Visiting Li and Holly in DC

We went to DC to visit Li and Holly for a few days after Christmas.


We had a great time and made a nice cake for Li's birthday too.

Heading to North Carolina for Christmas

We went back to North Carolina for Christmas this year.


Sadly we had lots of flight delays so we spent a lot of time reading books in the airport.


Eventually we made it to Raleigh, but our luggage did not. I had to wear the same fur the whole time!

Resting before our trip home

We had a great trip but we were tired so we slept until we went back.

Though there was the occasional pillow fight too!

Summer Palace, here we come

We visited the emperor's summer palace. There was a place where Greg dressed up like the old emperor would have. It was traditional for the emperor to have a panda and platypus as a royal guard as we understand it.

Here we are perched above part of the palace.

The palace has some nice buildings in it but isn't how we normally thought of a palace: it's very open.

Holly took this picture with us at the palace.

I wanted to make sure no one missed me so I jumped in front of her for this picture.

More panda friends

At the Great Wall, some of the other travelers picked up stuffed pandas of their own.

They seemed to be a little overweight but they were very friendly.

We played a lot and had a good time.

We even did a panda pyramid!

Back to Beijing

At the bottom of the wall we ate some dumplings before heading back to Beijing.

On the way back into the city we stopped at the Bird's Nest, which was an Olympic stadium. Bill was blocking my beautiful face though.

On top of the Great Wall

Once we made it to the top there were many nice views.

You can see part of the wall behind us in the picture. We climbed up that part later too.

The wall is really long, longer than any one panda and platypus can walk in a day.

Here's Holly, the bride, with us at the wall.

This is us looking back the way we already hiked on the wall.

Climbing the Great Wall

We decided to climb the Great Wall of China. SP said it was built by his ancestors to keep out invading platypuses.

There was a statue of some famous Chinese warrior at the start of the hike.

There were a lot of steps up to the top of the wall.

Eventually we made it to the top though.

Li's parents' house

We went to see Li's parents' house in a town near Fuzhou. They had a nice bench outside but the old house was tiny (and no toilet!)

A Chinese massage

Everyone from the wedding went off to get Chinese massages late at night.

So SP and I gave each other massages in the hotel instead.

Panda Central

SP was very excited when we got to the panda exhibit at Chimelong Zoo.

They didn't just have one or two pandas, but something like 12!

You can see they were doing the things pandas like best: lying around sleeping and eating bamboo.

SP really wanted to go in and socialize with them but it was not allowed.

A giant platypus!

Bill found this giant platypus at the Chimelong Zoo.

The platypus was so big that Bill could ride on its back.

Here is Bill with the 'baby' platypus, who was also pretty big for a platypus.

Chimelong Zoo tigers

The Chimelong Zoo near Guangzhou has the world's largest number of silver and golden tigers. Here is a silver one I got to see.

This Siberian tiger liked to jump in the water to catch meat to eat.

Here is a younger tiger growing up in a play area.

They also had smaller baby tigers in a special room.

Here are the cutest really tiny tigers.

Dinner time!

We had a giant dinner after visiting the temple. There were many interesting dishes, including some chicken feet. Sadly not much bamboo or water bugs for me and Bill.

Chen Clan Temple

We went to the well decorated Chen Clan Temple, which is now a showcase for different forms of traditional Chinese art.

You can see that the roof is decorated with many details.

Onwards to Guangzhou

There was a few hour bus ride from Hong Kong to the wedding city, Guangzhou. We had to go through immigration as well.

We stayed in the very nice Garden Hotel, but we had to climb up on the furniture to see out the windows.

This is the view from our hotel room of the city.

At the Hong Kong Zoo

The Hong Kong Zoo was near our hotel so we went to see it. It mostly had monkeys, like this one.

And there were a lot of birds. SP liked this crane due to its colours.

I think he was also impressed at how red these ibis were.

I saw some cool lemurs there too.

Sadly we couldn't stay long as it was against the rules for us to eat while we were in the zoo.