Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Chinese New Year Adventures

After spending 10 Chinese New Years away from home, this year we finally decided to take two weeks off and head back to Asia for the celebration. Of course one of the biggest challenge is to leave Maya behind. Fortunately, Tachi's family kindly offered to look after Maya for a week, and the doggie daycare was available for the other.

If only we can bring her with us

Thanks to Tachi's parents for not only taking a good care of her, but also sending us lots of pictures. She sure had a good time hanging out with her Shiba friend.

Pictures we got from Tachi's parents

Besides the photos with Tachi, we were also surprised by the videos of Maya with their guinea pig Sam. I pretty much held my breath while watching them. 



Once Maya headed to the doggie daycare, she was pretty much off the radar, so we had to find comfort elsewhere, including visiting a neighbor's Shiba Inu, Kuruma in Taiwan. She's a shy girl and usually hides when people look at her, but I did manage to make myself interesting enough to come close for a picture, despite her tail still pointing down.

Shy Shiba girl Kuruma

Besides Taiwan, we also took a short trip to Hong Kong. It's not my first time there, but it's the first time I noticed that there are no dogs in the city at all. The only "dog" I found was on a poster in the subway stations. Ironically, a Shiba Inu pooping on the street.

Poster in Hong Kong subway stations

On our way back to the Bay Area, like our previous trips, we were able to help out the rescues in Taiwan to bring back another 14 dogs to their new forever homes. There's always a dog that gets to me and this time, it was a Golden Retriever named Brian, who was skin and bones when his foster parents found him on the streets. I can tell that the family was so attached to him, but were willing to let go, because they think he'll have a better life in California with more space to roam. It was hard watching them say goodbye.

At Taipei airport getting ready to head back

On our flight back, there was a small hiccup. Our flight landed at 8:30 pm, two hours later than scheduled, and we were supposed to pick up Maya before the daycare closes at 9:00 pm. We came up with a great plan to have Maya's daddy rush off the plane as soon as it stopped, literally running past all the passengers before they had a chance to stand up. By the time I retrieved our carry-ons, passed the super long line at customs, collected our luggage, gathered the dogs, rolled them out, and handed them to the local volunteers at the lobby, Maya's daddy already took the taxi home, drove to the daycare to pick up Maya, and was only minutes away from picking me up. Team effort! (He was still a few minutes late. Thanks to the daycare staff who was willing to wait for him. We would have been very sad if we weren't able to pick up Maya that day.)

Maya slept for two whole days

We were all exhausted after the trip. Maya pretty much slept for two full days while we jet-lagged for an entire week. She smelled like doggie daycare when she got back, but we waited a few days to give her a much needed bath, because we didn't want us coming home to be a negative experience (maybe I was over-thinking...) All-in-all, it was a great trip and we were really happy to see all our family and friends. Wish everyone a wonderful Year of the Horse! 新年快樂!馬年行大運!

Totally not happy about the bath