Vietnamese border and more boating

True to his word, A Wu woke me up at 7am. I did the same to Ailun and Anzhe in their room while A Wu took his shower. I wondered why, as we got in A Wu's car, Anzhe looked nearly as white as the sheets we'd slept in. With trembling hands he passed me his camera, and tried to show me the eight-legged monster that had spent the night in his towel and didn't take kindly to being woken up by an Englishman wanting to dry himself. Ok it was just a blooming spider.

Anzhe's friend

Because we'd not been told what we'd be doing for these couple of days none of us had sufficient clothing. I did try to wash some clothes in the hotel, but by the morning they were somewhat predictably wet due to the 99% humidity I dare say. So I had the ignominy of wearing the previous day's shorts and a totally unironed shirt. Anyway, we drove through beautiful mountains, alongside rivers following the valleys through the paddy fields until we reached Vietnam.

Well, Vietnam was more of a "beauty spot" for which we had to pay about a tenner each to enter. Not only that we had to buy flip flops as it would be a bit wet. Of course if we'd been told this we'd have brought our own flip flops that we'd bought just days earlier in Pingguo but that wasn't the point. We drove back down to the ticket office (why you can't buy tickets at the place you present them is known only to the Chinese - I guess it's to keep more people employed in meaningless jobs). Then we came back and entered the border place where they ensure you stay on a well marked path and point out to you the "beautiful views" where you should take photos from.

Some sort of milestone by Vietnam

This sort of stuff really pisses me off. Yes, it's beautiful, or at least it would be if there weren't signs telling you so. We'd love to have got off the beaten track to see some things first hand but that was transgressing the rules. Anyhow, Ailun took plenty of photos. He got talking to a couple of women but unfortunately nothing came out of it. We ended up (unsurprisingly) at a number of stalls selling Vietnamese produce from coffee to sexually enhancing pills (I thought they were just dirty playing cards until I asked, then felt extremely embarrassed).

Ailun apparently discovering his sphincter for the first time

We did have a good meal outside the border place, and Anzhe and Ailun are now both converts to fried bees. And mysterious eggs that apparently you have to leave underground for months first...

I've already posted pics of fried bees but we also loved the brown eggs with snowflake patterns

I found that I had no shadow in the midday sun. Then I noticed the sun was directly above us

After the Vietnam border we drove for some time to the place we were supposed to meet A Wu's friend. During this time we learnt of Anzhe's fantasy: somewhere, in a paddy field in Guangxi, there is an 18-25 year-old paddy field worker woman who is actually quite pretty. But she has a problem. Her washing machine has broken down. Anzhe happens to be the only washing-machine-repair-man in the area, and goes to her help. As strange as it sounds, when Anzhe arrives the wind picks up and blows the light cotton robes off the nubile paddy field worker, revealing her young body, pert breasts pointing to the midday sun. Man this is so much a fantasy; the only paddy field workers were in their 50's with skin you could make jackets out of. 5/5 for imagination though....

Andrew's fantasy setting

We got to another boating place a bit later where we met two rather pretty women, saying they could get us in for a discount. It is in these situations where I feel rather uncomfortable. I asked A Wu why they could get us in for cheaper when it looked obvious they were working for the boating company. I didn't get an answer. We drank tea with the girls, then parted with a lot of cash (about 60 quid for the four of us). And then they came back with the tickets. Apparently we'd just saved 20 quid or so. We had a very in-depth conversation about what we could bring with us on the boats. I asked if it was safe to bring cameras and they said "yes" of course - we can put them in plastic bags if necessary. I asked why that would be necessary and they said because they might get wet. Which was sort of the point of asking in the first place. Anyway, just as we were all leaving to go to the boats we were told it was probably better to leave the cameras in the car to avoid them getting wet. Man if only we got a straight answer in the first place...

We all bought a broad brimmed hat for a quid each, as the sun was beating down and I felt my feet already burning. Luckily, as we'd found near the Vietnam border, the sun is directly above you so a hat will shade all your body unless you're a fat American. We followed some blokes down down down a mountain path, where the sun got lost and it started raining in a nice refreshing if humid way. It took all of half an hour to get to the place where the boats were, by which time we (I) fancied a beer. Unfortunately that was the only drink they didn't have there. However a couple of minutes later we were being hurried onto our dinghies for our next trip.

This time each dinghy had a bloke paddling for us and we were able to take in the beautiful surroundings. We stopped for a few minutes under what I think was a fig tree and sampled the delights of the luscious fruits. Very sumptious and I'd love to take some home. But no time and I basically acted like a wasp and gourged myself for 15 minutes before getting back on the dinghy to enjoy the next 3 hours. And it was very enjoyable. It wasn't quite as much white water as yesterday's boat ride, but that didn't stop Ailun diving out of his boat at one stage while we were waiting for the others to catch up. I bet he wish he didn't; he was in the water for all of a minute but when he got back in the dinghy with A Wu he had four leeches on his legs. He spent the next half an hour trying to check his balls without the other boats seeing!

After the boating A Wu decided we wouldn't meet his mate after all as it was too late. Luckily I had downloaded all the world's maps on my Nokia E71 and with GPS I was able to tell where we were. I deduced it would take a long time to get home so we stopped at a food place and had some lovely pork and beef. I'd forgotten that A Wu doesn't eat beef for some quasi-religious reason so all the more for us. We got back before 11pm and managed to grab a headwash - the thing we'd all been looking forward to all evening.

There were plenty of pretty girls for Ailun, but he spotted one of them playing some war game on the computer and was unheard of for the rest of the evening

Four men in two boats

I decided Aaron needed a Chinese phone number. But in fact his name is now "Song Ailun". Fair enough, I like my Chinese name.

We went for a sweat-inducing walk from our flat to the phone shop 500 yards away. Unfortunately "Ailun" got stuck on the way. When I say stuck I mean he say a cute girl in a shop trying to sell him a shirt. When he found out he needed to pay nearly 50 US dollars for it he said "f**k that" and left the shop in a hurry. At least that's what I hoped he would do. In the end he spent about half an hour in the place before he realised he was being ripped off and finally left. With a new $50 shirt....

By that time I'd bought a SIM card for him, and posed in several photographs with the various women in the mobile phone shop. A free gift of an umbrella was forced upon me, and I had to choose out of pink, light blue and light yellow. I chose the latter (though any would have done).

Three blokes on a san lun che

I took Andge and Aaron for some nice dumplings as we hadn't been pestered by any phone call from A Wu, so we had a really relaxing morning. While we were eating our dumplings, Ailun noticed a woman with particularly lovely legs enter the place. Interesting how only single men notice that (hmmm).

We'd planned on going to Nanning for the day as A Wu's wife A Ni had said that he was too busy to take us on a drive to do boating and visit the Vietnamese border for a few days. Well we were ok with that, and well happy with our plan to take the train to Nanning.

So of course we got a call at midday, saying A Wu was taking us out to go boating. Now that is a loaded statement. Does that mean we're going to go on a boat for the afternoon? Or does that mean we're going away from our (my) families for a couple of days with no notice. No prizes for guessing it was the latter. We were told to be downstairs in five minutes as is the usual case. I said "bollocks" we need to have a shower and not together. So in a nutshell we met downstairs in an hour or so later completely unprepared for what was to come. Except for Aaron, who keeps a month's worth of preparedness in his bag wherever he goes. At least he keeps spare socks and a flannel he calls a travel-towel....

So it turned out we got into A Wu's new car (the 10 year old Nissan) and we drove through luscious countryside for a couple of hours. This is countryside that makes the holiday worthwhile for most; I mean a thousand shades of green pickled with a small number of paddy field workers and other leather-faced locals working their arses off.

We were going boating. What kind of boating we weren't really sure. We hadn't really been told much about what we were going to do, except that we were going to meet a friend and stay in some town and drink some beer. It did seem funny that after being told to "hurry up!" so much, when we were in the car hurrying up did not seem to be a priority. Before we got out of Pingguo we must have stopped four times to pick up bottles of tea, this and that, during which time I managed to buy a Blackberry charger for my phone for a quid as I guessed we might not be back for a while. During one of these stops, we all individually noticed a girl with a great physique in the doorway of a shop. For some reason we all got out of the car and went to buy a bottle of drink from her shop. Aaron straight away tried to take a photo of her (bad move) which she didn't want. So I got talking to her and found she was from Tan's hometown of Bangxu, then I spoke the only couple of sentences I know in Bangxunese and her and her mum loved that and we were immediately accepted. Accepted for what I will never know as we were called by A Wu to "hurry up!" and get back in the car to our destination.

I had been sitting in the front, but Aaron (actually I will start calling him Ailun), Ailun said he felt a bit sick, so I ended up in the back with Andrew (sod it, his Chinese name is Anzhe) for the rest of the journey. Unfortunately, my seatbelt wouldn't click into its holder, so we arranged that Anzhe's seatbelt would go through mine before he clicked it in. The strangest thing about this was not the way we managed to both buckle-up, but the fact we'd bothered to in the first place. We found out soon enough that A Wu's shock absorbers were shockingly non-existent. And with Chinese roads the way they are this took its toll.

But anyway we arrived a couple of hours later at a river in the midst of some mountains. Suddenly we realised that if we'd been told what to expect we would have packed accordingly. We were to go white-water rafting, which entailed getting rather wet. Well, I had longish shorts on, but nothing for swimming. Sod it, we got rid of our cameras, phones, etc. and then realised we had to pay about 12 quid each (which I paid for - no problem with that, but would have liked to know we'd have to pay as had not brought too much cash).

We were told our valuables would be safe in the back of our car, and lead to a place to put on a life jacket and helmet, and grab a wooden oar. We got into a couple of inflatable dinghies - Anzhe and I, and Ailun and A Wu. What followed, unbeknown to us, was a 5.8 km trek through some beautiful aqua terrain, including fabulous white water where you'd drop 5 metres in just a few seconds - extremely fun and totally soaking! We spent a good part of the time using our helmets to get water out of the boat. Being in China, we were never sure how safe the whole thing was, which added to the excitement around each corner.

Being business-minded, the company thought to put photographers at a couple of key places, so we had the chance to buy some photos at the end for a ridiculously high price. I negotiated that we would buy 15 or so, but on condition that they let us download all the files onto one of our memory cards. It was around that time that I noticed to my horror that the one thing I'd left in my pocket was my 16GB memory card in its reader. My clothes were completely soaked, and it was with little expectation that I put the damp card in my camera and fired it up. "Memory card read error" was all I got. Double bollocks. At least we copied the photos to Ailun's memory card.

Anzhe and I white water rafting

Seaman stains

A Wu and Ailun enjoying the water

We drove for an hour or so. I think it would have taken half the time but we kept meeting problems like unfinished roads. We had to wait a few mins for a digger to offload itself from a lorry, which was quite fun to watch. Then we had to build our own ramp to get the car one foot up to a new road that was being build in a tunnel. That's one of the things I like about being here.

Building a ramp so we could get back onto the road

In the evening we arrived at a place called Da xin (Big New), that had a town square that seemed the impossible size of that of Pingguo's. But there was a major difference. We barely saw a single smile - something that is a penny a dozen in Pingguo. We all noticed this individually, and it was actually quite profound.

We went for a bbq but Aaron was quite ill so I offered to go and buy some antibiotics. But A Wu asked how I could possibly buy such things in a place I hadn't been before. I said I'd asked someone and the chemist was over there, but he insisted on driving a long-winded way to get to the same place. Anyway, I got two packs for 50p each, and only regret not having bought loads to bring back to the UK.

Back at the bbq Aaron had perked up a little, and actually managed a couple of glasses of beer before we left. I experienced the wonderful feeling of bringing something back from the dead when I retried my 16GB memory card in the camera and suddenly it decided to be readable! It was one of those money-can't-buy experiences, though I'd have sold it for about forty quid. So happy to have my memory card back...as long as it lasts till we get back home and I can copy it to my external hard drive.

What finding out that your 16GB memory card works again may look like (ok that was taken earlier in the day but it conveys my sentiment, and the shakiness of the car)

A bit later I said I fancied a head wash, which A Wu said we could do. However, by the time we checked-in to our hotel it was too late. I had my first argument this year when I came down to the reception with Andrew after the others were in bed and asked for a couple of beers. I was told that the service was unavailable, which I accepted. Then I asked for a bottle of water, and was told that there was no water either. I flipped my lid and shouted at the woman that this was a fucking hotel and I wanted a bottle of fucking water. Within 30 seconds I had two bottles. I hate to say it but sometimes you have to put down your hand like that. And had thoughtfully brought a bit of whisky and we made use of the water to make it a bit more palatable and had a very enjoyable 30 mins getting pissed by the hotel maids until A Wu rang me and told me we had to get up at 7am and to hurry up back to the hotel room....

Void

This day has slipped into the void of lost memories. We probably drank fruit juice during the day, and something else by night. We would have had a great deal of fun, including the kids.

Three men on a moped and a Thai massage

I forgot Aaron didn't have a Chinese phone number and rang his American number from my Chinese mobile late morning and nearly ran out of credit as soon as he answered. We arranged to pick him up and go for some fruit juice as we knew he'd be hungover.

Fruit juice here is pretty much that. For 4 kuai the lady will chuck in a load of melon, some ice and sugar, blend it all and a minute later you'll have a lovely cool healthy drink that even alcohol couldn't make better or more refreshing.

I have got back my wonderful electric moped. The one that A Ni bought 3 years ago for 140 quid. I changed the batteries 8 months ago and it is still going strong (probably because she still doesn't use it for fear of tanning under the sun). But I am very happy indeed to have my own means of transport. Until, that is, I transport Andge and Aaron around. Even the Chinese, who regularly transport 5 or more people plus luggage and lunch around on these vehicles were worried about the prospect of 3 westerners using this means of transport. Well, despite the suspension being scraped, it managed to get us around town and to the place Aaron was to have his first lunch in Pingguo.


Our first lunch with Aaron

It was a nice restaurant, and some friends came to eat with us and see the new whitey in town. But I had a distinct feeling in my gut that the next 20 minutes or so was not going to be comfortable, so I excused myself saying that I needed to go home to get a camera battery and on getting home spent the next 20 minutes squatting and shitting out the bbq excesses of yesterday. There's no way I could have done that in the restaurant.

When I got back I found the first course had already been and gone. And Aaron was looking very pale. He does anyway, but this was like 6 shades paler than white - only 4 shades darker than completely transparent. Apparently they had had sheep's blood for the first course. The rest of the meal was great but obviously Aaron didn't feel so - he went through 6 bottles of water though, so I expect it was just due to last night.


Lamb's blood - good for devil worshipping (or is that goat's blood?)


A Hua, Chen mei and Aaron

Aaron managed to feel better a bit later. So much so that we were all invited by A Hua to go for a massage. Aaron went in the car with A Hua and I think I turned up later in the electric moped. Anyway, when I got there, Aaron was already into his Thai massage - you could hear him groaning (I think in pleasure). As I got undressed I asked the woman if I had to take ALL my clothes off before putting on the pyjamas and she said "yes". I then told Aaron but he had left his boxers on and was in too much ecstasy already and I feared if he removed his underwear he would come.

The massage lasted 90 minutes and at times was rather weird. She would move her fingers up your leg to millimetres from your helmet and leave you worried about what would have happened if she'd gone a little further. Luckily, had such a situation arisen I certainly wouldn't have as I'd only need to open my eyes and see the less than oil painting on top of me. Then she would turn her attention to the other leg, which was a relief as I was "dressed to the left" until she lifted both my legs and shook me until my poor todger fell onto the other side and I had to endure a near cock massage again. I finished my massage to find Aaron and Andge fast asleep on their beds in the neighbouring cubicles....ahhh


Aaron enjoying a woman's company rather more than he should have been

In the evening we had a lovely hotpot meal that included pig's brains, before heading out to the guang chang for a nice walk. Aaron came back to our place in the evening before going to A Hua's place to stay as she had offered him a spare room as he preferred to be with a Chinese family rather than living in a hotel.


Aaron thinking he was already home in bed


A night pic of Pingguo with exposure left open a little to get the idea of movement (was around 1am)

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!


Street bbq at 2am


View from Aaron's hotel room - I guess this was the next morning

Back to 2 caves

Back in 2005 I went with a few friends to a cave 20 minutes motorbike ride from Bangxu where Tan's from originally. This was an amazing place, pretty inaccessible to most. After the motorbike ride to a friend's house a group of five of us hiked up the nearest mountain a 100 feet or so, then entered a split in the mountain and staggered down inside until it was pitch black. After we all donned torches I was told I would have to shimmy through an eight feet long gap in the rock that was 1 foot high and under 2 feet wide. One bloke went first, then another a minute later. It was then my turn and I suddenly got pre-claustrophobia of the highest degree. I told them I couldn't do it and they laughed the way people who have never experienced claustrophobia do. I sat by myself a while and reasoned that the pain of not going through this tiny gap and potentially seeing something only seen by a handful of people before should be greater than the discomfort of the fear of being stuck inside a rock for the rest of my life. I managed to reason that I couldn't live the rest of my life without knowing what was eight feet away so I went in arms first and used my elbows to leverage me through the cold stone. Panic was not a thousand miles away when my body was encased in stone but thankfully the blokes who had already gone through were shining their torches through so I could see light at the end of the tunnel. After probably only a few seconds I thrust my hands in the direction of the torches and one of the blokes grabbed them and pulled me the rest of the way. I can honestly say there's not been a scarier path traversed in my life.

Getting into the cave

Once in the cave it was difficult to get a real appreciation of the magnificence, due to the fact the torches pierced perhaps 100 feet at furthest throught the dank air. But I estimate the height at around 50 feet and the expanse roughly the size of a football field after we'd walked around. One of the other blokes had wisely bought a fistfull of joss sticks and after spending a few minutes lighting them all, left one every 10 feet we walked, an acknowledgement of the risks of getting lost in a pitch black cave the size of wembley with only one exit the size of a human.

The strange balls making much of the floor of the cave

But it was perfectly different from any terrain I'd experienced before. Strange muddy-coloured balls under our feet mingling with mini-volcano like rotundities that were probably related to stalagmites (tights come down). We spent around half an hour in the cave I guess, certainly one of the most fascinating 30 mins I have ever spent.

Nice cave terrain

So of course I wanted to take And to see this cave. And after talking about it to the manager of a nice tea shop I used to drink with last year we agreed to go there today. Until Tan heard about our plan that was. She didn't trust the tea-shop manager's driving ability and said anyway we couldn't go today or the next day due to rain making the roads slippery.

Bollocks.

But anyway she'd now arranged for A Zhong's younger brother to take us in A Zhong's car as he is a good driver apparently. To cut a long story short we eventually got there (apparently) to be told the cave had been blown up to make way for an electricity generation station. This would normally have pissed me off a lot but I saw what they had done; they had channeled about 25% of a mountain river and built a duct to take the water a mile or so to a generation station that powers a whole village/town in this rural area. So at least this is renewable energy, at the cost of a fantastic cave. Having said that I'm still not sure this is the same cave I visited back in 2005.

This may or may not be the cave I visited in 2005. If so it has been smashed open to provide hydro-electricity to the neighbouring towns, in which case I don't mind

View from this area

After visiting this non-cave, we went to Tan's hometown of Bangxu and had a meal of frogs and pork ribs. I do like the frogs but they are rather bony and it's everything rather than just the legs.

Then A Zhong's brother drove us to the cave I'd visited in 2003 during my first time in Guangxi. Then we had to hack our way through coarse grass to get to the cave opening, and don head-torches to see where we were going. We scrambled down some rocks before a friend put us in a small boat to take us to an area where you can walk.

Tan and me in the cave in 2003

Well it's all changed now. For 50 kuai per person (about a fiver) you can enter the cave. There are walkways and the cave is all lit up with green, red, blue and yellow lights to make it look unrealistic. There is a guide who tells you at every turn that this rock looks like an elephant and that one is called "mother rock" because it looks like a mother bending over a child. The guide pointed out one rock and said it was called something or other, and I disagreed and told her it was an octopus. She didn't look very happy about it but I persisted and eventually she accepted.

There were 3 other girls on the tour. And thought they were all 14 years old, as he does with every woman that has not yet given birth here. We got chatting to them, and it turns out that one is from Bangxu (and went to school with Tan's nephew) and she was taking two friends from Hunan on a trip. That made me realise that they must be 18 years old so I asked and they said yes so that's one in the eye for And. One was quite pretty but had a moustache.

The cave spoilt by multi-coloured lights

They were 18 and we only said "hello" and gave them a lift back to Bangxu

Early morning walk and afternoon swim in boxer shorts

I stupidly woke up at 4am. By 6.30 I'd had enough of being awake so I went for a walk to see Pingguo in early morning after a nice rainfall. It was a genuine pleasure to walk around without the manacles of a chaperone. I felt truly free although I only walked around the town for an hour or so.


The guang chang in early morning after a refreshing rainfall

In the afternoon A Wu asked Andge and me to go out swimming. We asked what we would need to swim but were told to just come as we were as that would be fine. As it turned out, when we got to the lake just outside Pingguo, the only people swimming had their own swimming suits. A Wu wanted to show off to the girls, and he had a pair of shorts, so he stripped off and got into the water. As there were women around I duly did the same although my trousers came halfway down my calves and I had boxer shorts underneath. Well f**k it I dived into the warm water and swam around for half an hour. A Wu was knackered after 1 minute and complained about sore arms. Ha ha 1up for the English!

Enjoying a swim in the lake


Three men in a boat

Chickenpox

Oh dear. Leilei has picked up chickenpox from some other kids. Oh well, it has to happen some time...might as well be here...
A bit hungover from the KTV. Here are some pics or where we are living this month that Andrew took:


The quarter-segment shaped living area of our dwelling in Pingguo


One of the bathrooms in our Pingguo house (the other was the same)


Andrew's bedroom. It is normally a teenage girl's but looks like Andrew's student room at uni...

Later in the day we went for a meal with some friends in a bar/restaurant I suggested as it is close to where we used to live last year and has stronger beer on tap. Unfortunately we were called out to another meal at 5pm so we had some there and then And, Leilei, and I got on the tiny electric moped to go to meet our friends later than planned at our place. We had a nice meal and the beer was ok but we all (not Leilei) rather missed the weaker bottled brew.

Here is how we got to the restaurant around 7pm:

A Wu's "birthday" and And's first KTV experience

We went for a walk at around midday. There had been some rain so it wasn't as hot as it had been, however it was still extremely humid. The kind of humidity that dictates that you walk at 1.5 miles per hour. We happened upon a public garden that I'd not been to before. Inside it was full of old people in grey clothes. We had previously been talking about where the old people went and we think we have found an answer. The strange thing was that they were all chanting to each other in some strange harmonies and it seemed like we had trespassed upon some life-size bees nest. I will try to go back and get some video before we leave.

A couple of young blokes from China Telecom came round to sort out some wires for the Internet. I hooked up my modem/router but there was nothing on the line. They told me to wait 30 mins and try again and I did. This time there was definitely a DSL line but no connection. I went to the China Telecom shop and they told me it would still be another day till the service was up. Hmm.

Today was A Wu's birthday. Actually it was last week but he postponed it till we'd arrived as he wanted us to be there to celebrate. We duly went for a meal and duly had more beer and And learnt some more alcohol-related words.

Gan bei'ing at A Wu's birthday meal

A Wu had booked a KTV (Karaoke TV) room for the evening and we went there about 9pm. Andrew had previously been rather worried about the prospect of singing in front of people but for some reason seemed to be rather looking forward to the prospect by the time the meal ended.

As it happened Andge leapt at the opportunity to "sing song" (maybe had something to do with the couple of whiskies he'd managed before going out). We sang "Dreadlock Holiday" and I dare say a few other songs. Later I went home to put Leilei to bed. 45 mins later Tan came home to stay with him so I went back to the KTV bar to find Andge in rather a worse state for wear. In my absence he'd imbibed a few glasses of red wine - luckily here they're pretty weak, but still we'd had a skinful of beer. I got the young ladies to pour him some tea and within half an hour he was back on the beer. I'm sure there's a moral to this story but I'm buggered if I can make sense of it.

And and I at A Wu's birthday karaoke party. Those smiles are genuine (I mean the girls' - ours obviously are)

At least A Wu had the idea to bring some lovely ladies to the KTV bar, who for some reason were happy to have their photographs taken with handsome foreigners (ok, so we would do).


I will probably delete this video

It is rather hot here - mid to high 30s. Outside most of the ladies hold umbrellas to avoid being tanned by the sun. Our house, to add to the problems of the noise and 100+ step climb, is also very stuffy inside except for the two bedrooms with air-conditioning. That doesn't seem to worry the kids though. Qiqi gege (big brother Qiqi - Tan's 2nd sister's 2nd kid) came over today together with his mum and Tan's brother's wife and Waipo. They all slept in the non-air-conditioned room. I would have offered them our room but I got back late that night and didn't realise they were in the house.

Leilei's hair looked ridiculous due to his self-inflicted effort the day before we left the UK. I took him to Lao Ma's salon (the woman who used to be one of Tan's best friends but now isn't). It was a great struggle but we managed eventually to get him shorn and I got most of his old hair over my clothes. He actually looks a lot better now and it must let a lot more heat out. It's also aged him by a good year. And for the first time no-one is asking whether he's a girl or boy.


Qiqi, Leilei and Xixi hiding in the cupboard. Leilei looks like a boy for the first time in China

A Wu's new work opening and another big meal

Xixi practising karate in the house
A close-up of Pingguo bus station with an interesting mosaic effect (And took this)

Today was the opening of A Wu's new business - a stone producing factory based a mile or so outside Pingguo town. It was a fairly auspicious occasion. There was a "magic man" humming something that sounded like mumbo jumbo to us in front of some candles, joss sticks, alcohol and cooked chicken.
Magic Man making mildly mysterious mumblings

It was a blisteringly hot day in the countryside and the whole procedure took a couple of hours, but after a couple of speeches and loud bangers the whole thing kicked off. It's a fairly simple procedure of blasting a mountain so that rocks falls to the ground, then loading the rocks onto tipper lorries that take them a few yards to a chute. The rocks, from a foot to two plus feet in diameter are then tipped down the chute where they are crushed into stones varying from a fraction of an inch to a couple of inches in diameter. These stones then get sifted and placed onto one of three conveyor belts according to size, with the largest returning to be recrushed. Caterpillar diggers then fill blue lorries with the stones, and the lorries carry them off to other factories to make bricks or whatever else you do with stones.


A Wu`s work in full swing

There were a couple of first day issues; the lorries couldn't drive up the slope from the loading area with a full load, and also they tended to leak stones from the back. The first problem was solved by using the digger to help push the lorries up the slope (though I don't see this as a long-term solution). The second problem was solved by pushing cardboard down the back of the lorry and spraying water there to make the stones stick. Again this is not a long-term solution but it was quite fun to watch. Apparently if the lorries were to leak stones on the roads in town they would receive a hefty fine from the environmental authorities.


A lorry getting a helpful shove (note the piercing later) and then finding the stone leak

Around 11am we went to a restaurant for a meal with A Wu and his friends and the wives. Unfortunately in the area where the restaurant was there was no electricity. Which meant no air conditioning. Which meant we went to another part of town to have the meal. I was told that on very hot days, when everyone has A/C on, there is not enough electricity to go around so certain areas are turned off. It must be pretty grim to own a restaurant in one of those areas; they lost a good couple of hundred quid due to that.

At the other restaurant we enjoyed a big meal with beer till 3pm. All the blokes played cai ma with me, and And learnt how to say "drink a glass", "cheers!", "drink alcohol!" and "toilet". A Wu and his friends carried on drinking and eating but we had to get to the estate agent before 4pm so we left around 3pm rather the worse for wear. Tan signed some more documents and we drank some water. Apparently it will take up to a month for bank confirmation for mortgage and other stuff so it's by no means done and dusted.

And`s pal was more worser for the wear

After a couple of hours' sleep And and I went to the Night Market where they do bbq but we wanted some veg to counter the copious amounts of meat we'd consumed in the last two days. We found a place that did fried sweetcorn and bbq'd grass, and I heard someone calling for me - it was a couple of blokes from the tea shop that I frequented last year near our house. This was quite lucky as they had commandeered the only fan in the eating place, that was normally used for cooling the poor person cooking the bbq. We sat down to our first light meal and endured (enjoyed) a couple of beers.

We'd told our friends that we wanted to watch the Khasakstan - England football match at 11pm and were told no problem we could find a place showing it. We went to the KTV bar at 10pm and the ladies set up a couple of tables in front of the tv for us to settle down with a couple of beers. When A Wu realised there was an hour to go he decided we'd go somewhere else and come back later. That somewhere else was a tea house with a very nice interior (internal stream etc). It then transpired we were going to stay there for the football. However things did not look good at 10.50pm as the sports channel was showing two ladies warming up for the French Open tennis final. Our fears were realised when flicking through the 50+ channels there was no sign of football. I was then told there was no chance of watching it as A Ni's friend has lots of satellites and could not find it either. That's not the main problem - I would just like to have been told they don't know rather than going to the effort of taking us out on a guess that it might be on. Had I known earlier And and I would have gone to an Internet cafe to watch it.

We decided not to stay at the tea place, and went with our ladies for a bit more meaty bbq at another place near the guang chang. A Wu, after his earlier marathon beer session, stayed on the water.

Putting on a deposit on a house

We went to look at a new block of flats in the process of being built. Not much more than a shell, but a few of us donned helmets and went up with our current neighbour who is also a cousin and also works for the estate agents selling these properties. Just about everything below the 10th floor was already sold, and there were 17 floors. Interestingly the 3 bedroom flats with a corner view of the guang chang (town square) were bigger than the 4 bedroom ones without such a good view, however the latter did not require a deposit (normally 33%).
Back at the office I decided I'd like one, especially if we could sort out a 10 year mortgage (around 270 quid a month at current rate). Lin Hong straight-away paid the 1500 quid holding fee for us, and for another friend with us who also decided she wanted one. Tan signed some papers but there was no bank input. Apparently we have to come back tomorrow for more. And asked some financial questions that were not answered in a manner to which we are accustomed in the UK, i.e. directly. We worked out for ourselves the compound interest for the different number of years to pay back the mortgage - 10 years would be 7000 quid cheaper than 20 years, at an extra cost to us of 100 quid per month so it was an easy decision.

And on the balcony of an identical flat to the one we want to buy except that this is the 7th floor (higher floors in even less viewable state)

A view of the living room from its mini balcony. On the left is the kitchen door next to the main entrance, then the fourth bedroom/study, one of the bathrooms, and the door that leads to the other three bedrooms.

The view of the guang chang from the main bedroom balcony. Not as good as the view from the corner but probably a bit quieter.

How the block should look in December. If things go well we should have one in the middle on the 14th floor.

A friend and Tan signing some paperwork

A plan of the flat. Note the small furniture to make it look bigger than it is (actually 130m sq).

I woke up at 4.40pm after an hour's kip and it dawned on me that we needed the Internet in our house. I rang Tan, who told me the place would close at 5pm so I hurried out to the China Telecom shop and ordered one Internet. I went for the 88 kuai per month fast option (2MB). I also had to pay a 200 kuai deposit for a modem they didn't give me (but I told them I would use my own). Apparently it will take from 4-7 days. Hmmm.

PM bbq at same place - Brandy and hotel friend came

Back in Pingguo with a horological similarity

Up at 7.30am to have bite to eat and get hotel taxi to airport. Flight to Nanning was on time and uneventful. Met A Wu, A Ni and Chen Mei at airport where we got into A Wu's new car (a 20 year old Nissan Cefiro) and Chen Mei's nice white BMW.
Flew up to Pingguo at 150kph and got there in under 90 mins to have a nice meal in an air-conditioned room, followed by couple of hours kip in our house. Unfortunately our house is on the sweat-inducing 5th floor and our luggage was pretty heavy. Worse than that we are pretty much central, which means that there is loud music blaring out from 8am till after 9pm. Worse than that it is only four songs - 'All Rise', by Blue, plus 'Always Come Back To Your Love' (Samantha Mumba?), and a couple of other English ones that are driving us mad.
In the late afternoon And and I got a couple of SIM cards then went to eat and later had bbq.

Can you see a horological similarity between the photos taken on my first time to Pingguo and the one And took on our first evening?


Pingguo Bus Station in November 2003


Pingguo Bus Station by night in June 2009

That's right - they haven't fixed the clock for over 5 years. Well at least it's right twice a day.

Back to China after 5 months

We couldn't wait more than five months before coming back to China for what may be our last time for a decent duration as Leilei is going to start school later this year.
Drive took 1h30 to Heathrow leaving at 3.50pm
Meal at airport
No sleep on flight - Xixi also not much
HK airport - Andrew realised he'd lost his wedding ring - we asked someone to look for it while we waited for luggage. Miraculously it was found and Andrew was relieved like a man who had had his first dump in seven days.
No time to catch last fast train to Guangzhou, so we arranged a 'bus' from airport. I asked twice if this bus would take us all the way to Guangzhou and was told it would. The bus was a black people carrier that carried us to the border then dumped us off to get on a coach in mainland China. To add insult to injury the company had put us in the wrong coach so we had to move all our stuff into another one in sweat-drenched clothes with half-asleep children.
We got to the stop that we'd been told was 15 mins from airport to be told it was 30 mins. By now it was pissing down with rain and I ran to the front of the hotel where the coach had stopped to arrange to get a taxi-van to take us to the airport. While sorting this out a woman who was on our coach said she was waiting for her husband and they could take us to airport as they had a van. Well I didn't look this gift horse in the mouth and said xie xie very much.
We crammed into the van which was actually very small, but we just managed to get everyone in plus luggage plus the driver's wife and her friend. And managed to crack open a bottle of whisky and took an Awl-sized lug. I managed a bit too. Due to fatigue we felt a little light-headed and shared a laugh as we realised we were now well and truly in China. We paid the man and wife 100 kuai for their time/petrol and got off at airport where we waited a few more minutes for cab to hotel (free service but they didn't allow us to go straight to hotel).
10 minute drive to hotel. Not greatest one on earth but we got some food outside and got to bed around 2.