New Visa Step One, Long Drive Home.

October 15^th Welcome to another week in paradise! (PS It is raining as I write today’s post.) This morning we each went our separate ways, for a change. Huan went off to the local police station that covers “Exit and Entry Administration of the People's Republic of China” to renew her temporary Hainan hukou. After that she was going off for her regular free medical. My job was to go and top up one of the medicines for my heart. Madame went off first and then I set off over Little Island where I took many photos just so that you wouldn’t see a lizard first.

Medicine in pocket I headed off around the river where I checked on the progress of the sluice gates. They seem to be moving a wall.

The trees were very noisy today; birds must have been there in their hundreds, nay thousands! Unfortunately though they were doing a great job of not even letting me see them never mind photograph them. Here are some trees instead!

The only fauna I was able to find today was caged. First we have a beautiful canine.

And then we have some avian friends. They belong to a snowbird so we only see them in the winter months and then only if the weather is good for them.

What do you mean you can’t see them? They are right there, two yellow ones, two green ones and one white one. Oh, all right, I will see what I can do. Sorry, the green ones wouldn’t play nicely but at least you can see the others. Can you guess who was the shyest? PS These photos had to be taken with the phone to avoid the bars on the cages.

Just up the road a little, the owner of these birds was making his own music. He seems to have had a haircut before winter sets in!

So, there are no lizards today, sorry if I disappoint you. I did see a beautiful skink but he saw me at the same time. By the time I moved the camera to my eye he had disappeared into the bushes. Nearly home, I found another one which I took a photo of to keep Huan happy. However, it is not good enough to grace these pages.

After lunch and a nap it was kitchen time for me, possibly American although I got it from the Telegraph before it disappeared behind a pay wall.

Did I change anything? Well I doubled everything; we had 400g of beef because that is how much the piece I bought and had minced weighed. Our ‘passata’ was home made and I had no grated emmental so I used mozzarella. Oh, instead of elbow macaroni I used our flat noodles and cut them, it worked well enough. Of course I also added garlic! We both enjoyed it, bigly! Did you know by the way, that ‘bigly’ is a real word and not something created by Donald Trump.

October 16^th I had a plan, we would walk down the main road, around the old three legged dog corner, and then came back via the bank. Money is needed before we visit Haikou next Monday. The plan was ambushed and altered by the Field Marshall! We did get down to the river where we saw that the cows were back in force.

Coming towards us was, to me, a man on a bike, to Huan someone that she recognised from some work he had been doing elsewhere in the town. It seems he is a ‘little boss’, I suppose something like a foreman, and he explained what is going on here.

As we already knew, but the big boss had forgotten, there will be a bridge here. It will not cross the main river though, only the tributary from Camelot. Here you can see more cows, construction in progress, resting workers and a fisherman. Just a slice of life on the river.

This is where Huan decided that we would not return via the bank but that we would continue along the riverside. What could I say? Initially we had to walk along the road and then when we decided to go down to the pathway not yet completed I had to walk along the wall for a while. That was because I get frightened of jumping these days! Being above the hedge I spotted this chap at almost the same time as Huan did.

Soon we found an easier way for me to join Huan. As you can see, work is still in progress but it shouldn’t be too long now. The ‘little boss’ had told us that all was supposed to be completed in two years but that finances were not always there when required. As far as I am concerned, they do a fairly good job and as far as I can see much quicker than in the UK.

Huan then went and did it again; it turned out to be a good ‘spot’ though.

She then pointed out a ‘white bird’ for me, which basically means that I must do my best to try and get photographs of the bird in question. I got two.

Back on the home stretch of river I took the high road while Huan took the low road. You can see her if you look in the lower right corners.

Even though we were separated by height and distance the orders still came. “Look Bob, birds!” We think they may be egret chicks but are not 100% sure.

Soon Huan was approaching the bridge where she would have to climb the steps to join me.

And here she is. She didn’t like any of the individual pictures so I made a little gif.

Back in our apartment complex the expedition leader managed to find another little lizard. How she spots them so easily I do not know. It is rare for me to spot them first, if at all.

If you look at the weather in today’s, and yesterday’s photos, you will see that it was very nice, very pleasant walking weather. However, both yesterday and today had rain in the afternoon, a little unusual for this time of year I think. Mind you, it didn’t worry us, we were napping!

October 17^th For a change I gave Huan her favourite walk of Feicui Park today. Mind you we did it the anticlockwise way which is the most difficult for us oldies. I tried not to show you all the same pictures that we usually take on this walk. First we looked upstream.

And then I found a tiny little creature that wasn’t a lizard!

I then peered through the fence or gate of the apartment complex that we cannot access and took a photo upstream. Huan liked it and the one I took a little further on too.

“Old Yellow’ was at home today so I popped up to say hello and the Huan decided she needed twenty seven photos of me coming down. I used nine of them. I also kept the last one of the nine just because I liked it. The last one is Old Yellow herself, very happy today.

This is a different view from the bridge at the turn round point showing the summit of a small mountain. I have no idea what it is called and there is no way for us to climb up there.

As we left the bridge and headed for the road down we passed the usual ‘someone using the free water to wash their expensive car’. We wondered if they realised that small particles of sand may not be doing their paintwork a lot of favours! No photos today though. Our next photo is the little cave that we explored many moons ago and which has been inaccessible for years. Today all the undergrowth has been cleared away but the gate is still locked and there is also a fence now to protect the betel nut farms.

Now here is one that we definitely haven’t shown you before. When it grows up it will probably be a fruit piercing moth but for now it’s busy eating leaves.

Of course as far as the Illustrious Leader is concerned no walk is complete if it doesn’t include at least a lizard, or a bird or a squirrel or even better a snake. Today she found three different lizards to complete her happiness quotient. The second one seemed to be struggling to grip on a leaf but froze in position when it saw me.

Back home and after the mandatory naps it was back into the kitchen for me and some French cooking for a change. I suppose I was the Commis Chef (Junior Chef) and today I was also the Escuelerie (Dishwasher). Madame was waiting to be served when the time came.

The very observant amongst you may notice that we have no button mushrooms. That was because there were none available this week. Instead we have quartered shitake mushrooms. Huan had two chicken legs; I had three because I’m greedy like that. We had two or three extra garlic cloves and a few left over kidney beans from Tuesday’s dinner. Thyme would have been nice but I have never seen it here so I used Chinese parsley instead, we both like it. It takes a long time to cook especially when you are using one induction hob but it worked. Our plates were licked clean and there was nothing left in the pans either.

October 18^th We were up early enough today for a bus‘n’walk so that’s what we did. It was a #1 so it didn’t go out of town. Here we are passing the last school before leaving town and crossing the bridge into the countryside. Note the clouds on the mountains, they stayed all morning.

Going across the bridge the granny finger was in action with alarming frequency. I was supposed to capture shots of small birds in the reeds. Just as I was about to give up I had partial success with this one on the bank. Many more went in the bin at home.

All the lizards Huan found today were small, here’s the first.

This one was down to me; sometimes I see things first, not often though.

In the village there seemed to be an abundance of men today. Perhaps they have to work in the fields later or maybe they had already finished, who knows.

And here’s a closer view of the centre of attraction, the great big pussy cat on the table.

This next one is down to me too, I could hardly miss him, standing up there and glowering down at me. We never try to get near water buffalo; they are not normally as docile as normal cows.

Huan then did it again, another tiny lizard. I have no idea where the big handsome ones have disappeared to. Living in Hainan I, perhaps wrongly, thought there were no seasons for lizards.

I suppose I can forgive her for constantly calling me back to see something she has found when the scenery is like this. No city noise here!

Today we even have a fish for you although why it would want to come up for air I don’t know.

Tubular bells anyone?

This is the way we used to go home. Unfortunately they built a new housing complex at the end of this road so it now stops in mid-air. Younger versions of us might try to scramble down the quite treacherous slopes but our older versions prefer not to.

And here below us is our beautiful city, or part of it anyway.

Small creatures are all we have to finish our day. Huan found this little fellow just a minute after I had taken the previous photograph.

This one is down to me; it wouldn’t stay very still for very long!

And the last two tiny ones are again from old Eagle Eyes herself. The skink was right outside our abode so that completed our expedition for today.

Do I need to tell you where we went after lunch? I think not…

October 19^th Why do I have to stretch my arms out so much to take a selfie of us both?

Because today was market day I decided to take my own advice and leave the camera at home. Bad advice it would seem as the first thing we found was a little lizard. Luckily, this little fellow let me get near enough to get him with the phone camera.

Without the camera I thought I would try and look through the bars of the birdies in the cage again and capture the ones I missed last time. It’s not perfect, but, here they are.

Let’s try a small beastie with the phone camera.

And finally for the day, a nice wide angle photo from the phone. I’m not sure what the aspect ratio is but it is much wider than the normal 16:9 I use on the phone. Google tells me that it is 20:9 so I guess I should accept that.

I did try a wide angle selfie of myself, Huan and a neighbour but I failed miserably. I was trying to do it with only one hand and they were behind me. That’s my excuse anyway and I’m sticking to it! Neither of us had a nap today, Huan because she was waiting for a duoduo delivery and me because I had a plan to go to the bank. She got her delivery and I didn’t get to the bank. For some reason the song “Time is on my side” crept into my head, a little earworm, and then I spent a long time down the Rolling Stones rabbit hole on Youtube! I did enjoy it though.

October 20^th There would be no arguments, today I decided that it was imperative that we walk to my bank. Fuel would be needed for our return trip to Haikou tomorrow. We took a leisurely stroll through town on the way to the riverside.

It’s been a while so here’s the latest “Lido” progress report. The central wall has been shifted a little, the end wall has been strengthened and work goes on. When will we see the sluice gates?

White birds were in attendance, this one shows a little attitude.

Then in the centre of the river we spotted a few very brave souls. They were hanging around the excavator waiting to see what lovely grubs he could uncover for them in his work.

Spot the sign-writing error next.

Huan made me shoot another bird and she also found an almost invisible lizard.

Today’s plan worked well, my wallet was replenished, enough for tomorrow anyway.

October 21^st I don’t really like alarming days but sometimes needs must as they say. I was up at half past five, showered and shaved in short order, and then waited for the Queen to awake. By the time she did wake up I could quite well have skipped the alarm clock (phone app) completely. Not to worry we had an uneventful drive up to Haikou, apart from the fifteen minute queue to get into the car park. Our desk was quiet, we were quickly seen to. The lady who took care of us this year asked many more questions, phoned her boss, got Huan to print out a copy of our Sanya title deeds and then told us we should be able to get a visa valid until May 2027, (That is when my passport expires.) I hope she is right. We certainly walked out smiling today.

Just up the road from the visa office there is a large supermarket, 大潤發Dàrùnfā, RT-Mart so that’s where we went next. It was my idea, we could make sure we got milk for the week and maybe a few other things too. We could also have lunch there before setting off back. We succeeded in all our endeavours, lunch is shown here, can you guess whose is whose.

For our return journey I thought we would try going down the East highway and look for the cross country highway turn-off towards Tungshan, Fengmu and Qiongzhong. My first navigation error was in Haikou and we ended up on a ‘different’ East highway, the G98/12 instead of the G98. It still went south but added more than a few kilometres to our drive. We stopped around one for a drinks break at a place called Fengjiawan Service Area, parking, refreshments and toilets available but no fuel, good enough for us. Spot the ‘distances to tourist hotspots.’

I wonder if, like us, you were wondering what on earth a ‘Boboyeah’ store is. Maybe this bunch of assorted characters will help.

My thoughts are that this final character is Boboyeah.

When we eventually arrived home I did a little Googling and it seems that he is supposed to be a Hainan tourism mascot. On the English internet the last mentions of him are way back in 2020. There is a Weibo but I don’t know the date. Is he another mascot that somehow lost his way? There do seem to be a few. For those who don't know him he appears to be an alien that fell to earth and took the shape of a coconut. He is described as having coconut water for his brain. There are some videos with various other characters that appear. I liked him, not least his name!

Anyway, back to our journey home. My second error was missing the required turn-off. How do you miss a highway interchange turn-off? By not knowing the right name for where you want to head. The signpost said Lingao but didn’t mention any city that we knew. We’ll know in the future if we want to waste time again! We weren’t worried because there are other ways home. My third error, although I would have to say it wasn’t really mine, was going round in circles for well over an hour, maybe even two. The highway was closed for maintenance so everyone had to take a detour. Unfortunately, the detour ran out of signposts in very short order so we were relying on our SatNav to assist us. We could see many other drivers also going round in circles, oh didn’t we have fun!

I know some of you are waiting for it so here it is, my third error! Yes, I went and did it again. There is another cross country highway, the one we usually take from Haitangwan. However, both of us remembered a long time back in the past going across country via Baoting to get home. Why don’t we try that one asked the love of my life and I stupidly agreed. The roads have improved tremendously since we last went that way but they are still, of course, much slower than a highway. We arrived home to park the car at half past six. That means that a journey that normally takes us about three and half hours, with a rest stop, took us five and a half today!

At one stage, passing through one of the towns on the road, we both did a double take. I thought there was an express delivery truck reversing down the other side of the road at quite a rate of knots. We both realised almost simultaneously that it was a driverless vehicle. Maybe until people are used to seeing them on a regular basis they need to have a windscreen and a fake driver. That might just be a little less worrying.

Anyway, obviously no cooking this evening and for me fast food was perfect.

Huan had a bacon and egg burger and I had a beef burger. Both of us were happy.

Total exhaustion had set in by the time we reached home. What happened to my ability to drive for days without sleep? I was so tired that this post was not updated until the next day. That means of course that it is 24 hours late being posted. I am so sorry, please accept my most humble and grovelling apologies. I’ll try to do better next time!