Ming Zhu Yin Fa Hotel Heyuan

Today another shopping day downtown.

First stop, and eye doctor for Amy's father. There the girls working there loved qiqi, one even gave qiqi a birthday present, an embroidery that she made herself.

Later some more shopping and then after dinner, qiqi visits a traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy and doctor.

Grab breakfast in the Asia International restaurant rotating at 46 stories above Guangzhou. Daylight looks different. Pearl River valley jungle onside and stretching tenements and skyscrapers rising up in the other. I cab 20 minutes to the Guangzhou East station. No signs in English and I walk around trying to read chinese before I find an English speaking ...

Since we've been so busy with many things, we thought we needed to give qiqi a break and enjoy something special. She seems to like animals, so we went to the zoo to give her a first look at real animals.

She seemed to enjoy it, though it was all a bit overwhelming for her.

Today Qiqi went to visit a beach resort, actually a future beach resort since this place is not finished yet. Most of the condos have already been sold out, even though the place is not finished yet.

It was only about 80km from downtown shenzhen but it took about 3 hrs to get there by bus! The road system is not yet built up in this area, so travel take a much longer time than we are used to in the US.

... normal for this trip.

But before we left to come back, I noticed one of the tires was flat! So we had to find a local tire repair shop (see photos) and then begin our journey back.

The trip back took about 4hrs! due to the traffic and two accidents that we had to pass along the way.

But we arrived back safely, and have decided to return the rental car! it is still much easier to take taxi and public transportation than to try to drive on our own.

On the weekend of May 2nd to 3rd, Eduardo and me went on a trip to HeYuan, still in Guangdong, but some three hours away from Guangzhou (by train). In fact, we wanted to be five guys being on that trip, but the others missed the train in the morning. Well ... Eduardo, my host in Guangzhou, proposed to go to HeYuan due to the nice scenery around this city. Likewise, our expectation was to find a rather small town in the countryside ...

Went bike riding today, sore bum. But I kept up at least. We rode over the bumpiest of dirt tracks; I only fell off once but Kieran had a major stack breaking his camera along the way. My camera started playing up in Hong Kong so we're keeping our fingers crossed with the pictures. Our guide took us to her house for lunch, some was nice, some not so. Then Kieran rode back to town and I went on a bamboo raft ride. I took some great ...

... breathtaking later this afternoon we are doing a cooking course and this evening will attend a light show. Tomorrow we have planned a raft ride well I do K wasn't sure so he opted not to and the following morning we do painting and K has also planned on calligraphy. I forgot tomorrow is also our bike ride with lunch at a farmstay provided. A very full schedule. We lucked out so ...

Arrived here late Tuesday afternoon. Headed for Ken's place and once he arrived from work, we went for beers and proper food - oh the joys of streak and spuds :-) Wednesday - meet up with Ken's friend, Caren, who's also on a world tour. Ken took us to the mainland, by ferry, and we got to see the HK skyline. From there we headed to the 'peak tram', which shows some excellent views of ...

The Name Game One thing that a lot of Chinese have done to make things easier for us foreign folk living here is to adopt an English name. I think this was eventually done after years of frustration with foreigners absolutely mangeling their Chinese names. There must have come a point in time when the English speaking community in China collectively said, "Screw it, they can't pronounce our names' and they're not going to be able to pronounce them anytime in the foreseeable ...