OAP Trip, Shenyu Dao, Rabbits, Duck Eggs, Scary Foreigner

April 14^th Miserable weather today, we even had our socks and slippers on in the house. However, we didn’t mind, yesterday had really taken it out on both of us. I took the time to spend all morning doing Blogger work and finished as far as September 2018. I’ve realised that I can’t do dashcam work and Blogger work at the same time, Lightworks takes up far too much system resources. Keeps me busy doesn’t it?

As we were in Haikou yesterday shopping had to be done today. No worries there. In fact we thought we’d show you our toilet paper section just so that you can compare it to yours!

April 15^th Early birds today, I had to set the alarm to make sure we were up before seven. Huan had asked, and I had agreed, that we would join the OAP singing group for a tourist trip to Shenyu Dao. Huan and I, Yu and her husband, walked up to the OAP school and then waited for everyone else. This was not a ‘tourist company’ organised trip so cars were being used. They had asked if we would care to use ours but as we had had some overheating problems on the way back from Haikou I preferred not to. Five of us squashed into a small VW, the other three in the back and me with my knees against the dashboard next to the driver. All the cars missed the turn off and ended up entering the car park through the exit. This is where were headed.

Details of admission can be found in the album, “Shenyu Dao” by following this link.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/pZEDR5xH3DuZSFBV7

You can also see a brief description, a pictorial map and all the photos we took on the way round. I will put just a few here.

Before long we spotted our first bit of Chinglish.

As always of course, Huan and I, and probably everyone else, had no idea what was really going on and so we just followed our leaders. After a brief stop in front of the (not yet completed) hotel we set off, looking forward to a relaxing day of walking. We had been told there were no hills and no steps, this is a photo of some of those “no” steps we just climbed.

I do have to say, that despite my knees complaining a lot, it was definitely worth it. This was the view from the “Lucky Stairway”.

From there we thought we were going to take the aerial walkway but we were wrong. Instead we hiked off through the undergrowth to start with and then on to a slightly better track.

Our destination was an organic farm where we were to have lunch before heading back to the start point. The weather stayed good for us and soon we were there.

Before lunch though it seems the ladies, and those men who either wanted to join them or were ‘told’ to join them were going off to pick tea. I didn’t need browbeating, fresh country air and walking were good enough for me.

I wanted to take a picture of the two large boulders in the picture above so stood to one side to let the ladies past and promptly fell off the straight and narrow into the irrigation ditch! On we went, for quite some way until we reached the plantation and the ladies got down to picking their tea, which was free by the way. I got some lovely shots of Huan which you can see in the album, here she is right on the edge of the panorama showing the fields.

And here’s a farm worker showing how it should be done!

Eventually they all came home with their baskets full, some of the men also carrying sugar cane, and it was lunch time.

We were fed very well indeed, far more than we really needed. I don’t know about the rest of the gang but Huan and I were bloated. No wonder they had a planned rest time. After a short while some of the group started singing, I thought a little too loudly for where we were, and a handful also danced. A few, myself included, had some archery practice. In my case, as you can probably tell by the photo, a lot more practice is needed!

Before too long we were on our way back to the Lucky Stairway and then down all those stairs again to the resort area. Near the Lucky Stairway I managed to fall off the straight and narrow yet again, not too bad though, the stairway must have saved me. Back at the “Coffee” and “Bar” we found they had not much in the way of cold drinks, in fact they didn’t even have a drinks refrigerator. Maybe that will change in the future. Water was good enough for me though!

“What’s happening now?” I asked Huan. “We’re waiting.” she replied. Perhaps we were waiting for the boatman to finish his lunch or maybe his nap. I suppose it gave us time to take a few more pictures. You can see them in the album, here I’ll put大禹聖像, (Dà yǔ shèng xiàng), Icon of Dayu, usually referred to as Yu the Great. Don’t ask me what he’s holding though, it looks like a huge tuning fork but knowing what he was famous for, it’s probably a ditch digging implement. More information on him can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_the_Great

Soon we were off on our boat. I think the tourist boats are all electric.

The boat dropped us on the Buddah island with instructions to follow the path and keep turning right. It’s interesting that even though this is a tourist walkway there are still security cameras dotted about here and there.

It didn’t take too long before we were once again approaching the coffee shop, this time from a different direction

Another ‘wait’ was called for here, especially as most of our party had still not returned. Of course when they got back, they blamed their delay on searching for us! I followed Yu’s husband’s example and had a nap on one of the benches.

Once the wanderers had returned it was time for dinner. It seemed like the family from the farm had come down en masse to prepare our dinner for us. It was called芭蕉叶簸萁餐, (Bājiāo yè bǒ qí cān) which according to Google is “Banana Leaf Dust Meal”. Bing translates it with “Bump” instead of “Dust” and Baidu gets it all wrong starting with “Azerbaijan”. Whatever, it is food served on a bed of banana leaves, in a round tray, (made of bamboo I think) and each tray served four people. It was delicious and more than enough.

And so ended our second long day of the week. If you’d like to see more, there’s a nice long video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD_xs15owcc&list=PLrm74YBD3qG5hMSefKtpaGIH2okgNoBLN&index=2&t=0s

April 16^th Neither of us wanted to go out today or to do a TV walk either so we stayed home. I was kept busy all day.

My first job was trying to narrow down yesterday’s photos from 371 to something more manageable. I ended up with 216 on my computer but when we get to upload the album that number will go down again. Blogger was next and is now finished for 2018, we’re getting there slowly. Third was a guitar practice, I’ve been very remiss this week! Last was Chinese, I’m still doing fine and I haven’t broken my ‘streak’ for April yet. There is still more work to be done, all the Keymission videos from yesterday need combining and uploading to YouTube. Combining is an overnight job for Lightworks.

April 17^th Another early morning, an accidental one to be fair, and not an unwelcome one. After our overheating problems with the car last week, we decided that today would be a ‘service’ day. Ledong calls next week, that’s probably about forty or fifty kilometres on the highway, so the car needs to be tip top before then. Mind you, driving about one hundred and twenty kilometres to the service centre, via the twisting mountain roads, while worrying about possible overheating does get your mind working. Mine was working so hard I missed the turn off!

Our little baby was booked in and then we went off to find a bank. The service staff were good enough to provide instructions from their phones. Their instructions worked, and we found the bank with no problems. Unfortunately, being a smaller branch, they didn’t have the capability of changing my pension pounds into Chinese Renminbi. Still, it gave us a walk we wouldn’t have had today, six kilometres worth in fact. No wonder I was nodding off on the drive home. I digress a little, we thought you might like this, not sure how it would go down in the UK though. The sticker is obvious, the Chinese above it asks whether the logo scares you or not!

The bank was not far from a place called Mangrove Tree, which looked very interesting indeed, nice restaurants, cafes, a water park and a jungle playground. We weren’t prepared for swimming but we thought we’d take a look for future reference. First off, just to give you an idea of what’s to come, one very faded sign and one not quite so faded.

You guessed it, it’s all closed down. Initially we thought it was due to the virus scare, most public places were shut down for that, but the more we walked round the more we saw how dilapidated everything was. It looked like another story of the owners going for the cheapest bids. Here’s a view of one of the many pool areas, note the colour of the water.

Back to the garage where everyone had gone on a lunch break so we took one too. I had planned on taking Huan to the Italian Job in Mangrove Tree but like everything else it was locked and bolted. This is what we had instead, not bad for ¥37.00, and very tasty to boot!

Back once more to the garage where we were informed that the computer can find nothing wrong at all but that they had cleaned the radiator fan. With all the usual fluid top ups our grand total service price was ¥1150.00, not too bad, so we paid up and went our merry way.

Driving home was not so easy, I was ready to fall asleep at the wheel more than once. Memo to self, when servicing the car, do not go for a six kilometre walk in the hot sun!

April 18^th Another slowish day, some dashcam work, some Blogger and a short trip around the town, mostly to buy the weekend’s tickets. The owner of the shop with the rabbits waylaid me on our way past and insisted I held one.

I found out afterwards that he actually wanted me to buy one. I never heard that part of the conversation but Huan did and gave him an emphatic NO!

Neither of us fancied doing a TV walk in the afternoon but because we’ve had such a busy few days and not had the exercise we should have, we went for it anyway. Surprisingly, neither of os found it too hard and in fact, we both enjoyed it.

April 19^th An unexpected day in was the order of the day. I woke up to an email from #1 son with some files attached. He had taken my Super8 movie reels back to the UK with him and got them digitised for me so the attachments were actually DVD files. I spent most of the morning converting them into mp4 files. Once I had done that I began to share some of them on Facebook and the very first one garnered me my first FB copyright warning! So the afternoon was spent replacing all the soundtracks. I think I desperately need to grow my copyright free music library, I need more choices to suit the movie content. Anyway, the videos were well received by friends and family so a job well done by me, because of a job well done by #1.

You may remember that last week we took our neighbours to the port in Haikou so that they could return up North. We had refused any payment because we had to go to Haikou anyway. This afternoon, this arrived from them.

I know Easter has just finished but these are not Easter Eggs. These are salted duck eggs and arrived here very well packed in a large polystyrene egg carton, there were twenty of them. Huan is not a big fan but will eat them, I love them!

April 20^th On the road again today, Huan had to go to Ledong and pay the internet bill for our tenants there for the next year. We parked at the shopping centre and decided to do everything on foot. There seem to be less people wearing masks in Ledong but also more people wary of the ‘large white foreigner’. While Huan went into the shop I went and found myself a coffee before going back to join her. The man serving her had no problems but the woman in the shop asked many questions about where we’d come from, had we been out of China and such like. Even though we haven’t been out since 2012 she still disappeared into the back room and came back wearing a mask and keeping her distance.

Once done there we set off to our apartment to let the tenants know their internet would be fine, and to let them take a picture of the receipt should they need to call the company with any problems. This is as far as I got.

Despite the fact that we are the property owners the security guards would not let us in. Huan argued for a while and she got in, but me, as a foreigner, no way! It’s a good job our tenants are not leaving yet. By the sounds of it, some work will be needed when they do eventually leave. The old man fell into the (glass) bathroom door so that needs replacing. He’s fine though. There is black coming through the outside wall of the living room, which it appears, many other apartments also have. The building owner’s office have said the outside walls will be sorted out. When that happens, we’ll still probably have to remove the plaster inside to sort it out.

Thankfully, the supermarket staff were not averse to foreigners entering so we did our weekly shop there for a change. The small walking street was busier than we’ve ever seen it before and luckily for us, there was no aversion to foreigners there either. I had a lovely lunch.

Back to Wuzhishan and our wet market so that Huan could buy fish, duck, chiken and pork. We didn’t fancy the car and cool box smelling of fish so we didn’t buy in Ledong. Home then for another blitz on the PC, bringing the Blog up to date and doing some more Blogger work.

As for Huan, she spent the afternoon in the bathroom dyeing her hair with some French product sent down from Dalian by her niece. In the evening she went through the final part of the process. I promised her we would take a photo tomorrow!