So I had Leilei ready by 9am in preparation for Tan’s return from her driving lesson and we ended up getting Xixi and having breakfast together as she was late back. Somehow this transpired to be my fault and there were more calls to “hurry up!” while we were eating in the breakfast place. So I just said to pick us up from there, which they did, in A Xia’s car, a few minutes later. A touch of calm is all you need.
Just outside Pingguo we stopped off as A Dong had his car and a few others inside. We ended up with A Xia’s husband driving (seems the women don’t generally drive out of town), Leilei and I in the front passenger seat, Tan, Xixi, A Xia and their son Su in the back, with A Dong, A Hua, Nong Kaicheng, A Da and A Ni in the other car. As we moved onto the motorway I remembered I had to take out the seatbelt quieteners in order to put the actual seatbelts in. All modern cars have this annoying feature of beeping quicker and quicker if they are driven without front seatbelts attached, so this is the way around that while driving in town.
Qian mei met us in Nanning in her car with her daughter. First stop was Qingxiu Mountain. It is a mountain, but from what we saw it was more of a picturesque slopey walk through some rather nice wooden walkways whose shade made the heat bearable. There were plenty of things for the kids to climb on, and what would have been an even better assault course had it not been for the temperature. I thought it was pretty good value for 15 kuai per adult and 10 kuai for over 5s, and we could have spent a bit longer, but lunchtime was beckoning. We went to a restaurant and for a refreshing change ate in a big area with other members of the public. The speciality was slightly chilli fried duck, and very good it was too – with everyone fishing out the breast bits for me. Qian mei’s husband came for the meal but soon disappeared when we went to the highlight of the day – the Caribbean Water World. It was a tad pricy at 100 kuai for an adult and half that for kids but for that you get up to seven hours in the place and all the water rides are free. Well, they would have been if I had queued up for any. But two kids in such a place are a handful, especially when crowded, so we spent most of the time in the kiddy pools going on the small slides to the delight of Xixi, and, eventually Leilei.
They enjoyed the false beach with its imported sand, and the wave machine. I appreciated the way that the bracelet I wore, with my locker number, not only opened the locker like a hotel room so I could go and get the camera, but also you could use it to pay for food and drinks. Not that I needed to as we’d actually brought quite a lot of stuff ourselves. We had started at around 3.30pm, and finished just before 8pm, just after a round of tsunami on the false beach. The kids had had very little sleep, so I knew they would conk out in the car and this evening would be difficult.
As a parent of young children who are mostly out of their midday naps, you are very conscious of car journeys, indeed any time where they may sleep during the day as it can seriously affect the quality of your evening. Here, it’s ok as all the kids have a nap, and then stay up with family and friends late into the night, similar to Spain, but back home can be a nightmare. It’s something some people sometimes don’t think about when babysitting kids, and let them sleep at 4pm in the car, knowing they won’t have to be with them till midnight that night. I would understand people who avoid taking their kids in the car for journeys over a few minutes after lunch for this reason.
I managed to wake up Leilei after 45 minutes kip. He was ok, as Xiao Pan had booked a meal at Li Jian He Xian again (very late, at 9.30pm) and the boys would be there. But Xixi was grumpy and didn’t want to get up at all, so I ended up taking her to Jiuma and Waipo where she seemed happier. We ate a lot as we’d been swimming and hadn’t eaten for seven hours, then I took Leilei home where he eventually got to sleep at gone 12.30.
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