IT, Sausages, Haircuts, OAP Trip, Man-eating Fish

January 1st “The January man he goes around in woollen coat and boots of leather” (Christy Moore) Well no woolly coats and boots here but not an auspicious start to the New Year, I spent most of the day not far from the throne room again!

January 2^nd My usual remedy for ‘the runs’ was not working so it was a nice slow walk to the hospital, just up the hill. When we got there, we found they had moved to a new place half way down the hill! I gave the doctor a print out detailing everything that had happened since my biopsy, including a restaurant meal on the evening of 29^th December. He settled on a bad case of food poisoning the same as me. Sigh of relief.

In the afternoon, I started getting worried again, blood was appearing in my poop. Checking Dr. Google, it seems that 100% of men who have a prostate biopsy have blood in their poop. Strangely, I didn’t until today. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

January 3^rd Stomach seems to be improving, had a walk to the supermarket for some probiotics based on advice from daughter Sammy J. and various sites on the web. Managed to stay out of the smallest room in the house!

January 4^th It’s just one of those days that you have now and then. I’m sure there’s a tune that goes like that. First off, I hate the aftermath of the ‘runs’. I feel like there’s a ton of concrete in my belly now. The doctor gave me ten sachets of ‘polyfilla’ with no instructions. The pharmacist told me to stop taking them when I had stopped running. I guess I took one too many! Anyway, enough of my health problems, at least for now, or this will turn into an episode of ‘Emergency Ward 10’, (for you younger readers think of ‘Casualty’).

Huan’s PC was playing up a lot today again, Windows 10 freezing on start-up, so I decided enough was enough, and took it to the repair shop. We had to leave it there because the technician, (loosely speaking) was out until the afternoon. I got Huan to explain as much as possible, including the fact that this PC has previously had an HDD problem, repaired by software. He called us at lunch time and asked us to bring the cable as the PC was OK. “Which cable?” I ask! I ended up taking the power cable, the VGA cable and the monitor. Guess what, the technician wasn’t there yet again. The lady in the shop told us the monitor was not working correctly. I spent a few minutes with her and did some fault finding my way. She was right, but the VGA part of the mother board was also not working. They had been testing using a VGA/HDMI adaptor. Anyway, we ended up buying Huan a new monitor with an HDMI connection. She is happy again now and that’s the most important thing.

January 5th No walks today, I think I’ll let my body get a little stronger first. I spent a lot of the morning online with Microsoft Support. With all the freeze-ups and repairs that had taken place on Huan’s PC I was no longer able to network them. They eventually sorted it out for me. Yet again, for those in China, there are benefits to having legal software installed on your PC!

The rest of the day was spent putting all the data back into Huan’s PC that I had removed before taking it to the repair shop. Photos take the longest time of course. Some software had to be re-installed, Alipay, QQ, etc. This time I installed QQ Interational for her, maybe it will stop half the rubbish that seems to come with QQ locally.

January 6^th Spent a lazy day indoors again. I had left our two computers supposedly exchanging information over FolderMatch when I went to bed last night, only to find out this morning that I had made a ‘booboo’. Before going to bed, as usual, I switched the wifi off, which, unknown to me, stopped any data transfer. Our computers, for some reason, are networked through the wifi unit. (I should have remembered this!) Anyway, that meant that today was more data transfer and re-installation of more software on Huan’s PC. She’s now all singing, all dancing again. All data there and the software to view it, Picasa, VLC, Libre Office etc. In the end, quite a good day.

January 7^th “Monday’s child is fair of face me…” Shopping day again, not a very big shop though as we still had a lot left from last week! Wandering around Baijiahui, our local supermarket, I spotted three faces that definitely were a bit ‘fair’ and not local. My first thought was “Russian tourists”. However, following them down the escalator I heard English being spoken. Of course I had to get in there didn’t I? “English Huan! They’re speaking English!” No shyness on my part! It turns out that one was from the UK, one from New Zealand and one from Tunisia. Foot in mouth disease, I said to him, “You don’t look like a Tunisian.” Immediately I found myself apologising for my PC oversight, in this case PC being Political Correctness. (God knows how I would survive in the UK these days!) It seems they are here helping out with the Olympic weight lifting teams in our local sports hotel. It’s a government run hotel built especially for events like this based around the Olympics. At least it’s being used now. Hopefully we’ll meet up with them again in the next three weeks before they return to Beijing.

January 8^th Life is almost back to normal now. We had a nice, steady, eight kilometre walk, down one side of the river and back the other.

It seems that either the owner of the hotel that used to be adorned with a ‘Holiday Inn’ sign has started work again, or someone else has taken over. Can’t say I think much of the colour scheme though, and there’s no longer a Holiday Inn sign.

And the last photo for today, (well you haven’t had any this month so far). My son keeps making me jealous on Facebook by uploading photos of him eating bratwurst. I wasn’t able to find any of that ilk, but here I am with a 哈尔滨儿童香肠 (Hā'ěrbīn értóng xiāngcháng) otherwise known as a Harbin children’s sausage. It’s called a children’s sausage because it has leaner meat and less fat than the ‘adult’ versions. It’s nice, but unfortunately, a ‘brattie’ still beats it by miles.

Finally today, back to Huan’s computer again. I couldn’t get the Taobao chat app to work at all and I needed her to speak to the buyer to make sure I bought the right battery for our laptop. In the end, it would appear that Microsoft Edge doesn’t support the necessary pop-ups. Using Internet explorer fixed it! Battery ordered, now all I need to do is find some software.

January 9^th An improvement on yesterday’s walk, just over ten kilometres today. We still went the same way though, up and down the river but with a couple of extra bits to give us that little more distance.

Some of you may remember previous blogs with views from our bedroom balcony, some with a torrential river, some without, but all with a fairly nice view. It’s not quite the same now! Hopefully when all the work is completed it will look presentable enough but as you can see, it will definitely look a lot more man-made than natural!

And lastly for today, Huan removing my power! She does like to give me haircuts, far more than I like receiving them. Today I tried to make a video of her cutting my hair and me cutting hers. For some reason my camera, instead of recording a whole video, only recorded two short 5 minute segments at the beginning of the process. I’ve asked on the camera FB page what went wrong, it looks like possibly the SD card I am using is not good enough for 4K videos. Anyway, here’s a screen shot.

January 10^th The weather forecast was fine, the weather was not! Ah well, lazy morning then. I also had a lazy afternoon because Huan had another committee meeting to attend. It seems that the existing maintenance company have been asked to leave by the local courts, they have agreed to go in ten days. Who the new company is I have no idea, neither do I have any idea if they will make any progress in getting our gas put back on! I don’t particularly want to drill holes in the kitchen wall and put a gas bottle on the balcony, but we could end up doing just that.

After dinner I had a nice fast walk. I was alone so managed eight kilometres in one hour and twenty five minutes. With Huan in tow, it would probably have taken an hour and forty eight minutes. “Where was she?” I hear you ask. Well, some of the ladies in our buildings are doing a little 大妈跳舞, (Dàmā tiàowǔ), the literal translation of which is ‘Aunt dancing’. We usually just call it ‘Dama Dancing’. In my view it’s time Huan had someone else to talk to and have a little fun now and then so I’m glad for her. She only started the day before yesterday so I was absolutely forbidden to make a video! I did take a couple of photos though and I will get a video at sometime in the future. (PS What do you think of Huan’s haircut?)

January 11^th Nice long perambulation this fine morning, nearly thirteen kilometres. We decided to keep it fairly steady though, no ‘sprinting’. Huan wanted me to make a video of the street market that we often walk through so being the dutiful husband that I am, I did. If you want to see it, you’ll have to visit my YouTube page. Meanwhile, here’s a screen shot, not of the market, but of us with me introducing “General Dogsbody” and the “Prime Minister”. Can you guess which is which?

Evening time I was back on the laptop again trying to get it to speak to me in English instead of Chinese. I got there eventually although I’m still not over happy with it. I think we have major problems with this laptop as it was bought new with a Chinese install, which I got them to change to English. I think they did that with an illegal version. Later on we converted it back to Chinese for Huan. Somewhere along the way I think all the original Acer tools and stuff disappeared!

January 12^th A lazy day today, cereal for breakfast, a nice slow walk, full English for lunch, German bread and Italian salami sandwiches for tea. It all made a pleasant change.

January 13th No people in our house this morning, just two fat lumps of lard! Huan didn’t fancy walking, too lazy, and I hadn’t slept well so I was too lazy too. It wasn’t much different in the afternoon although this lardy lump did some more work on the laptop. I spent ages on the internet trying to find a way to get the right recovery disks or software but as it was bought in China, it seems almost impossible. Gave up in the end! Instead, I went through all the folders in Windows explorer deleting any that had anything to do with software that was no longer installed. This included Alibaba, Alipay, Tencent, Kingsoft and all kinds of other stuff. The total number of files deleted was over 21,000! I was a little apprehensive when I went for a restart but it seems OK. I followed that by installing my (bought in Harbin) MS Office 2003, all OK there. Now the little beast is all ready for our next trip to hospital. I’ll be able to edit photos, keep next month’s blog up to date and watch some videos while I’m lying in bed wondering what’s going on!

January 14^th “Just another manic Monday.” Well, not so manic really as Monday of course, as you all know, is shopping day. We also seem to have found the best time to go, early in the morning as soon as the store is open. Here’s the Minister of Finance at the checkout!

January 15^th After a two day hiatus neither of us really felt like walking but we went for it anyway. We did fairly well, but we, or should I say I, was too lazy to take any photos. Instead, here is the route we walked. Spot all the twists and turns to reach eleven and a half kilometres.

January 16^th Boots back on today and a little longer walk taking in a little of the country side and our mountain park walk. For me there is something really special about mountains against a pure backdrop of blue sky and that’s what I was looking for today. I didn’t find it but I thought you might like this one instead.

And just to prove we did the mountain park walk here’s one of each of us nearly at the bottom again.

January 17^th Off the beaten track today and a little exploring down paths and tracks we haven’t been down before. Sometimes it makes a change and today we didn’t stray too far. Wildlife spotting was not quite what I expected, no pigs, ducks or chickens, just a few dogs. Mum ran away and one little black pup seemed to have been ostracised by the others but these three were very happy together. I couldn’t get very close, they were far too nervous. I guess if I had sat there for a while they would eventually have sneaked up to say hello. Ah well, never mind, they are cute though aren’t they?

On our way home we heard music coming from somewhere, a bit like a brass band. It took some searching but we found them in the end. It wasn't a brass band, more of a saxophone one, with the addition of some clarinets, flutes and a trombone. They might not have sounded perfect but, bearing in mind who they are, I think they're doing pretty well. They are in fact, all 'snowbirds', (retirees who travel to Hainan in the winter months), including one of our neighbours. Nearly all of them have taken up learning an instrument since they retired. They certainly put me to shame! Check out my YouTube channel for the video.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQdDjjD_0qYthEuj9UwQeuQ?fbclid=IwAR168TTJfSjZiCsfs6qA8Jvl271YGfOxHmt2n3OzxLmwgJWlidiC_w73eDI

Christmas has been and gone as I’m sure you all know but today we got a Christmas card along with a calendar from my youngest brother and his family. Check out how it arrived, and what it says on the envelope!

Lucky us, we also got another pressie today. Our tenants in Ledong, despite our protestations, had asked their daughter in Harbin to send us some sausages. She then phoned to confirm our address, when we again protested that it really wasn’t necessary. She didn’t listen of course so today this is what arrived. I guess that’s my lunch sorted out for the next two weeks!

January 18^th No boots today but a long distance! Well, no walking either! Huan was busy for the first half of the morning making dumplings and patties. Once she was finished and we’d had our morning coffee it was downstairs to the car repair shop. Our car wouldn’t start again yesterday, the standing voltage had gone down since Monday, (when we did have to have a jump start) to 6.8 volts. While Huan was busy I had been googling and decided that the battery definitely needed replacing. Should be easy, yes? Well, not in Wuzhishan. It was not possible to buy another battery for our car anywhere here so we had to drive to the dealership in Sanya. It seems because we have a 2.3L engine our battery is special, the cost of the replacement was ¥800.00, (about £90.00).

It doesn’t look very special does it? Note to self – When this battery looks like it is on its last legs, look for a replacement on Taobao! We also got some clarification while we were there of the new rules about buying cars in Hainan. As of the 1^st March the sales of diesel and petrol cars will be severely limited. Hainan natives, with their Hukou (household registration) in Hainan will be able to buy, provided they have won the number plate lottery. Mainlanders and foreigners will not be allowed to buy at all. So, if we win the lottery there will be no new car as I’m a foreigner and Huan is officially a mainlander. Of course we could, as we are allowed to, buy an electric car. Problems that come to mind are range, coming up the mountain from Sanya or Haikou, public charging points, they hardly exist yet and lastly domestic charging, when you live in an apartment block that doesn’t even have enough parking never mind any charging points! I guess if we get that rich we’ll be renting cars a lot!

January 19^th Well we really motored today, five kilometres in fifty four minutes! What’s more, that ‘little slip of a girl’, who says I walk too fast, was with me every step of the way, at least until the last few hundred metres. She only slowed down then because we met a neighbour so Huan walked home with her, having a gossip. Our route was also ‘up and down’ not all on the level. Check out the screenshots below.

January 20^th Having broken the world speed record yesterday we decided to slow down a little today. Huan thought we were going very slow until I showed her the Endomondo readings. I think today it was me trying to slow her down. She was also playing ‘director’ again with subtle hints about the scenery and photos. Who am I to argue?

It was the leaves on the ground that took Huan’s fancy, a touch of Autumn on a tropical island. What took my fancy was a new hotel being built. Well, not being built, being refurbished. I don’t know if it was an apartment block before or a hotel before, but here is the sign of what it will be! Once it’s completed, I’ll try and do a Keymission video there and report back to you.

January 21^st “Gloomy Monday morning / I’ll never make it to work on time”. (The Black Hollies – worth a listen). Of course, I don’t have to make it to work on time any day, just to the supermarket on Monday. An uneventful trip although a little worrying. For some reason there was almost no milk left at all and what was there, was ‘skimmed’. Personally I can’t stand it, full fat is always the order of the day for me, but beggars can’t be choosers! The rest of the day was scanning some documents and then synchronising folders between Huan’s PC and mine. I quite like Mondays really.

In the evening Huan came back from her D² (re-read previous days if you can’t remember!) and told me all about a planned OAP trip on Thursday to a park somewhere near Sanya, a night in a hotel and a boat trip, somewhere near Sanya. She asked me if I wanted to go, (Price - ¥80.00 each.) Do you know, I’m pretty sure I never answered the question, but we’re going anyway! Photos and report will follow!

January 22^nd Boots back on this morning and a walk down the country roads towards Changhao village with a detour through some smaller lanes and tracks. No really steep hills, and no speed either so we both really enjoyed it. Not having taken photos for a while we went a bit berserk today and took thirty two. You won’t want to see them all of course so we’ll just put two here. The first is a gaggle of geese. I actually took a short video of these for the noise they were making. No wonder people use them as ‘guard dogs’.

The second is a little piggy who didn’t go wee wee all the way home, or anywhere else for that matter. Its relatives ran like mad but he / she didn’t. We weren’t sure why but looking at the way it was holding its tail I thought it may have been a little ‘constipated’! Anyway, we didn’t want to get too close on this occasion.

January 23^rd Lovely weather this morning, not too chilly and definitely not too hot, so we decided a countryside walk was in order. It is nice to get off the tarmac roads and take the tracks through the trees now and then. We don’t live in a big city but like all towns, there is always noise of some sort. Getting out into the countryside takes us away from all that and gives us some wonderful scenery to boot!

Another video of the local ‘wildlife’ taken today, not half as noisy as yesterday. The ‘parent’ was very quiet indeed and just tried to subtly keep us away from the brood. They were cheeping away like mad but very quietly, so much so that they are difficult to hear on the video unless the volume is turned right up. They are cute though, aren’t they?

January 24^th Day one of our Snowbird tourist trip or perhaps I should say the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ because we never seem to know where we are going. Here we are on the bus.

Our first port of call turned out to be Betelnut River Hot Springs, the driver got lost going there, it’s not so easy. We had to do a couple of U-turns on the highway (where allowed of course) before we eventually found the place. Our immediate need, or at least the “team’s immediate need” was food so it was straight to the restaurant. Now if you go alone you probably get a choice, we didn’t. It wasn’t bad though and enough for me, I don’t like to eat too much at lunch time.

After lunch we were left to our own devices until four PM when we had to return to the restaurant for dinner. We took that time to sample all the various pools and of course I was busy testing out my Nikon Keymission in the water again. Here are the ladies in the Green Tea pool. I’m not sure why they weren’t drinking it!

One thing we always do in these places is go for a fish supper! That is, you are the supper and the fish eat you! Here’s me being nibbled, including in my ears!

Those pesky little blighters managed to draw blood on my chest, where, according to the hospital in Haikou I had an infection. Anti-biotics are not working so well, perhaps I should spend a lot more time with the fishes!

We had no choice at dinner again but it was a pretty good meal and most definitely filled the rather large space in my insides. We had no food choices because we went with a tourist company, two days, including all meals and one night in the hotel, ¥80.00 per person. I would recommend a visit, maybe, more details, including (individual) prices, phone number and map, can be found in my album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gM8E1C2CtJ3FmPML6

Our second ‘activity’ was to be an evening boat trip. True to type, the bus driver got lost trying to find his way out of the hot springs village! Success came eventually though and we were off. There were no further mishaps and although we were a little late, we weren’t the last coach to arrive. Here’s a picture of our ‘little’ boat. You can see more in my album

https://photos.app.goo.gl/R1zyVx9W5WjfmWWM9

We then had a two hour drive to our hotel, in Xinlong. No photos from there, it was too dark. The hotel didn’t even have a name outside and no business cards either. On the surface it was pretty good. All the walls had been freshly painted and it appeared quite new. Looking more closely told a different story though. The rubbish bins in the entrance were overflowing, a bad omen to start with. Once we got to the room, we had to use the key to open the door. The card didn’t work, and the ‘slot’ for electricity was disabled. The deadlock on the door didn’t work, the balcony door didn’t lock. The glass shower ‘wall’ had disappeared. There was no toilet paper. The A/C had gone yellow with age and lastly, the kettle lid was broken. At least the beds were OK and we were cream crackered enough to sleep all night.

January 25^th We had to be up and out by half past six to be taken somewhere for breakfast. Why don’t Chinese hotels serve breakfast? It wasn’t far, but for me not worth it. No choice of course, just rice soup and bread with a little pickle, not even any boiled eggs!

Then began our second day which turned out much different to what we had been expecting. We knew there would be some shopping involved but we also thought there was a trip to a park somewhere. We were wrong!

Our first port of call was a mattress outlet. The tour guide gave us all a long speech explaining that we had no choice but to ‘follow the leader’ as this was how they made money and kept costs down. Fine, but three hours of lectures and people trying to sell you foam mattresses? They weren’t cheap either. The one you can see here costs ¥10,680.00 which at today’s rates is £1,200.00. I haven’t lived in the UK for a long time but that still seems steep for a foam mattress.

I got fed up after a while and managed to escape to the attached shopping mall, ‘Capital Outlets’. Being so early, I had almost the whole place to myself. I found a nice little boat but at ¥810,000.00 I decided Huan wouldn’t let me have it. I thought she might let me have this though, two seats, space for shopping and 4WD. Only problem, foreigners can’t buy cars in Hainan anymore!

Back on the bus after more than three hours, it took longer for us than all the other coach parties because one of our party spent ¥20,000.00 in the mattress outlet. Time for lunch then. For me, a bowl of rice and a little egg plant. I had to keep reminding myself how cheap this trip was.

Next stop was ‘pots and pans’ or what they called a European Utensil’ outlet. This time I refused to go in and had a wander around what is called in English ‘Xinlong Bar Street’ whereas in Chinese it’s ‘Xinlong Style Street’. There were definitely no bars and not a great deal of style but I did bump into another foreigner. I did try to have a chat with him but he seemed a little reluctant. It was also quite difficult to get him to smile. As you can probably guess, he is from India and he was working for a restaurant there.

Third stop was a ‘Health’ outlet, probably Chinese medicine. I stayed outside again, lay on the grass and looked up at the sky!

Was it over yet, were we going to visit a nice park? No, our fourth stop was a ‘Jade’ outlet. Here’s a photo of Huan giving me the (not quite evil) eye for mumbling and grumbling again. I didn’t go in here either.

It still wasn’t over, and by now I wasn’t the only unhappy teddy. One of the other passengers was trying to get the coach to go back to Wuzhishan when the guide told her, we have one more place to go. It should have been two, but we spent too much time in the mattress outlet!

So our fifth, and last outlet, was Xinlong Coffee. This time I agreed to go in. I didn’t stay in long though. Like all the outlets today, photography, stills or video, is not allowed. Of course all those with mobile phones, doing it sneakily, were fine. I had my camera around my neck so was singled out. If you can avoid the lectures this isn’t a bad place, a little history to see, and a lot of tourist paraphernalia to buy. I’m still wondering though which tourists buy dishcloths. Question for you, recognise the wallpaper?

No dinner today, just the coach back home now. Our guide left us here, I assume ready for her next bunch of tourists tomorrow. We went back down the highway to Lingshui, turned off for Baoting and then carried on to Wuzhishan. Five lots of shopping in one day is enough to wear anybody out, and Huan is no exception!

January 26^th & 27^th Lots of work going through videos, converting, combining etc, then the photos too. Not so easy with three different cameras to work from. Lightworks especially was a problem when combining MOV and mp4 files. Still I got there in the end. You can see the videos of day one on my YouTube channel. Day two videos will stay with me! Last job, update the blog and sync folders from my PC to Huan’s.

January 28^th Just a bop bop bopping a shop shop shopping along! Yes, it’s Monday. The weather was also pretty miserable so that was it, at least until nine in the evening when the electricity went off. It was only our building, again! Someone eventually realised that no one else was going to call the maintenance company so they did. I was in ‘grumpy old man’ mode of course and was busy saying that China could land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon but we couldn’t have a stable electricity supply. I used a lot of other examples too but I think Huan only translated this one, probably just as well. The response from one old lady was to quote from Chinese news that “Europe is banning the use of the 500 Euro note”. Now what that had to do with anything I have no idea! When the ‘electricians’ arrived we had ‘Christmas’ lights for a while, on then off, then on then off while they tried to narrow down the location of the problem. You’ll never guess where it was, the flat above us, which not so long ago had been leaking water into our kitchen and balcony. The electricians just removed their breaker completely so they’re in for a shock (pun intended) when they return.

January 29^th Miserable weather again today! Binge watched ‘The Bill’.

January 30^th Beautiful weather this morning so, not before time, we had a stroll around the river. We’d had six days of no walking and I think we were both more than ready for it. Not far from the house we spotted our first ‘wildlife’, maybe spring is in the air. This looks a lot different to the slugs that I have seen in the UK, longer and thinner, what do you think?

Now you may remember me saying that I particularly liked the mountains when they are set against a clear blue sky. Today they were!

January 31^st Last day of what seems to have been a short month, probably due to ‘something on my mind’. We took a walk around the town today, Huan decided that a leg of lamb would be fine for Chinese New Year. I have been trying to get her not to bother this year. I failed but at least she has agreed no ten course meal! As it was the last day, I was looking out for photos, without much success I’m afraid. All I could find was a little flora, no fauna. First it was the ornamental flowers, these are all over Wuzhishan for the Spring Festival holiday period. This is the display we passed today.

Second, it was a tree. “What kind of tree?” I hear you ask. Well, I’m afraid that is one for you to answer because I have no idea, other than it is not bananas!

So, that’s it for this month, not as long or varied as usual for which I do apologise. Next month’s missive will either be posted very early, or very late, I haven’t quite decided yet. From me, and from the C in C it’s goodbye until then!

Being Tourists in Haikou, Prostate, Biopsy, Christmas, Cancer, New Year

December 1st “Once upon a Christmas night the girls were telling fortunes: taking their slippers off their feet and throwing them out of the gate.” Not a pop song this time but a poetic epigraph (translated from the Russian) taken from “December” from “The Seasons” by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

It is December of course, and the first job of every December is to change the SD card in the car. We now have 1743 Christmas songs to listen to until January 6^th. Thank God Huan doesn’t get bored with them!

First walk of the month today, we had to go today because we’ll be off to Haikou soon and will probably miss a few days. The ‘snowbirds’ are certainly back in force this year, here they are listening to three saxophone players on the road to 21 Hotel. (Many Chinese people take up hobbies when they retire and music features quite strongly amongst those hobbies.)

Something else we often see on this road but we’ve never mentioned it before, car washing! Yes, people will spend loadsa money on a BMW but won’t pay to wash it, or even use their own water. Instead they’ll use a stream at the side of the road!

December 2^nd Writing this in retrospect, we went to Haikou on Sunday for an appointment with Dr Tim on Monday. Our destination was the Jing Lan Boutique Inn, a small hotel right across from the hospital, very convenient. Checking the price list as we were checking in I noticed that you could have an ‘o’clock’ stay for ¥80.00. I’m assuming that means one hour, no shady business allowed though, it says so on the back of the door. Strange how we got business cards left outside the door every night offering massages from skimpily clad ladies!

As we were early enough we had the whole afternoon to spare and decided to walk to the end of the street in the hopes of seeing the sea. Lo and behold we stumbled on a park and the sea. The park is called Baishamen Park and is well worth a visit. If you have children it’s even more worth going, there’s plenty to do. We just walked around a lot and then did our impression of the film ‘African Queen’. It’s easy to get there. The park is located on the north coast of Haidian island. Take the ‘clocktower’ bridge and head on up Renmin Da Dao until you reach the end. To see more photos go to my Baishamen album, this is the link:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/er7R8gM8WTTxcm9HA

December 3^rd Appointment with Dr Tim. I was worried that I may have the beginnings of skin cancer and also wanted blood tests for cancer screening and PSA. From Dr Tim’s we went to the dermatology department and it seems I don’t have what I thought. Dr Google had led me to suspect that I may have Basal Cell Carcinoma. According to the dermatologist I have some kind of infection and it should be cleared with two different types of cream. I hope that’s the case anyway! The blood test results would take longer, two days in fact, so extra nights booked in the hotel.

After lunch we headed off to Mova Plaza to visit Decathlon and buy me some much needed walking footwear so that I don’t keep wearing my sandals, and my feet, out. Successful mission, and not too expensive. We stopped off at Zoo Café for a much needed drink. They did very well with my ‘unusual’ request. I asked for an iced coffee, but only half full, the other half being taken up by ice cream. It was lovely. We also met a couple of friends!

December 4^th A whole day free today, what to do? Well, I remembered Jake writing about a zoo in Guilin Yang so that was our plan. I hadn’t realised just how big Haikou is! Still, we made it there with no getting lost. The zoo is called “Cosy Lake Park Zoo” and it is just that. It’s not very big and it’s got lots of small lakes. I loved it though, apart from one small problem. In fact, I should say hundreds of small problems. We had to park on the road outside because the car park was full of coaches. Unfortunately, they were school coaches! This meant that for a couple of hours I had no peace whatsoever! It wouldn’t be so bad if only one would ask me a question at one time, instead of hundreds at the same time. Still, we mustn’t begrudge them their extracurricular activities. At least they got to go the zoo, I never did. We were always too poor for school trips.

It was a wonderful morning though and we took hundreds of photos, one of which you can see below. He, or she, was really having fun with my hair! Once again you can check all the other photos in the album - ”Cozy Lake Zoo Park” and just for you, here’s the link:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/96MkVA2bSLggBXdj8

December 5th Morning free today, we had to make sure we were back in the hospital by four o’clock in the afternoon to collect my results and show them to Dr Tim. So instead of planning a destination we just headed west out of Haikou, towards Chengmai, looking for tourist signs on the way. As usual, some led nowhere or to dead tourist sites but we were in luck. We spotted signs for Yong Qing temple and it was there, it was open, and even better, cheaper for me than Huan! I got the OAP’s rate. It’s quite a nice place with a beach and walkway behind it. Our entrance included a free coffee for me. I’m not sure why only me but I wasn’t complaining. We did half the temple insides then sat on the beach to have our ‘refreshments’ before finishing off our little tour. Yet again, too many photographs were taken, here’s a little taster for you. The rest you can see by following this album link:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LfTJ9jtmaCc9c7rH7

On our way back we stopped at a Foshan coffee rest stop on the beach road. I can recommend it if you are out that way. Just be careful of the entrance it’s right on a set of traffic lights with a bus lane on your right when you want to turn in. Food is also available of course but if you prefer western style snacks such as a club sandwich, chips etc you need to visit after two o’clock in the afternoon. On the beach, just next door, there were people kite surfing. Sorry about the quality of the picture, I had the wrong camera with me.

Back to the hospital for the results. My ‘first look’ gave me some relief and some worry. Sharing them with Dr Tim confirmed what I thought. The ‘cancer markers’ were all well within the normal ranges, hence the relief. The PSA test results, on the other hand, were well out of the normal limits. More tests will be needed so another visit to the hospital arranged for next week to see Hainan’s #1 urologist. I’m still hoping that the elevated level of my results will not mean anything too bad. According to Dr Google, this is possible!

Some non-medical advice from Dr Tim was where to get some ‘different food’ for our dinner this evening. He directed us to a Philippine restaurant called ‘The Porch Café’, across the road from the north gate of the university. A good choice indeed! We started with lumpiang, a Philippine version of spring rolls, then I had a chicken curry and Huan had ‘pancit’, a Philippine version of rice noodles. All very tasty, a place worth visiting much more often. As well as Philippine food they serve Italian, Mexican etc.

December 6^th Shopping day and return to Wuzhishan. As usual our first stop was the wholesale market for sausages, bacon and frozen chips. Then it was off to Corner’s Deli to top up on marmalade, cheese, cream, sandwich meat etc. Unfortunately still no mincemeat this year so no mince pies, again. We had some problems getting out of the car park, there are no attendants any more. You have to use WeChat wallet on your phone. Guess what? We both have WeChat but neither of us has the wallet app! Eventually, with the help of a security guard and a passer by we succeeded. Our third stop was RT Supermarket, they have the best sandwich bread in Hainan and we had left space for six large loaves in the freezer. We got stuck in this car park too! Getting out was only possible eventually by Huan talking to someone on the exit intercom and leaving ‘actual money’ on top of the ticket barrier machine! Our fourth, and final, stop was our favourite garden centre so that Huan could pick up another two large pots for the balcony. No car park to worry about here! After that, the highway beckoned and what a difference that makes. No winding mountain roads and a saving of at least an hour for the journey home. Just think how much more often we’ll be able to go shopping!

December 7^th Slept very late today, Huan had to wake me up at nine O’clock. I had gone to bed late with all the catching up of photos, videos, dashcam videos etc. I still had a lot more to do today so lazily, we scrapped our walk. Huan was also busy ironing, then putting up the Christmas tree, (late this year). I did help a little with the decorations, honestly!

December 8^th Well we had great weather in Haikou but it’s fairly miserable here. It was raining when we woke up but we did manage to get five kilometres in without getting too wet. I even bought Huan a rain hat!

On our way home we stopped by the water cooler repairman who told us that he would fix it if we agreed to pay ¥90.00. You may remember that figure from earlier when we had in fact agreed to pay for the repair. We agreed again. Ah well, all’s well that ends well. He called us in the afternoon, we picked up the cooler, paid the money and took it home. It works!

December 9^th Still miserable weather today. Luckily the rain did hold off most of the morning. It did try but we were not worried by any downpours. I had my new shoes on today. They must be OK as we did ten kilometres in just less than two hours!

Almost home and we spotted some local wildlife. It has been a while hasn’t it? Huan’s first question was whether or not it was edible. Now if there had been dozens of them maybe I would have investigated further, but one out on his own?

December 10^th “These boots were made for walking / And that’s just what they do / Today they went a long long way / And took me with them too!” Well, they aren’t smelly enough yet to go very far on their own. They went fifteen kilometres today in only two hours and fifty minutes. Huan thinks she’s not very fit but when I reached the 21 Hotel and turned around to go back down, I found her about 250 metres from the top so she only walked 500 metres less than me. That means all of her 5k’s were less than one hour as well. She’s happy because, according to her, she’s losing her belly. I didn’t think she had much of one in the first place!

On our way down I asked Huan if she could spot anything different. She couldn’t. However, if you check this photo, you will note it’s taken on a hairpin bend. A short while ago, from either side of the hairpin it was impossible to see the other side because of the trees and undergrowth between them. Now it’s a mini farm!

And for today’s wild life, something not so wild. Huan was wondering how they got all the ducks in the bag. I told her they were born there and grew up there!

December 11^th “On the road again.” Another song for you. Back to Haikou for my appointment tomorrow. I must say, again, that the new highway makes a huge difference. The only thing we have to remember is that it’s not highway speed limits until we reach the Ledong exit! Long walks today, three in total giving us just over eleven kilometres. We just walked around the main part of Haidian island. There is a shopping mall on the island, in Chinese it’s called Haidian City, in English, for some reason, it’s called Haden City. Huan bumped into someone famous outside the ZMAX cinema there.

Later on we found more ‘empty spaces’. Unfortunately I hadn’t brought my Keymission on the walk. This is like a little European village. The security guards told us it was now impossible to rent or buy here. Someone living in one of the few occupied ones told us that the government had given them one in exchange for their land. They also said the price for the others was ¥10,000,000.00! We did have a prowl around inside one of the empty ones, we could live there, no problem!

December 12^th At the hospital nice and early for my appointment with the urologist. It seems having an appointment doesn’t make any difference, you just join the queue like everyone else！ I was #9. The doctor, who Dr Tim recommended, spoke English fairly well. He was being ‘watched’ or ‘assisted’ by four trainee doctors. To my surprise, there was no ‘rectal examination’, in fact it was just another piece of paper to send me for an MRI test. If Dr Tim had been allowed to do that I could have skipped a stage. So more trips to cashiers, then MRI centre to check what medicines or chemicals required, then back to cashiers then back to MRI again. Appointment made for tomorrow meaning another night in Haikou.

We then had a much needed lunch, for me anyway. I had been fasting since yesterday evening just in case it was required for my appointment. We had Won Ton soup in our usual breakfast place. It filled a hole, and warmed us up. Haikou is pretty chilly this week! With the rest of the day to waste we had another long walk. We ended up crossing over the ‘big’ bridge to Haikou, Century Bridge. Here’s a panorama looking east.

Qilou was the next stop, where I knew we could get a nice hot, fresh, Foshan coffee. While there I did a bit of haggling.

Huan fancied tofu and vegetables for dinner so we ate out at the street market. I found something meatier! From there it was a short hop, skip and a jump back to the hotel. This is what you share the pedestrian crossings with in Haikou.

December 13th A lazy start to the day. After breakfast straight back to the hotel where I wrote up the blog to date. Huan watched TV while I watched YouTube. An interesting  life we lead at times. My appointment today was 13:40 but I needed to arrive about twenty minutes earlier. I thought that may have been to inject me with chemicals. We were early enough and in fact they started earlier. First I had to have a ‘line’ installed in my arm and then I had to change into hospital jammies. (They didn’t have a jacket to fit me!)

I ended up being in the machine for 40 minutes. It’s noisy, a bit like ‘techno’ but with only the beat and no melody. I could also hear what sounded like a mechanical heart beating away in the corner somewhere. You have to lie perfectly still, which is not too difficult usually. However, both arms had to be kept above my head and the one with the ‘line’ in was extremely uncomfortable. I was counting beats, singing songs in my head, maybe even fell asleep for a short while! Boy was I glad when the time was up! Results tomorrow morning at nine o’clock. Hopefully we’ll be on our way home soon after,

What to do next? Walkies of course. We wandered around all over the place, sometimes lost, sometimes not. We took photos of a little temple in the middle of a very crowded part of the city, photos of the canals etc but I thought you might like a smile to end the day so I took this one for you. Nice isn’t he/she?

December 14^th Collected the results from the MRI Department and presented myself to the doctor on duty in the urology department. He decided that a rectal examination was in order this time and I think he also asked his trainee to have a go so I had two fingers up my bum in no time at all. I hasten to add, only one at a time! The news is not good. I have to book myself in to the hospital for ten days where they will carry out further tests. “When should I come?” I asked. “We have beds free now,” they answered. We decided that we would need to go back to Wuzhishan for the weekend and pack whatever we think is necessary before coming back on Monday so that was what we all agreed on.

A trip to Dr Tim was called for to clarify things for me and as luck would have it, he works on Fridays. It seems I have an enlarged prostate which, by itself, is nothing to worry about, it happens to most men with aging. However, I also have two ‘nodules’ or ‘growths’ and that is what they want to test. They may have to take a biopsy, they may not. I’m afraid all the technicalities are way beyond me at this point! Of course Huan is now beside herself with worry! I’ll have to keep her away from Dr Baidu and I think I should probably stay away from Dr Google too, at least until we know more.

Tried shopping in Haikou for vests and a dressing gown, failed miserably, so after lunch we headed back to Wuzhishan. The nearer we got there the clearer the weather got. It seems it has been a lot nicer here than it has in Haikou for the last few days. We actually succeeded in finding both vests and a dressing gown in Wuzhishan, much to our surprise. And just to finish our welcome home, Father Christmas has arrived in Baijiahui.

December 15^th A lovely morning to start the day, the sun was shining, but not too hot for walking. Having only two days to do this before we go back to Haikou we kept to the local mountain park walk. Today it wasn’t just saxophone players, we were treated to a whole Chinese orchestra along with a ‘diva’! I’m not sure how good her singing really was but the audience gave her a lot of applause.

The route was much busier than usual today, a combination of snowbirds and it being Saturday. Here’ the panoramic view from the halfway bridge.

Once we were home the weather deteriorated very quickly indeed and it felt, at least in the house, as if winter had arrived. Spent the rest of the day on the PC with occasional breaks to add something to the ‘hospital packing list’!

December 16^th D-day minus one. We still managed a walk this morning, the same route as yesterday. No photos today! Huan’s computer was playing up this morning so we couldn’t walk any further. That was my first job on returning home. My second job was to copy a load of DVD material onto my external HDD. According to what Huan read, there is no WiFi in the hospital. That means no Facebook for the next ten days, no YouTube to keep me occupied etc. I now have the first two seasons of ‘Cheers’ and all fifteen seasons of ‘A Touch of Frost’. I also have a few ‘real’ Agatha Christie books. I should have enough to keep me busy when I’m not having anything ‘done to me’. After that came packing time so we can be off reasonably early tomorrow. To be honest, once all the packing was completed, I began to feel nervous too. It wouldn’t be so bad if we knew what was going to happen. All we’ve been told is that I need to be in hospital for ten days. Hopefully, we’ll learn more when I ‘check in’!

December 17^th Well, it’s begun.  Traffic wasn’t so good but we got to the hospital around midday and found our way to the admissions desk. They of course were not expecting us and had to check first whether or not they had any beds! Once they decided they did then we paid our deposit. Now I expected to pay a large deposit to cover everything that will happen while I’m here. In fact, they only took ¥2,000.00 which means at various stages over the next few days I will be visiting the cashier’s office. Anyway, from there it was up to the 17^th floor to the Urology ward where we presented ourselves at the nurse’s station. First test, blood pressure, 134/80, not too bad considering I’d already got angry twice this morning. More questions followed, some from us and some from them, before I was ‘shown to my room’.

As you can see it is the best five star accommodation available. Huan was finding dust all over the place and the other bed had not been sorted since the previous occupant left. I am sharing this room, a two person room, for ¥53.00 per night. A three person room would be about ¥40.00 and a private room would be about ¥200.00. I imagine all the bathrooms would be to the same high standard too!

And here’s the criminal, awaiting his sentence!

The doctor came in the afternoon and took away my scans and the results from last time. He said that I would need to provide two urine samples in the morning, a stool sample, and that they would be testing my blood again! We were then free to go out for dinner. I’m actually wondering if there is any planning here at all!

December 18^th 154/89! My blood pressure this morning. I blame it on the fact that they woke me up at five o’clock to take the measurement! At least I remembered to ‘wee’ in the bottles! One hour later they were back to take what looked like seven phials of blood for more tests. Quite a busy time even before the sun came up.

After we’d had breakfast an orderly turned up with papers for me and my roommate, we had to present ourselves to X-Ray. From there we had to proceed to the ECG department to check our hearts. Once back in the room and relaxing to wait for further instructions, a nurse turned up to take my temperature and pulse. Not long after that we were presented with the bill so far and asked if we would please visit ‘Admissions’ and top up our deposit. Yesterday, you may remember, we deposited ¥2,000.00. Well the bill for less than 24 hours is already ¥1,600.00. It is an itemised bill though so we can see where all the money is going. Whether I really need all the different tests is a different story!

We went out for lunch after which we had a very pleasant stroll around the grounds of Hainan University.

 It was Huan’s idea, although I did fancy getting out for a while too. She thought it might help to get my bowels moving again! It worked and I was able to provide them with what I hope is the final sample when we returned to the room. Another ‘paper’ was then provided to me, I need to have a colour ultrasound scan this afternoon. No peace for the wicked!

What a palaver! We presented ourselves at three o’clock as suggested for our half past three to four appointment. I remember visiting this particular department last year and not much has changed. We eventually escaped around five o’clock. At least the Ultrasound staff didn’t seem very worried about what they could see. I was though, I told Huan I shall be asking for child support when it’s born!

I also had a phone call from Patrick (Quinn) today who did me the great honour of meeting me for dinner. Flora and Podraig were also there as was Jake (Canning) and we met in the Porch Cafe, the place Huan and I ate at last week. I must tell you that I had an absolutely brilliant evening, great food, great company, sure took my mind off what’s going on at the moment. I enjoyed it so much I forgot to take any photos. Thanks very much guys!

December 19^th Another early start today, they woke us up at five to take our blood pressure readings again. Who understands the machinations of the human body? I certainly don’t. After yesterday’s elevated reading today’s took me completely by surprise, 100/60. I don’t think I’ve ever had blood pressure that low! No ‘arm emptying’ this morning so I slept until half past seven, not so good as I was supposed to be meeting Huan for breakfast at seven. No problems though as I back in my bed before the surgeon’s rounds. He spoke English so Huan was asked in advance to ‘leave the room’. He explained yet again that they would be taking a biopsy, using a needle. I asked yet again if I would be asleep for this procedure and thankfully he confirmed it, yet again. The ‘new’ news was that the surgery will take place on Friday which means more time hanging around doing nothing! After the surgeon, and his entourage of interns, had left, we were left free for the rest of the day.

We had a nice long walk, another ten kilometres, although my Endomondo won’t show it because my phone battery failed. That was due to the amount of photos that we took. We walked down Renmin Da Dao to Haidian 1 Street, turned left and kept going until we reached Baishamen Park. It’s a very nice route to walk, we were beside the sea inlet all the way. Around lunchtime we stumbled across a Starbucks but luckily for us, there was also one we hadn’t tried before, Coffee World.

I can heartily recommend it. Not only do they serve nice coffee, they also have a fairly good food menu. As it was lunchtime, we stuck to something ‘small’ and had a club sandwich each. Not bad at all!

Just past the two coffee shops there is a “Park of Culture” where we found a Whisky Club and a Pirate’s Bar among others. It was too early for them to be open, and unfortunately, I am under express instructions from both the doctors and the Prime Minister to abstain until my ‘procedure’ is finished. Ah well, at least the walk was healthy. We had just reached Baishamen Park when my phone died so we had a little coffee break and then walked back, Huan to her hotel and me to the hospital, both to shower and clean up. No walking tonight, Huan will bring food in for me. So that’s it for day three in the hospital, oh, apart from the fact that just before I finished this typing, I had my blood pressure taken again. This time it was 137/94, I really, really do not understand.

An addendum for day three, from the ‘bad boy’!

December 20^th A late start today, they didn’t come to check our blood pressure until ten past six. Another different reading, 140/78. Me no understand! While I’ve been here, Huan has washed one set of my jammies and a shirt. I had plenty of spare undies, vests, two pairs of pyjamas, should have been enough. It’s very warm at tight time though so one pair had to be washed. As for my shirt, well I didn’t bring any spares because I was under the impression that I was going to be in hospital for ten days, not walking around Haidian Island and eating out most of the time! As I was up so early today I took a little tour around, here’s the drying room. We later found it takes two to three days to dry anything!

and here’s the place to fill up our flasks with hot water should we so require –

After breakfast with Huan it was back to the hospital where we were presented with the latest bill and asked to go and pay another 5,000.00 on our deposit. Following that a nurse came along to give me some kind of test to see whether or not I was allergic to the anaesthetic they will be using tomorrow. I hate needles, ouch! She also gave us a list of instructions. Here’s the Google Translate version: -

Tips (preoperative education)

Dear patient

We appreciate your trust on us! You will be treated surgically tomorrow, and you need to cooperate with the following matters;

1. At 16:00 this afternoon, according to the nurse's instructions for oral laxatives (older patients need to stay with 1 person).

1. trim the nails and shave the beard.

1. Start fasting at 10.00 tonight, start drinking water at 12.00 in the evening; do not go out.

1. In the morning, please change the patient's clothes, do not wear vest and underpants, and hand over the accessories and valuables such as active dentures, watches and hair clips to your family, and keep one family.

1. need to prepare the following items: (1) 1 bottle of 1500ML mineral water (diarrhea); (2) 1 bedpan; (3) 1 pack of nursing pads; (4) 1 pair of elastic stockings (pre-operative / post-operative) . (5) 1 urinal.

Out for lunch, small one for me, just some pieces of fried chicken. Back to the hospital then, for the duration. I will not be having dinner, hardly seems worth it when I have to drink this soon after. If you can’t guess what it’s for, then you can do a google!

Remarks: The purpose of wearing elastic stockings: due to long-term bed rest after surgery, less activity, prone to deep vein thrombosis. Wearing elastic stockings can promote venous return of the lower extremities and prevent venous thrombosis of the lower extremities.

Thank you for your cooperation! I wish you a speedy recovery!

Date: Year Month Day

Four o’clock and yet another BP reading, this time 147/92. This time I’ll blame it on the nurse who came just before asking all kinds of questions that we’ve already answered numerous times and increasing my worry threshold!

Four thirty and I’ve begun my ‘electrolyte’. Huan is playing temptation and eating her dinner in front of me! I’m a little worried about this ‘stuff’ we have to drink. There are two of us sharing this room, both having to drink one and a half litres of the stuff, at the same time, and only one WC! What’s more, my neighbour is nearer to that than I am! (This stuff was supposed to react within an hour of finishing it. It took four hours for me!)

Five thirty and we’ve had our explanations from the doctor. I have to say that they were very thorough, covered everything and answered our questions. Of course Huan and a nurse had to translate for me but no worries. We then had to sign umpteen forms, I was wondering if I was ‘joining up’ again!

December 21^st Blood pressure high today, 149/94, probably due to being woken up and the fact that I was really not looking forward to this morning. As well as our ‘electrolyte’ drink yesterday we had to have enemas this morning.

To think that some people do this by choice! Neighbour had six bags, I had to have twelve! I can tell you I was sick to death of it by the end. There must be a better way!

We had been told we’d be on our way to the ‘theatre’ by eight o’clock. Eventually we got on our way just after ten, where, as expected, Huan was allowed to go no further. Spot the shoes of all the patients being operated on, including ours in there somewhere.

They were right about one thing, the procedure was very short. Neighbour and I were different again. They used six ‘needles’ for his biopsy and twelve for mine. Strange how the figures match the enema bags. Mind you, he had only one growth and I had two so that was probably the reason for the ‘needle’ difference. Anyway, here I am, job done and on the road to recovery!

Well the procedure may have been quick, the rest of the day drove me crazy. I was put on a drip feed, for nearly twelve hours, I was getting really cheesed off about it. “Why so many bottles?” I wanted to know. Saline solution accounted for quite a few bottles and antibiotics for the rest. I’m afraid to say that at half past eleven I was getting familiar with the ‘smoking area’ again before wishing Huan good night!

December 22^nd Four o’clock early call, temperature. Six o’clock, BP readings, fine this morning, 120/76, must be relief that it’s all over, for now. Back on the drip again though, although it will be less than yesterday. Here’s me starting my day!

Sent Huan out for lunch, she needs a break from sitting watching me. She will have hers outside, buy the weekend’s lottery tickets and bring something back for me. We’ll try and ‘escape’ together this evening!

After my three o’clock drip we escaped as planned and visited a ‘Taiwan’ dim-sum restaurant. The food wasn’t too bad although it bore no relation to the actual menu, at least for mine. I thought I was getting shrimp spring rolls and fish cakes but ended up with something resembling soft rubber, probably fake fish of some kind! On our way home, as I was wearing only my vest under my jacket I decided an ‘Onslow’ picture was called for!

December 23^rd Late BP this morning, just after six o’clock. I had been awake and was expecting it so I thought the reading would be nice and low. No, it was 149/86 today, the nurses don’t seem worried about it though. We were having breakfast in the hospital today so I went out for a coffee while I waited for Huan. There is a reception and delivery point for online orders (Taobao etc) just outside and I thought you might appreciate the message on it!

Later on, while we were on our first drip feed of the day, we had a visit from a rather grumpy young doctor who told us we would be leaving tomorrow. He asked no questions about how we were feeling, gave us no advice on what we should do once we leave. Huan wondered if he was grumpy because he had received no ‘red envelope’. That is a custom which is not supposed to be allowed any more, where people pay to get better service, whether it be in hospitals, schools, (for their children) or any other such industry. I’m rather hoping that we will get a visit from a more senior doctor in the morning!

Out for lunch as usual, back for a second dose of drips then out for dinner. Huan chose the place to make sure I got enough rice and vegetables! Back in the ward after dinner and we decided we should have a photo of me and my neighbour together. So, here we are, me back from a short after dinner walk and him fresh from a drop or two of米酒, (Mǐjiǔ). That’s rice wine for the uninitiated and he keeps it in a plastic water bottle so the doctors and nurses can’t see it. Huan could smell it though!

December 24^th Bad boy today, I broke the thermometer! I was in the bathroom, when I forgot it was under my arm while trying to pull my trousers up. Blame it on the early hour! The nurse found the bulb but I’ve no idea where the mercury went. A little later it was out for breakfast with Huan and then back for the final drip feed. We then had to wait around until our medicines for the next few days were delivered. At least they are tablets and not ‘drip’ bags. Our results will not be available until New Year’s Eve when we have to present ourselves back at the ward at nine o’clock in the morning. Goodbyes all round and then we were on our way. Lunch was first then a coffee stop.

Finally we were back on the highway again. I had a couple of stops, mostly because I hadn’t slept well in the hospital at all. At least we ended up at home for Christmas Eve.

December 25^th Well we had expected that I would still be in hospital today, the doctors had initially told us it would be ten days. That means of course that we haven’t prepared anything at all for Christmas. Ah well, there’s always next year.

What to do today then? Well how about going to one of the more upmarket restaurants for Christmas dinner? We would if we could but we can’t so we won’t. There aren’t any such restaurants in Wuzhishan. What we do have though is a fake KFC.

The menu is pretty good, the staff are very friendly, although not highly efficient. We asked if they had a vegetable salad instead of what was on the menu. She said she could do one for us and then when it arrived it was the one on the menu. They also forgot the chips which is why they don’t appear in the photo. They did arrive a little later, before we had eaten too much, and I do have to say that we both enjoyed the meal! Merry Christmas!

December 26^th Life is back to normal. I didn’t tell you yesterday, but we have no gas and it will not be back before New Year’s Eve. They’re testing the pipes. Huan also had a WeChat message today telling her that the electricity will be going off at six thirty tomorrow morning and not coming back on until six in the evening! At least she was able to cook dinner today! Other than that, just a more sedate walk than usual, my kidneys are still killing me. It could be the after effects of the surgeon poking around in my insides but it’s more than likely the after effects of twelve enema bags! Alternatively, it may be the result of having my legs up in stirrups as though I was going to have a baby!

December 27^th With the electricity being off, we decided to have a drive to Ledong. First off was a visit to our tenants. The old man is a very happy soul and our visit was OK. They didn’t ask for anything and in fact the old lady is worried about keeping everything nice for us. She needn’t worry, they beat the last two tenants hands down!

After that it was walkies time, a nice long one around the river through Ledong. Before we got to the river we spotted today’s ‘wildlife’ for you. Poor little things, I wonder if they realised that they would soon be someone’s dinner!

Then onwards around the river, the Changhua river. There may be no hills to walk up and down in Ledong but they certainly have enough riverside walks, we managed over twelve kilometres. For those who think China is chock-a-block full of people, here’s a panorama of part of where we walked, spot the crowds milling about everywhere!

Back home to Do & Me in Wuzhishan for dinner. Coming home from that a local gent walking with his wife was having a good laugh and I heard ‘red’ in what he was saying. It seems he thought I was red-faced from too much alcohol when in actual fact I was sunburnt from our walk in Ledong! Huan put him right. When we got home, it was six thirty, the electricity was still off and we had to walk up the stairs. The electricity didn’t come back on until nearly nine, almost had to go to bed far too early!

December 28^th Leisurely stroll around Wuzhishan today, no photos! Huan was called to another committee meeting in the afternoon where they decided too tell the existing maintenance company that if they didn’t move out at the end of the month they would take them to court. They also told those present that there was no gas in the tanks and that this would be rectified when the new company takes over. This is the new company that isn’t even registered as one with the local government yet! How does anything ever get done here?

Finally for today, Huan received a telephone call from the doctor who did my biopsy. In his best “bedside manner” he told her “It’s bad!” Now in a normal Chinese family the patient would probably never be told, only the relatives. Thankfully Huan knows my feelings on this matter. We have to go back to Haikou tomorrow instead of the 31^st and I will probably have to go in for an operation to remove what I imagine must be cancerous tumours in two months time. More information forthcoming tomorrow!

December 29^th Miserable weather today! We set off for Haikou and believe it or not, we had to use the heater in the car! Now the new highway means we can get to Haikou within two hours but getting to the hospital takes another hour from there. We arrived about half past eleven and as he had promised, Grumpy Doctor was waiting for us. Later on I found out that they would not be working on New Year’s Eve hence the call to come early. He told Huan that it isn’t a little problem, but that it isn’t a big problem either, it is somewhere in the middle. He was very reluctant to answer questions such as “How soon should I come back?”, “How long would I have to stay in?” and “How much would it cost?” The result is 21^st February, I’ll be in for about twenty one days and the cost is within what we have in the bank.

We were just about to get in the lift when I said to Huan that we had no ‘admission slip’ for the operation so off she went back to the Doctor. He decided he needed to see my passport and have our full address, despite all this information already being in the hospital computers. (When we got home I checked the admission slip, there is no date. So, I checked the admission slip for the biopsy, there was no date on that either!)

From there we went to see Dr. Tim. What a Godsend he is. He explained the biopsy results to me in layman’s terms, some details are too technical and will require some help from Dr. Google! He was also very happy to answer the questions I had prepared for him. Yet again I highly recommend anyone in Hainan who has a medical problem, make an appointment with Dr. Tim at the International Clinic. Details can be found here:

http://www.tropicalhainan.com/get-hospital-treatment-haikou-peoples-hospital/

We then had to get our deposit back from the hospital, from a different office to that in which we had paid it in. That meant waiting until after lunch. We were on our way by three o’clock and back in Wuzhishan by six. No photos again today.

December 30^th Lazy day, scanning hospital records, dashcam work, Taobao ordering etc. No walkies, no photos.

December 31^st Monday again, so shopping again, and very busy it was too. It looked like all the old people in Wuzhishan were in there, presumably getting ready for New Year. It doesn’t have the same importance as Chinese New Year but people do get three days holiday for it. Some grumbling in my stomach so a quiet rest of the day. The grumbling got worse and I spent a lot of the day on the throne. Checking Dr. Google only made me worry about all sorts of complications arising from the biopsy. Both antibiotics said that there would be possible side effects of diarrhoea so I put it down to that. Fingers crossed.

What was our New Year’s Eve like? Well Huan spent a lot of time on her computer, as did I on mine. During one of my regular balcony trips I decided to take a photo of the road outside. We have decorations down both sides of the road, possibly in anticipation of Chinese New Year. They’ve been up a while though, on all roads leading into Wuzhishan, and of course our road is now the access from the highway.

And that’s it for this month. Huan and I are off to bed with a hot water bottle, yes it’s cold here at the moment. Finally, but most importantly, we both wish you all a very Happy New Year, may it bring you everything you wish for but above all good health and happiness! See you next month!