Hospital Tests, Camera Dying, Computer Dying, Less Bugs.

June 14^th A new week, with new weather, gorgeous, it turned into a very good day for walking. We headed off past the Rendishan complex into the countryside.

For a lot of this route we had shade from the trees and when we didn’t, the sun did us the honour of hiding behind the clouds.

Approaching the head of the valley and the village therein we noticed that there had been some changes to the local farms. It looks as though they are growing flowers under the netting.

Getting closer we heard a cacophony of poultry. From a distance I thought I could hear geese but getting closer we realised it was chickens. They all came to see us, you can find the video here - https://youtu.be/BKyVcHiPL6Q.

For the first time ever Huan spotted a lizard in the last few metres before the village. She took a photo of me which doesn’t show my frustration. The camera was playing up terribly today, I had to delete a lot of photos for being out of focus.

Somehow, I managed to eventually get a couple of decent shots.

Huan was doing well with her phone today, here I am with two little pups. They look a little nervous in my arms but they were all over my feet and my legs and very happy to see me.

Huan got me yet again, my posterior view anyway, as she noticed that quite a few of the village men were not away working today. They were busy getting coconuts down.

If you look closely at the next three photos you can see the results.

The next thing we knew was that they were preparing one for us!

And here we are enjoying the juice although we were both a little disappointed. The villagers told us that the nuts were a little old, perhaps that is why.

Would you believe it, we spotted another lizard on our way back down to the town. Again the camera gave me lots of problems but I managed, somehow.

Two quite worn out little old people arrived home after walking just over ten kilometres today. Mind you, we both enjoyed it very much; it’s been quite a while since we have been that way out of town. The villagers still remembered us though!

June 15^th Up early this morning and out without any breakfast, doctor’s orders. Fasting was necessary for today’s blood tests. We were at the hospital by half past seven, two hours later we were in Dr. Mă’s consulting room. Before too long we were in the EKG room and about an hour after that in the ultrasound room. After that it was up to the fourth floor for blood tests, which I will never get used to, and then back down to the pharmacy.

As usual I had to pick up hundreds of pills so having had no breakfast I sent Huan to get something to keep me going. Yes, I was a bad boy, I had a Pepsi!

We were out of the hospital by half past eleven, that’s four hours for a consultation, an KG, an ultrasound, a range of blood tests and collection of plentiful pills. Does that sound too good to be true? I guess it was because we had to go back at four in the afternoon to collect the blood test results. Here I am doing just that, the printer didn’t quite manage to swallow my hand.

All that was left was another quick consultation with Dr. Mă to discuss the various results. He was quite pleased with everything and, apart from repeat prescriptions; I don’t have to have any more hospital visits for another three months. Yet again I find myself pleasantly happy with the health services provided here in China, everything I needed finished in one day.

Ooops, I forgot! Dr. Mă gave Huan some wampee which one of his patients had given him. “Chinese wampee (Chinese: Huángpi, 黄皮): The grape like fruit tastes sweet, some are sour.” Strangely enough, huángpi translates as yellow skin. I can’t tell you what they taste like as Huan ate the lot! She did say they were sour though.

June 16^th Huan chose a walk towards Changhao today, to the nice little villages that we know. I changed her mind as we were on our way. The road under the highway and towards the off ramp is being widened which meant numerous trucks carrying soil travelling towards Changhao. As my health was tested OK yesterday I suggested we take the landfill route although it is a little hilly. Huan was happy to accept that, it is perhaps three months since we walked that way.

Today was the day the rubber traders came to town so this place was busy. People were delivering rubber, it was being weighed and analysed, poured into a big bath and then money exchanged hands. The smell of ammonia was heavy in the air! My camera went berserk so nearly all of these photos were taken by Huan.

Next we took a detour and didn’t go under the first highway tunnel, we knew that the road to the right would take us to the second tunnel just before the actual highway tunnels.

It seems that they are building a new road to join the little farms but we were lucky to still have the wonderful tracks through the woods today.

Eventually we saw the highway ahead.

Soon we were through the old quarry village and back on to the landfill road.

Here’s something that we saw for the first time today, in fact we spotted a few. They are ground water monitoring stations and are dotted all around the landfill.

Sometimes scenery off the road can catch your eye, this one did for me. I wasn’t allowed to go too far just in case of leeches but it may be a future exploration.

Onwards and upwards towards the crest of the hill.

Soon the crest was ahead.

A selfie at the crest was needed and this was the time when my camera played up yet again. I lost count of how many photos I had to delete today. This was the best of multiple selfies.

Unfortunately, all the snaps I took of the downward slope from the crest failed as well. Instead here is the point at which we spotted the town again.

Soon much more of the town came into view as did the housing complex called Shangri La. We had been waiting to walk this way again to see if we could see where I had my little incident back in March. If you enlarge this photo and then check about a quarter of the way up on the left hand edge you will see some pieces of metal. To the left of them is where I finally reached found my way out of the stream bed and struggled to the road.

Further down quite a few tress had been pruned so I was able to take this next panorama which shows you a little of how the road snakes down the hill.

You may remember just how much it rained last week, in fact we got wet again yesterday but we had our brollies with us. I wonder how the internet access is in this village during tropical downpours. There is no way that the cabinet door can be closed.

Finally, almost home, we spotted one of my favourite dogs of all time, well him and “Old Boot” anyway. However, there is no chance of seeing “Old Boot” except perhaps in the UK. Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz  certainly knew how to draw, just look at the expressions on Snoopy’s and Woodstock’s faces.

Well we took a lot of photos today but as the camera is very rapidly giving up the ghost that is probably just as well. Now I just have to work on Huan and get a new one, less expensive and less likely to go wrong in the hot and humid climate that we live in.

June 17^th For some reason or other, I don’t remember, we only did a river walk today down towards three legged dog public conveniences and then back along the riverside. Disappointingly my little three legged friend was not there. The new attendants told us that the other lady has moved to another post.

First subject to pop into the lens was this butterfly, the camera is playing up more and more but at least I managed something.

Yesterday’s decal was on a motor scooter, today’s is on a car. I presume these monkeys(?) must be from some topical cartoon.

Arriving at the river we noticed an absence of snowbirds, perhaps the great northward migration has no begun in earnest.

Without any rain to fall on me today I had to find another way to get wet.

One reason Huan likes this route is that she sometimes finds lizards basking on the trees. Today she was a lucky girl and found four but one photograph failed. Here are the other three, I quite like the tail on the last one, all he needs is a flag!

Yet another decal on a car is up next. My first thought was that it was Maisie from “The Perishers” but then I realised that she would be unknown in China.

Silence accompanied us towards home, definitely no snowbirds!

It had been a while since we checked on the progress of ‘our’ dam so we took a slight detour on the way home. Will we be able to cross over the top when it’s finished? Time will tell.

The last one for the day was another little rascal trying to climb into the camera lens.

June 18^th Saturday came around again, strange how it seems to come faster and faster every week. It is riverside market day of course and our first surprise was how busy it was. One has to be very wary of umbrellas, shopping bags and trolleys, old people (like us) and even vehicular traffic, bikes and cars!

Our destination was the man with the belly pork! I had decided that rather than cook this weekend we would have some of his lovely meat and a nice potato salad. We forgot to take a photo before it was cut.

There was a show from the Li ethnic minority while we were there, my camera didn’t do too well but I did snap them ladies with their nose flutes.

Today, as well as the show, there were quite a lot of traditional craft stalls.

On our reverse route, after buying the requisite vegetables, Huan spotted this guy playing the leaf! He was pretty good at it too.

Let’s finish the day off with Huan returning from her Pinduoduo trip empty handed. Whatever she had ordered had not turned up yet.

“How was our dinner of belly pork and potato salad?” I hear you ask. It was delicious, probably because I am hardly ever allowed food with salt and taste. We’re not sure how it’s cooked, it’s definitely not fried. I think it is suspended over flames in a barrel cooker. Both of us really enjoyed it and we will definitely be partaking of more in the future!

June 19^th Huan had admin work to do today, she wanted to pay the internet charges for our Ledong apartment, this despite the fact that we will be going to Ledong next week anyway. No worries, I do like a walk around the town anyway. We passed Zhaode at the gate, Huan said he was building a shelter for courier packages.

Somehow we managed to get wet again, not the rain this time, but this spray truck.

To add a little distance we went through what we call the “no housebook flats” where, despite camera problems, I did manage a few exposures.

Huan decided to take some of me, lots of light pollution, but a crop wasn’t bad.

Once Huan’s admin was complete, we went downriver as far as Fodelai bridge and then headed for home. This was our view back the way we came.

Our route was sneakily planned by the devil in disguise (not me) to pass the baker’s and buy s little chocolate cake! On the way we passed the pet store where I wondered what kind of pets all these little creatures were. How can you form a bond with a crab, or a frog, or a turtle? I mean the crabs will spend half their time waiting to worship the “eyeballs in the sky”!

Let’s finish off today’s post with the result of Zhaode’s endeavours. I guess the parcels will at least be sheltered from most of the rain.

June 20^th I had an important job to do first thing in the morning, and that was to send birthday greetings whizzing across the miles to my eldest brother. Remember the days of buying birthday cards? I would still prefer to do that but it seems that most of the cards I send from China never make it to their intended recipients!

Monday is shopping day so that’s what we did with me trying to sneak unhealthy food into the trolley when the Minister of Health wasn’t looking. After Baijiahui we had to make a stop on the way to the market. Here is Huan looking happy because she is about to put some money into her Taobao account. Her happiness will be short lived because it is my money, for my new camera!

The rest of my day was spent dithering about which camera I was going to buy now that I had limited my possible spending with the amount I gave Huan. In the meantime I switched her computer on ready to send the URL across and lo and behold, everything went haywire. First I could not get my QQ account to work at all, it is a Chinese one so should be fine. I even took the VPN off and it still wouldn’t work. Uninstalling it and trying QQ International failed too, I’m not at all sure if that still works. I even tried installing QQ on my phone with just as much success. “This is a new phone number” they said. “Oh no it isn’t” said I.

In the meantime, Huan was having trouble with her QQ and with her payment programmes, either very slow to sign in or not able to. Eventually her PC got slower and slower and gave up the ghost! It is now in the middle of a supposed disk repair that will take the rest of the night! I can foresee us having to cart it off to the repair shop in a day or two.

Enough of my trials and tribulations, how are you all keeping? We’d love to see some comments either down below or on Facebook. They can be critical or not, they can be about our posts or about your lives, we don’t mind. In fact I’ll read anything! See you next week! 🐸😁😎