Only a Few Photos, A Lot of Rain, Being Tourists

October 12^th A little more normality returned again this morning, Huan and Yú had another class learning how to deport themselves. That is a correct usage of the word by the way, I checked up the etymology. I escorted them again, only carrying my phone due to the ominous cloudy skies. Here are some pretty flowers for you.

And now for something different, at least for any youngsters reading this, oldies may well remember seeing such things when they were young. Most new multi-storeyed buildings have an underground facility that can be used for car parking but that will also double up for “Air Defence”. We don’t have one; we just have the siren on the roof!

Taking a detour I went to see if our little goat was still there, it was. Not only that, it seemed to remember me and came bounding up to greet me.

The little kid wasn’t lonely today, it had geese and goats to keep it company. Whether the other goats were its parents or not I have no idea but neither they nor the geese would let me anywhere near them.

Finally for today I spotted a strange yellow machine from a distance so I had to go closer for a look. It turned out to be men at work although I couldn’t actually see the one man who was doing the work. He was under the bridge somewhere.

Did I manage to miss the rain today? Yes, and so did Huan. It did come back a little in the afternoon and a bit more in the evening. “Rain, rain, go away, come back another day!” There’s not much chance of that, we both had messages on our phones tonight, typhoon Kompasu will make landfall probably tomorrow evening.

October 13^th Confined to barracks! No worries, I started binge watching “Line of Duty” while Huan got on with her music. Google sent me my monthly analytics email; I now have over 100 subscribers! Over 10,000 people viewed “Needle in my Belly” last month bringing the total to well over 54,000 up to date. Why would so many people want to watch a fifteen second video? I have absolutely no idea. In other news, I had to put my track suit and slippers on in the house!

October 14^th NTR, CTB luckily no ROPs.

October 15^th The day started with preparation of the travelling IT bag, making sure all necessary chargers were packed, making sure the external HDD had all the files I would need and that the laptop was still functional. Once that was done, and our clothes were packed we were on our way, a nice long journey to an OAP tourist trip. It took us all of ten minutes to get there! Huan had booked us into Rendishan Resort; it goes under many different names. Not many photos were taken although a lot of videos were made with the Keymission 170. Here is a part of my ID card that I would need to carry around for the duration of our stay.

Once we were safely ensconced in our room / studio apartment, it was time for lunch. Should you wish to see more, click here - https://youtu.be/ArWOkwNazhc

After lunch we had a guided tour of some of the available facilities but before that, a sales visit to the show apartments. We saw a studio, priced at ¥1,100,000.00 and a two bedroom priced at ¥2,000,000.00. That does seem expensive and we are not sure how many of the facilities you would be able to use as a resident, either free of charge or at a substantial discount.

As we were passing various posters on the wall the sales patter was more about the location of Rendishan, here in Wuzhishan, the clean mountain air, the surrounding amenities, hiking, rafting, rain forests, markets, trips to Sanya, generally an overview. There was also a poster showing the longevity of Hainan people, there are many over a hundred years old.

There is a daily exercise schedule that everyone is free to join in if they so wish. Sessions include body exercises, Nordic hiking, (if it’s raining exercises using the Nordic walking sticks are substituted here), tai chi, individual softball, ‘beat your body’ etc.

There are various function rooms, a library, a meditation room, (with instructors), a small old style cinema, individual herbal steam baths, acupuncture, cupping, massage, reflexology, communal salt saunas etc. That led us to an Ethnic (Miao if I remember rightly) hospital. It’s a place I wouldn’t mind staying in, I told Huan that’s where I want to go if I’m ill!

I left Huan and everyone else sitting on Mugwort Steam Chairs being lectured to and made my way back to the room, passing some more optional facilities on the way. There are pool tables, table tennis tables, multi gyms and of course badminton.

Dinner came next and very nice it was too. Click here for more - https://youtu.be/PljEbucsECs

Still more activities after dinner, for Huan anyway. I didn’t fancy joining her because it was raining a little and, having eaten too much, my belly was bloated. The steam sauna was the first port of call but she soon got bored with that and moved outside to the spa pools. There are nine or ten pools of varying temperatures, we’re not sure if they have anything in them. Huan tried a few of those before going back inside to steam herself this time for a good fifteen minutes.

Back to the room, end of day one, upload all the videos, charge all the batteries etc.

October 16^th An early start, breakfast at seven followed by a Nordic mountain hike at eight. At least that was the plan. You can see breakfast here - https://youtu.be/ww35ykK5Q3g

Disappointingly the mountain walk was cancelled; they read the weather better than we do. Instead group indoor activities were put in their place, most people joined in, some didn’t. I was in the latter category, blaming my full belly again. They had stretching, Nordic stick exercises, individual softball exercises, then I missed some by taking a walk outside. I came back to find them doing a ‘chicken dance’ so went to watch some pool for a while. They moved on to even more exercises before finishing off with some tai chi. We came then to the reason why this trip was so cheap, the mandatory sales lecture. I didn’t attend this as it would have all gone way over my head anyway. I spotted a few other guests ‘running away’ too.

I had a little more exploration of the grounds, found the shop, which was closed, explored the cinema etc. Around half past nine the rain came down, the organisers did well to call off our walk; we would probably have been just about to turn back! So back to the room for me, upload this morning’s videos and other mundane stuff.

Huan’s lecture lasted over two hours; Chinese people can be very patient at times, when they want to be. I actually went looking for her so that she didn’t have to go upstairs before lunch. That was similar to yesterday’s; click here to see - https://youtu.be/-eCA5YLUOhI

Check out followed, I left Huan while I went to find the car, drove back up to collect her with the windows open and Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song blaring out on (almost) full volume. “Straight home M’lady?” I asked. Nope, we had to visit various express delivery places to collect items ordered from Taobao that had been delayed due to the typhoon. Once home we were both exhausted, Huan had a reason, I didn’t. My day was then spent transferring data from the external HDD to the desktop and uploading to the internet. The complete video of the trip is far too long though at nearly two hours so that will probably stay local.

Without many photos, how can you decide if you want to visit? Well Rendishan has a website, the landing page is http://www.wzsrds.com/ This next link shows you where we were - http://www.wzsrds.com/About.php?id=13 Other links will show you our beautiful island, our county and city. Browse away and enjoy! PS Ask in the comments if you want to know more.

October 17^th Lazy day, something wrong with my belly, doesn’t seem to be food related. Huan’s worried, I’m pretending not to be.

October 18^th Yet more rain is falling on us today, it started yesterday evening and hasn’t stopped since. The lovely lawn and path they created across the river is now all underwater. That rather begs the question will it be permanently under water when the dam is complete?

The worse thing about rain here is not so much the rain, it’s the fact that buildings are not built for it. There are no such things as cavity walls here and neither the outsides nor the insides ever appear to be waterproofed in any way. This is our office wall. Believe it or not, it used to be even worse; this is after a fairly costly repair. Now if we lived in a house we could treat the whole of the outside but living in an apartment building that’s not an option.

We had to go out, you know why, it’s Monday, and the fridge is empty again. There have been some shortages of various foodstuffs due to the typhoon but nothing really to worry us. The only thing we couldn’t find today was cucumber for our sandwiches. Lots of our Taobao stuff was also delayed because of the typhoon so a detour to the local baker was required.

With not having a lot of photos this week I thought I would entertain you with another from the supermarket. You know about chicken feet, you can see some at the back of this photo, but I bet you didn’t know about pig’s noses. I certainly didn’t, even Huan has never seen them before!

So as I finish off this week’s missive the rain is still pouring, the river has gone down a little though and our wall is not getting any worse. Hopefully we will have a few breaks in the rain over the next week so that we can get our little legs moving again. Until next time then, look after you and yours, be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful! Bye!