Lots of Rain, Pooh Sticks, Eating Out (Twice), Health Checks, More Bug Bites!

September 7^th First job, edit last week’s post, the fruit Huan bought, and that I ate in Singapore was not lychee, but rambutan. Apart from the skin there’s not a lot of difference though.

Rain stopped play today, the computer was 100% correct. It did ease off enough for us to visit the post office and collect the mail. Here’s Huan holding up her birthday card, from one of my lovely sisters and her husband. This one was posted some time in July.

September 8^th Rain should have stopped play today, the computer said there would be rain and I agreed with the computer. However, the Chief Meteorological Officer said there would be a walk. Bowing down to her vastly superior knowledge, as I usually do, we set off and what do you know, within the first kilometres the rain was already making us wet! We weren’t the only ones out today; it looks as though some of the snowbirds have started making their way back for the winter. Here are a couple on the saxophone, she is the teacher and he is the student.

Hiding when the rain was too heavy we did manage about three kilometres before the sun showed its face again. The two kilometre walk home was much better although we still needed hot showers when we eventually arrived there. On the way I stopped to chat to a friend, Huan is always amazed at the way he stands up and nestles his head on my lap. You’ve seen him before, but here he is again looking for a little love.

September 9^th The weather was absolutely glorious this morning so we didn’t check phones or computers just set off for a little countryside walk. I still can’t wear my boots yet so ‘off road’ would not be allowed. I tried to snap a few butterflies on our little island in the river but they were moving so fast today there was no chance. Our route took us along the irrigation canal, a route we have used many times, but recently it appears to have become more overgrown. Here is the (not quite so intrepid explorer) waving goodbye to his team leader.

Something that was moving slowly enough to photograph, apart from me, was this creature.

And here’s our hero again, going deeper and deeper into the unknown!

A little further on I was lucky enough to catch two butterflies that were not quite as fast as their island siblings. This looked to be a courting couple.

After the canal we headed for the village of Konglu to avoid going the long way round via the mansions on the hill. Our way was blocked, the ‘road to nowhere’ is growing and all access to the village from this side, the track to the left and the road to the right, had disappeared.

So off via the mansions on the hill we proceeded. The first thing that struck us, both of us, on the road, was face pareidolia, can you spot the GI leaning against the tree?

The mansions on the hill had Covid restrictions so we had to skirt around the outside. There we spotted quite a few snails on the wall. The first picture caught my eye because of the shadow and the second was me trying to get a head on view with the light in the wrong place.

Huan was happy, she found a baby lizard.

Crossing the irrigation canal again we decided to have a game of Poohsticks. Here we are watching our sticks reappearing, Huan’s won, but mine overtook hers soon after.

My bovine friends were absent today, out in the fields somewhere I guess; all they left behind was this chicken as a look out.

We took a detour down a little track but decided at the end that it wasn’t a place to explore today, I need my boots for this route.

Heading back towards home we found that the route for the bypass, from the bridge to nowhere, had some more construction going on. I thought the road would be built up on pillars but it looks as though they will just raise the level of the ground. Here they are putting a reinforced covering over another irrigation canal.

Passing by what used to be a fish farm restaurant we spotted a lone goose on sentry duty. Huan thought the first photo was like someone ‘fishing’ for the goose. The second one is the warning hiss of course and the third one shows just what the goose was guarding.

Our last picture of the day, courtesy of Huan’s phone, shows a wet Bob sheltering under a tree. Yes, we got caught in the rain again; it started about nine hundred metres from home. Still, that’s a marked improvement on yesterday.

September 10^th Rain stopped play, well to be exact, the thirteenth typhoon of the year stopped play. I’ve realised that they count the number of typhoons not by how many actually hit Hainan but by how many originate in the NW Pacific Ocean. The present one is called Conson and is nowhere near us; it is heading for the coast of Vietnam and has been downgraded to a tropical storm. Of course that still means lots of rain for us! We did go out though, to a Teacher’s Day lunch, held in honour of the teacher of Huan’s singing class. He deserves it; he had a full lung transplant after which he taught himself to sing to aid his recovery. Now to ‘pay it back’ he teaches others to sing. I did video the lunch but it’s not a very good video. I initially wasn’t going to upload it but then I thought you may as well see all sides of our life here. As usual, if you want to see it, go here - https://youtu.be/9hYKG4oXkNQ

September 11^th Clear skies greeted us this morning which was not what we expected having checked the tropical storm warnings last night. We took advantage of what we saw, or at least I did anyway. First I had to take the returning student to class, yes, Huan was back at singing class today. I decided to see if there was a back way out of the Yefeng complex. If I had my boots on there could possibly have been a way but with sandals I wasn’t going to risk it.

It seems that we are definitely going to have a fast train through the centre of Hainan. This hoarding tells us that the central highway has already been completed, the central railway will be starting soon and that Wuzhishan is advancing rapidly. What they are really doing of course is trying to market their properties!

Being a Saturday I took the riverside market route but found nothing to photograph for you. It looked very much as if half the stallholders and half the customers had decided the weather was not going to be good today and as a result had stayed home. Coming back via tea street I did spot a change, one of the large overhanging trees has been pruned, (or maybe pollarded). That is the only tree that now has new growth, but not of new bits of tree, instead various fungi. I didn’t bother picking any!

And the last picture is a bug, which I didn’t know until I got home. I could see something on the floor; I thought it was something being moved by other little creatures. Luckily it seemed to be unable to fly or I might have got stung on my nose!

September 12^th “What’s the recipe today Jim?” (One for all you oldies out there.) Today’s recipe, or plan, was to drag Bob off for a medical; Huan had received a call yesterday saying we were due some more tests. At our age it’s not so easy to ‘hold your wee until you get there’! As it happened they only took our blood pressure and tested our blood sugar.

Are we fit? Huan’s blood sugar was 6.3 and her blood pressure 123/86, no problems there. My blood sugar was lower, 5.9, no problems there either. My blood pressure, on the other hand, was unlike any results I’ve had before, 117/100. A quick check on Google shows that Huan is in the prehypertension zone and I am on the border of hypertension stage 1. Huan’s reaction was to ask the nurse if I could have tablets and then to ask me if I wanted them. A firm ‘NO’ was my answer. The nurse then told us that my readings were probably affected by me not being relaxed and talking too much, (I was trying to record the results on my phone as we went).

Being out so early we had missed breakfast so found a new place to try before we went walkies. Huan had dumplings and rice soup while I had fried noodles with an extra fried egg. It’s not very near our house but we will definitely remember it for future reference, it was a good breakfast.

Weren’t we the lucky ones today? As well as eating out for breakfast we also ate out for lunch.  Zhào dé and yú guì lán’s daughter was visiting from Guangzhou, she’s a dentist ‘up there’ and she had invited us all out for lunch. That gave me a good excuse to make another ‘eating out’ video, you can see it here - https://youtu.be/gCjOTys9pf8

September 13^th “Come quickly! There’s something on our window, look!” while waving her phone under my nose as I was blearily opening my eyes. Dutifully I went to the living room and, holding the camera outside managed to grab a snap. Fancy choosing our house to do their canoodling!

Having gone out to lunch yesterday we still had dinner in the fridge for today so we skipped shopping and went for a walk instead. I still can’t put my boots on yet but casuals were fine so off to the countryside we headed, to stay on the roads of course. I found a new way on to our little island, some steps I had never seen before.

Passing in front of the new Chun He hotel we went to see if there were any fish in their ponds. There weren’t but we did spot a very beautiful dragonfly.

Soon we were diverted by Magellan, the famous navigator, otherwise known as SWMBO and headed through a small village towards a new apartment complex. At least it gave me a couple more photo opportunities on the way, the first a flower we don’t think we’ve seen, or noticed before. Google wasn’t much help; I’ll have to ask my horticultural nephew.

Sometimes views jump out at you as this one did. I had to creep in under the undergrowth a little and then straddle the irrigation canal but I think it was worth it.

Now if you’re a ‘Brit’ you will know all about allotments. Well, some of the new housing complexes here have allotments attached. Usually they are free to use until the developer gets permission to expand their construction. We do know of a few that have been in use for twelve years or more. This one is a new one.

Just after this is where our journey took an unexpected turn although in this case I can’t really blame Huan, it was a joint decision. We decide that instead of retracing our steps to the road through the village we would head off through the trees and hopefully reach the road at the other side of the village.

You can’t tell from the pictures but we got bitten all over our legs again, thankfully only by plants, ants and mosquitoes this time, not those nasty blood sucking leeches. We knew we were heading in the right direction when we saw this.

Yes, it is a lift; we guess it’s for the residents to get down to their allotments. We had seen it ‘up above’ but it’s not operational yet. Leaving the lift and following the path out of the allotments we came to the next view, no problems getting through there we thought.

Of course we were wrong, again, and got ourselves tangled up in the undergrowth before finding a stream too wide to cross. Perseverance is the word so we did just that and found a farm.

And here’s one of the farmers busy chopping down an old crop in preparation for planting a new one. There’s no “off season” for farmers in Hainan!

To Huan’s surprise my sense of direction had not let me down at all and coming out of the other side of the farm this was our vista. I knew from the blue buildings that we were in the right place, pointing out to Huan the traffic on the road eased her mind too.

Before too long we were on the road where we decided that having wasted too much time in the jungle, again, we should make our way home. From behind us we heard the toot of a horn and shouted greetings, no it wasn’t a lift, just people being friendly. Besides, there was no room in the back for us!

No afternoon sleeps today, although I did do a nodding dog impression once or twice. Huan had to go out, to another class. Their hulusi teacher has asked them to take a few of the Qipao fashion parade lessons, I guess you could call them deportment lessons, so that they are able to walk on and off stage in a more ladylike manner the next time they have show.

And that’s it, another day, another week; see you next Monday hopefully having received no more bites this week! Take care and be good!