Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Climb, climb up Horse Head mountain, and Aaron arrives

As usual I woke up early. But today I thought I'd wake up And and do something we'd been thinking about doing since we arrived; climb up Horse Head mountain. It's not like you need climbing equipment or anything - there are steps all the way. But in the heat and humidity you'd be insane to do it between 9am and 9pm.

So I woke up and at about 8am and he managed to get up. We walked to the entrance and bought a couple of bottles of water each. The walk up was rather sweltery but the fact there were a number of elderly locals making the same trek spurred us on! It took us about 45 mins to get to the top, with stops, but we saw some nice wildlife on the way in the form of beetles and spiders. Some of the latter were huge, and we were glad we weren't the first to walk that path that day as we would have had our heads wrapped in spiderwebs.

View of Pingguo

One of many spiders that were at least 8 inches long (maybe 3)

A rather splendid beetle with an iridescent exoskeleton (or something like that)

Went to the local cake place for breakfast. I find it quite amusing that grown men come here and buy a couple of slices of cake with pretty decorations on and eat them as if that's normal.

A slice of manly cake

Today my American colleague Aaron came to China. I've met him only a couple of times in Austin, Texas, when on business trips. He's a real American as in he would have been German five generations ago. His truck gets 17 miles a gallon and he thinks that's good.

At midday Andge and I took the train from Pingguo to Nanning to see Xixi who'd unofficially moved there a few days ago to live in Tan's 2nd sister's house along with Tan's mum and her sister-in-law and various other relatives. It was very refreshing be on our own without a chaperone for once. We went out for a walk near Tan's sister's house and found a place to have a couple of relaxed beers without anyone telling us to "kuai dian" (hurry up). And we just watched the people and traffic go by. The highlight was seeing an old woman walk past with a duckling following her. Half an hour later she walked back in the other direction with the duckling still in pursuit. I think we were the only people to notice that and think of it as something other than normal.

Although A Wu said he'd drive into central Nanning to pick us up to take us to the airport to meet Aaron, he rang us to say he wouldn't and that we'd meet at the airport. I thought he said we needed to leave in half an hour but he actually meant we had to be there in half an hour. Bollocks as the taxi ride takes 40 minutes. Anyway, we got there and Aaron, who'd had a gruelling 48 hour trip from the states seemed in fine fettle as he gave us all hugs like we were long lost family members.

Meeting Aaron at the airport

He'd been practising his English though as he said he would like a fag. At least I hope he meant that in English. It appeared he did as from the first minute in Guangxi he was oggling the local female talent.

We drove straight to Pingguo and didn't even give him time to drop off his baggage before going straight to the street bbq place and ordering pig's eyes, duck's intestines, duck's tongues etc. Just writing it makes my mouth water. We ate with A Wu and some young blokes that seemed to be in the local mafia; they had too much money and confidence. Anyway they were a nice bunch and we had a great time before taking Aaron to his hotel at 3am...at which time he was asking everyone to stay and drink more beer!