Chinese SUV -- Enough room for the whole family

Tyson Again -- See my blog below on China -- Here is a interesting photo on how different things are in terms of personal safety. The whole family fits on one 49cc motorbike --- I guess car seats are for whimps?? -- Try this in the US and you will for sure be arrested.

Middle of China

This is Tyson – I went to China about a week ago for work, I went in the middle nowhere and had to take a car about 2 hours from the airport to a small (by china standards) industrial town. There were only 3.7 million people that lived in the town and it was not even big enough to have their own airport, thus the reason for 2 hour ride by car from the nearest airport. I only stayed for a couple of days. I will post a few pictures of things with some comments.

In by the area that Mao started the Cultural Revolution in China.


Typical Scene from by the side of a River


Dinner anybody -- this was some kind of catfish with feet -- good for me that he cost to much to actually have on my plate -- however I probably ate his cousin or something??


This was the dinner room we ate at one evening -- it was pretty fancy and on the menu were some new items that I tried such as tripe (cow intestines) and picked pig ear, yes it is real a pickled pig ear, not just some made up name.


So after dinner, I was booked for a massage -- this is the way most of the trip went -- I did not have clue what was going on until it actually happened -- so I just went with the flow -- I was booked so I went and got a 1 hour foot bath/massage then a 1 hour full body massage. Massages are very big deal in Asia as it promotes well being and good health, the massage place in the hotel was open until 1 am and I got done about 11:00 pm, then I had to pay -- so someone else booked the time, but I still had to pay -- I figured the rate was not going to be very cheap -- so I got to the cashier and it was $120 RMB -- which equals about $17 USD -- It was crazy, a 2 hour massage for 17 bucks!!!

Disneyland hotel resort

Here is the back view of the hotel we stayed at. you could either walk to Disneyland or take a shuttle bus. We mostly took the shuttle but walked a few times. Behind Hayden is the green bushes that made up the Mickey maze (see pic below).
The hotel had a Victorian feel to it. Something that is funny is there were hardly any children. There was only a handful of kids and most of them seemed to be from Australia. I think I got one of the token Asian kids head in this picture. There would be one kid and his parents, grandparents and maybe an Auntie.
Even though Halloween is a predominately American Holiday it was a theme there in Disneyland and the hotel. Mostly characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas which you'll see in some later posts.

They had a big maze in the back if you look real close you can see the boys in the front also Mickey is in the light green color bushes.

The BIG buddha, or Tian Tan Buddha (in Hong Kong)

Here we are with the boys in the taxi Asian style, no car seats. Note the passy on the lanyard, we have at least 1 passy MIA lost during a Babybjorn outing so this was Tyson's idea which worked great.

Here we are riding on the gondola, the ride alone was 20-25 min. We opted for the return trip. The picture below if you look real close you can see the stairs that are part of the trek. with kids, no thank you.The start of the 300 or so steps to the top of the Buddha. This Buddha was the largest in the world until just recently in 2007. At 34 meters and 250 tons and made of bronze this is quite amazing.

The Singapore Airport and traveling

These aren't way exciting pics but they are something. The airport here is pretty cool. I just found out there is actually a swimming pool, movie theatre and of course places to eat and shop (duty free) if you have an longer layover. You can also take a tour bus, there are 2 different tours depending on the length of you layover that are actually free. The inside of the airport is nice and so smooth getting in and out of you hardly even notice when you actually go through security and you rarely have to wait in line (or the Que as they saw around here). The airport has plenty of plants (I like the orchids) you can see the boys posing in one of the "gardens". My favorite thing was the foot massager, kind of like the chairs you can sit in but it only does your feet, it felt so good and it was free.
We have been pretty lucky so far with our airplane since being here they spoil the kids. They actually got little bags (literally mini backpacks) with different little goodies like stickers and other little activities on the plane. 2 of the 3 flights have had there own screens with a choice of games to play and vids to watch. Our return flight was the hardest because we thought we would have the vids and video but it was an older plane so no games the kids movie wasn't working. Ugh, we did bring any of our own entertainment so the flight was kind of long. Having Collin has also been nice because we have had good seats so we could put him in a bassinet on the wall in front of us which means lots of leg room and nobody for the kids to hit or through things at in front of us. I wanted to get a picture of it but they have a mini seat belt that you put on the baby that attaches to the adults seat belt for take off, landing and anytime the seat belt sign comes on (which was annoying when he was sleeping in the bassinet and we would have to take him out so we could buckle him up.) The best thing about Asia is everyone is so nice and accomidating all the time especially with children, which really helps. Everyone always comments on us and our 3 boys. There is 2 ways to look at it here, boys are very busy and a handful or in some cultures the boys grow up and take care of their parents so we will be well taken care of.

Singapore F1 (Formula One) Night Race

This is Tyson again. -- so the much anticipated F1 race was last weekend here in singapore. I got tickets for the two older boys and myself to go on Saturday for qualifying and some other races like the Asia Porsche Carrera Cup. This F1 race is the fist time that they had a circuit in Singapore and also the worlds first night race -- they spent about 50 million USD on lighting along to light the track. We spent a good part of the day kicking around the track on Saturday. then on Sunday we got an invite to go view the race from a friends office building. We went down to the race track, with no tickets and watched the race from the 29th floor of the Shaw Building. The crazy part was that we got on the 29th floor then crawled out of a window and sat on a ledge to watch the race -- the boys were with me and there was no railing so is was a bit scary but it was a great view of the race. We could oversee about 1/3 of the total track.

Here are the boys on the side of the track -- we are only about 10 feet away from the cars as they go by. They are of course wearing earplugs because of the noise and got the tickets around their neck.
The boys got these fans for free and they automatically turned into weapons. they are using them as swords.
Here is some of the singapore skyline -- the Merlion is behind the boys (kinda small) but he is spitting water out of his mouth to protect the harbor. The bridge behind was part of the race track that the F1 cars went over. Plus the sword/fans.
This is the view from the 29th floor of the Shaw Building where we got see the F1 race. The real bright parts are the actual race track and the singapore skyline is behind.

Singapore Zoo Bathrooms

This is Tyson -- we were at the zoo the other day, is was a public holiday here Hari Raya Puasa, so we took the kids to the zoo. Natt may post more later, however I snapped a photo inside of the bath room of hayden washing his hands this is the inside of the bathroom as Natt talked about in a previous blog.