbye to Taiwan. I have fallen completely in love with this place, especially the people. In a sense it really has become home to me and will always be a special place to me. I will take the things that I have learned and the things that I have experienced on this trip with me for the rest of my life.
If going solely by time, I’ll be home in one hour ha ha. It’s 3pm here and we arrive in the states at 4pm (because of the crazy time difference). We leave and arrive at 4pm on Friday lol. See you soon!
We wanted to do baptisms but they only do them on Saturdays. They’re going to try and call the temple president to see if they can set up a special session for us tomorrow. While at the temple we met a member. She was absolutely adorable. She was at the temple praying for an opportunity to help someone. Then we showed up! It was really touching because she’s been a member for a while and for the past 9 years she’s been praying every day that her husband would get baptized. He just finally agreed! So they will be sealed in 2 months. 
After the temple the woman took us to get this famous Taiwanese dish. I can’t remember the name but it was spicy noodles with pig intestine and oysters…it sounds gross but it was soo good! Then she got us Taipei’s famous fry bread with bean milk from a 60 year old shop. The milk kind of tasted like crap…but the bread was good. 
We then went to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial. Chiang Kai-Shek was an important political and military leader here in Taiwan. People either hate him or love him. His memorial was beautiful and they have the “changing of the guard” like they do in Arlington in D.C. It was pretty much the same thing but the one in D.C. is way more uniform and professional. 
We then went home to take a nap (I only got like 3 hours of sleep last night) and when we got there Matt left a note saying that he had switched hostels (he wanted one that was closer downtown) but that he was going to meet up with us that night to hang out. It’s just funny that he’s a party guy from So Cal but he wants to hang out with a bunch of young mormon girls ha ha It’s really nice of him. Mike was home too (Harvard guy) so I hung out with him for a bit.
After dinner, Kris, Katelyn, Tara, & Rainy went home and the rest of us went out on the town. We just shopped around and explored to find stuff to do. We met lots of fun new random people…..and found fun shirts with funny translations. They crack me up!We met these two Australian exchange students that hate it here..lol so they hung out with us for while. 
We found this American restaurant and thought it was pretty funny. It's called "Cola Forest".
Now we’re in for the night waiting for Matt to show up. We’re going out to a bar with him and Mike! (supposedly there are non-alcoholic drinks there….)
I talked and hung out with him for a bit then everyone took naps and recuperated. I absolutely love hostels. The people here are so much fun. I went to put my stuff away in my locker and I met this kid name Matt. He was super friendly and COMPLETELY desperate for Americans ha ha He has been here in Taipei for about 4 days and has only met one person that speaks English. He said he literally ran a white man down today so he could figure things out…but the man was German.... kind of depressing. He was so relieved to find us there. He's been bored the pst 4 days and has nothing to do so I invited him to go out with us so we all went out to the Snake Night Market. 
Finally an old man came up to us and asked if he could escort us to the actual snake market. So he did! He walked us like three blocks down to get it. The Snake Market is a night market that features snakes. There are snakes all over in cages and they kill it right in front of you and cook it. We all ordered one BBQ snake and shared it. It was surprisingly really delicious! Tastes like chicken but has a rougher texture. Then we walked around some more and watched the snake charmers. 
My legs were wobbling the entire way back….i’m surprised I didn’t collapse ha. The hike was gorgeous. It was through tons of greenery, reservoirs, rivers, and beautiful lookouts. We even found lots of frogs, turtles, and fun insects! 
The whole thing took us about 3 hours and as soon as we got back we headed out to the famous Hong Kong City Hall for Dim Sum. Hong Kong is famous for its dim sum and the #1 place to get it is the City Hall. We heard so much about it and every list of top things to do in HK has it on it. And it was for good reason. It was so absolutely delicious. The best meal that I’ve had on this trip. Dim Sum is directly translated to “little hearts”. It is actually little snack foods like steamed dumplings, spring rolls, veggies dipped in sauce, etc that you eat until you get full. At the restaurant a person walks around with trays or carts of little dishes and you point at what you want as it goes by. 
It was Christina, Sophia, Kris, and I (because the other girls wanted McDonald’s…lame) with Yvonne and her Mom. The Lai’s go all of the time so they knew all of the best stuff and ordered their favorites for us! It was so yummy! I tried a lot of new stuff like lotus leaf rice, congee, char siu sou, mango pudding, sesame soup, almond soup, dou fu fa, some choy thing and lots of others!
This place is known throughout all of China. Everyone that I have met so far has told me to go here. I got this delicious mango drink that had rice balls on the bottom (different from tapioca pearls…and better!), with a slushy mango drink in the middle, topped with cream and chunks of mango!!! It was sooo good! Then after we went to a delicious crepe shop and shared one. 
After stuffing ourselves we headed out to Stanley Market. This is the most well known shopping street in Hk because it’s SUPER cheap and good quality (all of the knock off stuff). I bought lots of stuff. The picture below is of the building that they filmed a lot of "Dark Knight" on. 
Yvonne’s driver then picked us up and took us back home and we had a delicious dinner that her cook made for us. Authentic home cooked Chinese. I loved it. Then we headed out to Kowloon to watch the “Symphony of Lights”. The Symphony of lights is a synchronised building light and laser show , featuring 44 buildings on both sides of the Victoria Harbour of Hong Kong accompanied by music. It is currently the world’s largest light and sound show. We took a ferry to Kowloon (another island in HK) and watched the show from there. It was so cool! 
The sky lift ride was gorgeous. It takes you really high up over all of the mountains on the island so you can see all 200 islands of HK and the mainland. It was about 25 minutes long. There is also a hike that you can take. This is part of the trail. 
When you get off the lift you arrive at this little village full of shops and restaurants. It was so cute. We spent some time shopping around.
Then we began the ascent up to the Buddha. It was super cool because we were really high up on the mountain so there was fog all over. Even at the base of the stairs you could barely see the Buddha, just the silhouette. 
But as you got closer he slowly appeared! (you can barely see the silhouette in the picture at the top of the stairs) He was GIGANTIC lol and beautiful too. There were a bunch of statues surrounding him also (symbolizing offerings towards him). We toured around up top but then all of a sudden it started pouring like no other. We ran down all the steps to try to find cover..but it was pointless because we were dripping wet by the time we did.
Saturday afternoon the branch had a closing social at the Lai’s (the family that I’m staying with). About 150 people showed up to swim in their pool (which hangs over the ocean), kayak, eat, and play games. I had such a blast meeting tons of new people. The members here have the craziest lives and they are ridiculously wealthy lol. One man I met graduated from Harvard, has traveled the world, and now he’s a professor in the MBA program at the University of Science and Technology. The University of Science and Technology is basically the MIT of Asia and the MBA program is ranked #1 in Asia and #9 in the world! One man is the church lawyer for ALL of asia. Another man works for JP Morgan and he travels EVERYWHERE. A lot of them were wealthy political leaders and diplomats.
I felt so lame after meeting all of the younger people at the party. They’ve all grown up in several different countries and know a couple different languages. Their experiences growing up were so different from mine. But it’s cool because my life growing up in Annabella is just as foreign to them as their lives are to me. They were fascinated by how I grew up. I hung out with some of the young single adults all night and I got to know them pretty well. One girl just randomly moved to Hong Kong for hotel development as an adventure and she’s been here for 2 years. She travels all over including Thailand, Mongolia, Singapore, Vietnam, Korea, and India…and she’s only 25! Another guy just got here two days ago. He’s been living in NY for the past few years working for a huge company and was reassigned to Hong Kong for 10 months. Another kid grew up in HK for a while and he’s about to start in MBA at BYU this fall so he just randomly moved back to HK for a year. It’s so crazy. A couple of investigators came to the party too. One kid is from Nepal but he moved to HK because has been modeling for designer companies for the past 7 years….he’s ridiculously rich…it’s just so interesting how different each of their lives are. They each have a story about why they’re in HK and it fascinates me. 
I thought the conference was going to be some huge conference room with tons of people…but it was just a normal chapel with only one stake. So it was really cool to see Elder Oaks when there really weren’t that many people there. 
The flight to Hong Kong was only about an hour and fifteen minutes. As we took off we flew over a small group of whales! We could see their backs and fins and the water spouting….it was SUPER random but really cool! The flight was fun because we flew over TONS of beautiful islands. Landing was cool because the airport is on an island all by itself so it seems like you are going to land in the water! After landing we got on the MTR (Mass Transit Railway) to head to Hong Kong Island. 
Hong Kong is not what I expected AT ALL. I was expecting some huge, stinky, dirty, city that was very industrialized but it is the complete opposite. It is the most beautiful city that I have ever been in. New York is a complete shame compared to Hong Kong. A girl that I know put it perfectly by saying “Most cities are a city that overtakes an island…but Hong Kong is an island with a city spread throughout it”. It is a beautiful green island that has tons of small mountains with tropical trees and shrubbery covering them.
Then huge skyscrapers are set randomly around the island among the mountains. So the buildings are on all different levels on the island so there’s not a straight skyline. It juts up and down. Its soo cool!!! And its spotless. All of the streets (even the backstreets) are super clean and all of the buildings are newer and very well kept. Everything is very classy too. It’s an extremely wealthy city. 
When I first stepped out of the MTR, the first thing I noticed was how diverse this place is. It is definitely an international city. There are people from ALL OVER, tons of Indians, tons of Europeans, etc (surprisingly hardly any Americans). Every time I go anywhere I just sit and people watch because they’re so fascinating. The majority of the people here are very wealthy. Everyone dresses in designer and the entire city is kind of tailored to that way of life. Also, the Chinese people are COMPLETELY different from Taiwanese. In SO many aspects. The Chinese people are much more forward, pushy, and a lot less helpful lol. It’s not because they’re rude people. It’s just simply how they are. When we got off the plane we were shocked that no one was willing to help us and that people didn’t even look at us ha ha On the MTR I sat next to a man that just started talking to me…I was so surprised…until he told me that he was Taiwanese ha ha So it figures. Now every time I meet a super nice asian I automatically assume that they’re Taiwanese…and they always are. The guy I met was named Brian. He gave me TONS of advice for Hong Kong and Taipei even down to what restaurants I should try and what I should order from them. It was so nice of him. He even walked with us to our next station to help us out. 
The house is like NOTHING I’ve ever seen before (google map 20 Southbay Road in HK..and be amazed). It’s seriously equivalent to a celebrity home. We arrived at the house and there’s a HUGE gate on the outside. They have three 24 hour guards set around the house and a personal guard at the front gate. The guard let us in and we walked on in. This is the view from their garage and these are pics from inside. 
It’s a five story mansion set literally right on the beach. They even have their personal strip of beach with a guard dog on it. They have a personal cook, 2 housekeepers and a personal driver for each member of the family. Pool, Spa, Hot tub, elevator, gym, and movie theater. These people are ridiculously wealthy. They also have traveled everywhere in the world. There hasn’t been a single country that I have asked about that they haven’t been to. Apparently he works for some antivirus company….I haven’t met him yet because he’s currently in Jakarta. They have been living here in Hong Kong for 22 years. The wife is American (from Utah) but the husband is Chinese. None of their children live with them but Yvonne (their daughter) is visiting for a couple of weeks and she’s a year younger than me. This is the view from their living room. 
After we met everyone and got settled in we went out for our first authentic Chinese food experience. It was an adventure. We COMPLETELY got lost. We took the wrong train and got off at a random spot in the middle of downtown. We walked around searching for the restaurant we were meeting at for about an hour. We probably looked so pathetic aimlessly wandering and asking people if they knew where we were supposed to go. Finally we just hailed a taxi and gave him the address. He read the address wrong and took us to some random place…then he finally understood and took us to it. We were 2 hours late! Ha ha The girls were just finishing dinner so they all left and it was just us. The restaurant was called 3.6.9 Shanghai. It was absolutely delicious and completely packed. It’s one of the more famous places here. Right when we sat down they brought us tea and these hot rags to wipe our hands. We ordered then they brought us our food and some random extra dish. Being the naïve Americans (and being used to Taiwanese hospitality), we thought they brought it to us for free….but that definitely wasn’t the case. They charged us for the tea, rags, AND rice even though we didn’t order any of it! They just kept saying “English is bad”. Let’s just say it ended up being an expensive meal…but all part of the experience.
We got lost again trying to get back to our place. We walked around aimlessly for another hour trying to find it! Ha ha It was so ridiculous. We finally made it at like 12:30 am!
We got there earlier than the other girls and right as we were walking in a big group of older ladies walked out. We started talking for a bit then we said that we had heard that Elder Oaks was in town. A lady stepped forward and she was all “Actually….I’m his wife…and this is Sister Burton (Bishop Burton’s wife)”! ha ha So we got to meet both of them and chat for a bit. Baptisms were a lot of fun. Very similar to what I was used to…except we each got dunked like 20 times! We also got to see a family pick up a missionary to go back home. It was so cute!!
After the temple we went to Fa Yuen street (this is one of the best and cheapest shopping streets in HK). While eating here, the waitress tried the same trick of bringing out random food…but we caught on and called her out on it). We spent about three hours shopping there and headed back to the Mansion.
What I loved the most about it is that you’re on top of a mountain surrounded by tons of greenery and tropical trees. You can hear tons of crickets and frogs croaking….yet right below you can see the huge bustling downtown. I loved it. It was so peaceful with a nice cool breeze. At the top there are a ton of shops and international restaurants. We just sat at the lookout eating crepes…what a life . We made it home much more smoothly than the night before…but we didn’t get in till after midnight again. I’ve gotten no sleep at all. 
