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| Disappointed with the camera trap so we took our own pretty picture of a pond in the guangchang |
After lunch I took the kids for a spin and to their old nursery and their old school that they attended not that many years ago. We found the train station and saw it had been massively modernised, presumably for the huge infrastructural changes that have been made to accommodate the new "gao tie" (tall steel) fast trains that have taken the country by storm in recent years. I'm slightly annoyed that many people refer to the new trains as "dong che" - moving car, as opposed to "gao tie", as I'm not sure if this is a different type of train or not. Tan recently took a dong che to Baise and said it was very nice. Well hopefully I'll find out soon - this reminded me I needed to book tickets to Zhuhai but looking at the queue I thought we'd do it online.
On the way back from the station we stopped off at the cool cave, a place I used to frequent with mates until a couple of years ago when the main bloke stopped using the place as a mini restaurant - presumably as it was too mini to make money. It looked deserted and Leilei didn't want to climb up the outside steps in the oppressive heat, but I made him and nearly regretted it when nearly at the top a snake, presumably roused from its slumbers on the steps, woke up and whizzed right past us causing a mild panic. All I remember was that it was nearly three feet in length and the front three to four inches was mostly red, and the rest quite brown - we'd better look it up to see how close we were to death. Up by the cool cave there was a solitary old bloke who didn't seem to want to have anything to do with us. I asked if anyone lived there and he said "no", then went for a look and saw clothes hanging out and wondered why people would do that if they didn't live there. I couldn't be bothered to ask him more.
I dropped off the kids at Waipo's then went home for half an hour before thinking I should be making more of my time off work, so set out again on the dian dong che looking for a new place that actually does nice massages as opposed to those that are supposed to cure something. I spent much more time than I should have done between 2-3 pm and ended up finding nothing that didn't look rather seedy, then realised I'd caught the sun.
This caused me to feel a little tired, and I managed to grab 1h15m of sleep till 4.30. I grabbed a shower as although the meal was to be at 5.30 at Li Jia He Xiang, the excellent restaurant we used to be invited to more than was good for us. Sure enough I got the call that she was leaving now and we needed to be there in five minutes, and sure enough as soon as I arrived five minutes later I got another call to be told the meal wasn't at Li Jia He Xiang but rather another place up the road by the corner of the guang chang.
As the kids and I were on the bike it didn't take a minute to get to the actual eating place and there were many oldish people standing outside in the heat chatting. This went on for 15 minutes or so until it was determined that we should enter. Inside were about 40 tables, each seating around eight people. We appeared to be in the first 20% or so and took a table quite near the entrance with Lin Hong, her daughter Tian Tian Jie Jie, and her parents. Of course this meant that as other entered they cooed over the kids, causing a bottleneck for the rest trying to get in. I thought about moving to a more practical table, but it would have meant moving more people, so just let the situation run its natural path.
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| Waiting outside in the heat with the Bangxu gang |
Some people were well into the food when we entered, and by the time we started some had already finished and were busily depositing what they hadn't finished into doggy bags. I had a couple of glasses with Lin Hong's father, but nothing significant, but as is the custom here blokes from other tables walked over to ours and gan bei'd with me. Then I thought I didn't need to be passive here, so joined in and went and found my own bottle to take to other tables. Tan suggested a particular table and then warned they would try to get me drunk. If that was the case then why suggest that particular table??
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| The meal in full swing |
Well I went there anyway and instead of accepting a standing gan bei they grabbed a fresh set of eating utensils and bade me sit down with them. The next 45 minutes or so did indeed involve plenty of gan bei'ing, so much that I needed to use my usual trick of moving to cai ma to put a slight slowdown on proceedings. In fact it must have been more than an hour as later when I looked around not only were Tan and the kids gone, there were only a couple of tables with people left. The blokes were all "family" from Bangxu and accepted my excuse to leave, but only after gan bei'ing each one a final time.
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| We were one of the last tables remaining |
Outside I managed to do tipsily what I didn't manage in the afternoon - to find a lovely massage. Why hadn't I thought about it in the first place? I just needed to go for a "wash face". I went to a place opposite the KTV place that I used to go to quite a lot, and asked if indeed it was possible to "wash face". They looked at me as if I was a bear asking permission to poo in the forest before telling me to lie down on one of the beds. I excused myself and went for a wee first, but instantly realised I'd made the right choice. I'd even shaved earlier in the day was able to really enjoy a face massage complete with head and shoulders and arms too - such a decadent thing to do but it's only my first time this year. They did warn me that the price would be 130 kuai - a lot of money but they said it was mainly for the face soap, and that next time I came it would be 30 kuai. There will be a next time for sure.
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