Being A Happy Holiday Guide.

November 4^th Well I promised you more of the dining room this morning so without further ado, here you are. Sorry, I had to make a collage again.

Unfortunately for us the weather today was worse than it’s been since our honoured guests arrived here in ‘sunny’ Hainan. Thankfully they did not mind visiting the Hainan Museum, once their Dad managed to navigate his way there. Far too many photos were taken so some severe editing will be needed. The museum is quite large with many well presented galleries. This was our first one, Qilou Street.

We’ll follow that with Chris painting a pig, me explaining about their great grandfather and then Sam listening to old Chinese musical instruments.

We then move to the local store which is of course, ‘open all hours’!

We need some wildlife! OK, here are some frogs.

One of the galleries may have had a misprint, here are some glove muppets.

This is one of my favourite photos of the day, my ‘little’ babies!

While we were inside, the weather was still there, outside.

Shall we see our guests again? Why not, and let’s also include the hosts.

And here’s the whole family, feeding the fish.

Just to please Huan we did find a lizard in the gift shop.

That concludes out visit to the museum. I know there are not so many ‘cultural’ photographs but then I do believe that you should visit if you can. Overall, it is a great museum albeit a bit lacking in English descriptions here and there. As #1 explained though, Google translate, or whichever app takes your fancy, do a good job of translating for you.

We missed the turn off for RT supermarket; in fact I almost went through a red light! I decided we should visit the other one that we knew, we could also eat there. When we arrived we found that the basement cafeteria area had shrunk considerably and appeared to be still doing so. We did find something to eat though.

In the supermarket we found a rather strange sign so back at the hotel it was my turn to use Google translate. 进口休闲零食=Imported Leisure Snacks. I’m not quite sure how they managed to get ‘shoe repair’ out of that.

Other strange markings were found too.

After a nap dinner was taken in the Sushi restaurant across the road from the hotel. It’s a terrible place to eat, they just keep showing you food and your brain just keeps taking more!

Someone, apart from me, likes cake too! Just look at that smile.

That cake was very nice indeed, probably the best cream cake I’ve had since being in Hainan. It was light and fluffy and the cream felt and tasted like real cream. It was so good that I do believe that I should let you have another look at it.

Back at the hotel lots of work needed for me, too many photos again and not all the director’s fault this time. I did manage to get to sleep before midnight though. Zzzzzzzzz.

November 5^th Remember remember the fifth of November, etc. Would you believe it, our day to return to Wuzhishan and just for a change it wasn’t raining. We did debate staying in Haikou a little longer but the weather was still not really good enough for swimming! Someone special was staying though, or at least someone rich!

After breakfast Huan and I thought that Chris and Sammy would need some time to pack so we had a wander around the swimming pool part of the hotel.

Huan was busy with her phone too.

When we rejoined Chris and Sam we went to the Grocery, stopping after to fill our tyre which we had been receiving warnings for. We checked the rest too of course.

From there it was a trip to Corner’s Deli to buy breakfasts for the next few days and thence on to the highway. We stopped at Qionzhong Services to fill up, us not the car. Photos of Huan’s food and mine were taken but they were abysmal so I binned them. I did take Huan’s photo; maybe that will suffice instead.

And we had a look at the local scenery.

Back home we dropped Chris and Sam off with all the luggage and we headed off to the post office to collect a new mattress for the top bunk bed. Coming back we passed the express delivery cabinets to pick up more stuff and then we failed to park the car.

After another trip to the gate for me and a little sorting out at home it was soon time to go out for dinner again, this time it was Chinese but a Chinese burger place. We enjoyed it!

November 6^th It was beautiful weather today, just right for a nice walk. However, admin was the order of the day and we took our visitors to the police station to register.

After lunch we had some Taobao work to do, trying to find a charger cable for one of Sam’s friends in the UK. Hopefully we have ordered the correct item, it has already been shipped.

In the evening it was a trip to Eighteen Bowls restaurant in the Baijiahui building. Here are Chris and Sam patiently waiting for the final dishes to be served.

Soon the food was all there and we could tuck in. Eighteen Bowls is a franchise restaurant and you can usually rely on both the service and the quality. Today was no exception.

And here we all are, captured in a selfie by Chris; he is much more adept at than we are.

Our day finished with an English language movie with Chinese subtitles. Lovely!

November 7^th Our poor visitors must be wondering who has been telling them lies about Hainan being a sunny tropical island. This was today’s weather.

#1 son has a new camera, a better one than mine, this was his first photo.

Just like me he takes photos of strange things on cars, this was KAWS.

Here I thought he was going for an artistic shot of the table but he wasn’t, he was taking a snap of the small lane up to the top street.

We got rained on a lot while we were out so no more practice could be had with the new camera. Only Chris and I went out, Huan and Sammy stayed home so that Sammy could learn how to make dumplings. Back home, after having showers and easting some of those dumplings, in saw an egret outside so I sent Chris to the balcony to ‘have a go’. He did quite well, and as his camera focuses better than mine and has a bigger sensor, allowing me to crop more the results were not bad at all. Both Huan and I loved them.

In the evening we went out again, by car this time so that we could stay dry. Our destination was ‘Just Fish’ in the Baijiahui building and here we are just prior to tucking in.

Afterwards we had a look next door at the entertainment place. It has changed; KTV only on the top floor, lots of pool tables and a little roller skating area on the fourth floor. The bowling alley has disappeared from the fourth floor and the other floors are not accessible from the lifts.

Am I enjoying having my offspring visit? Of course I am!

November 8^th Woke up to no access to the foreign internet, no FB, no email, no Wordle etc. I was a frustrated teddy. Problems would have to wait until later though, today was market day and neither of our visitors had been there before. On the way we passed this car, displaying someone that I believe even DJT has tried to pronounce recently. Don’t quote me on that!

One of the photos of the three of them going through the crowd has a strange extra face in there so we will show you one of the other photos, only #1 son and #1 daughter, original and heavily cropped version.

This is where they were aiming for.

The pack horse was laden with ‘mountain alcohol’, grapes and sweet corns for all but the director still found work for him to do. He tried his best, honest!

All on my own, I managed to find a frog.

Being a little on the late side we took a #2 bus home, here are the three stooges sat waiting.

After lunch we had a wonderful surprise. Chris had been contacted by his Aunty Gwenda to bring a card for us so he suggested contacting my other siblings. Consequently he brought with him a pile of Christmas cards! Big thank you to him, to Sammy, and to all my siblings.

In the afternoon I also tried using Nord, it would not connect to any servers at all. What am I going to do, I’m doomed Captain Mainwaring, doomed!

In the evening we took Chris and Sammy to a new spicy place that we hadn’t been to before. In retrospect we should have checked it out first and also chosen our time better. It was jam packed! Three of us had our food served in a little dish still being heated.

The fourth one, the boss, had a bowl which for some reason we have no photo of. We made up for it and took her photo with the franchise mascot. Note the matching colours!

November 9^th VPN still now working but we were off out today anyway, to visit Mauna where Huan had done her open air performance for Chinese TV, with lots of other people of course. It has become more popular and changed, we could no longer drive in. Instead we had to go to the visitor centre in Shuimangshan village, buy tickets and go back on a coach. I tried taking a photo of the screen before we got on the bus.

There’s even a train for the kiddies now. Can you spot Hyacinth?

As usual far too many pictures were taken, by all of us, so I will have to severely limit what I put here. First we’ll see some swinging youngsters.

And then the swinging oldy, only one.

Shall we have a mascot and a couple of painted walls?

If you were to scroll back through the archives you would find quite a few photos there from Mauna. It has changed a lot since those days and despite having an entrance fee and needing a bus to get there it is well worth a visit. I am not going to bore you with too many photos of the ‘new’ Mauna though; if I do this post will be far too long. We’ll move on with Sammy doing what Huan more than likely taught her, giving someone a good talking to!

She also beat Huan to finding lizards. Here it is, with Chris using his new camera too.

We do need a little scenery though, don’t you think?

This is what it’s all about.

We finished our morning with lunch in Shuimanshang.

On our way home we passed by Peacock City to show Chris and Sammy the peacocks.

They could also feed the birds, more than tuppence a bag though.

I had a go too.

If you would like to see more of the peacocks then click here, https://youtu.be/iiHD4HJyVbU Back home I sent the visitors out with Huan while I tried to sort out my computers. Neither the laptop nor the desktop would let Astrill work. Downloading #1’s vpn didn’t work either, I had no idea what was going on. On top of that there were hundreds of photos to sort out.

November 10^th More messing around with computers this morning, eventually sorted by using vpn.ac. That required a Paypal account, not something I really wanted. Nothing else had been planned for the morning though because we had a lunch date with the neighbours. On the way Sammy made friends again with Dodo.

This was our choice of restaurant, walking distance from home.

I don’t usually do this, I would normally make a collage, today I present to you the ten dishes chosen by the Prime Minister and her cabinet cronies.

And here is the merry throng sans moi.

I must say that the east and west mixed together very well. Our friends and neighbours were very happy to meet Christopher and Samantha and the feelings were reciprocated. A good time was had by all and back home some of us had to go straight for a nap!

Tune in next week for another episode, hopefully I will not have lost my vpn again or had FB disable my account. You may not all miss me but I certainly do miss you! Bye for now!