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!

More Eating Out, Cutting Down, Still On Light Duties, Birds & Bugs

August 31^st I woke up to an empty house today, Huan had gone off to the morning market. She quite enjoys that and often thinks I should go too; bed is far more appealing. This morning though she was accompanying Zōushūxián, Yú guì lán and Zhào dé, they were buying supplies for another lunch tomorrow. It seems they had to go today to buy three live chickens which were then slaughtered and brought home, not to our house I hasten to add. Huan’s job was peanuts and green beans, both to be boiled. I hate boiled peanuts!

When the wanderer returned we set off to the lair of the Bapman again having now completely run out of bread. Both of us thought the clouds were rather beautiful today, and just look at the colour of that sky. It’s a shame that I was still on light duties!

Bapman’s abode was built by the same chap that built our area and suffers from much the same kind of problems. If it was all maintained it would be wonderful. However, I do love to see nature taking back control of places.

From some steps going down to an escalator going neither up nor down. There is a children’s dance studio on the upper level but nothing else yet. Perhaps they will put the escalator into service when more shops move in. Mind you, it’s been at least a couple of years now…

Walking through the centre we found some dragonflies ‘flying united’, probably as a precursor to mating. (I found this great little video on Youtube that explains the procedure well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UL08PQ3dPk&ab_channel=JoAlwood Try as I may though I was unable to get a decent photo, they were just too fast for me. We’ll try again another time. The only other creature we saw was a dead rat, and I’m sure you don’t need to see that. It looked as if it had been in one of the many traps around and eaten the poison therein.

Arriving at Bapman’s stall we found it still closed so we tried to find someone who knew why. It turns out that his mother back in Harbin has been taken ill so they’ve gone back up North. We’ll just have to wait a bit longer and order more Russian bread from Taobao. For today though we walked back up the main street trying first a new bakery, no hope there. Our usual supermarket was next, when we asked why there was no bread on the shelves they told us they had stopped making it. Huan thinks we were the only ones buying it! Luckily our third attempt at another bakery, (Bread Story), was more successful although I suspect from the name that they buy it in, probably from Taobao too.

No afternoon sleep for me today although someone else did play Sleeping Beauty on the sofa. I was the duty chef today, the menu was stir fry and I think I quite excelled myself! I started by frying up some onions and diced chicken breast before adding a touch of soya sauce. Next in were some bamboo shoots, mildly spiced followed by ‘garlic legs’ and spring onions. Then came some sliced and diced hard(ish) tofu, a diced tomato and half a can of sweetcorn, (without the juice of course). Finally, when we had a nice little sizzle going on I added bean sprouts and a dash of water. HM the Queen was suitably impressed by the colours and the taste and suggested taking a photo of it. Unfortunately she was too late, we had both already scoffed too much!

September 1st “Rubber knees, trying to forget you.” The first female telephone operator, Emma Nutt, started work on this day in 1878. Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees was born on this day in 1946. Britain’s old penny and threepenny coins ceased to be legal tender on this day in 1971. (I remember decimalisation very well, I wonder if you do too?) (Details from Penguin Pocket Reference ISBN0-141-02715-0)

Alone again, naturally. Huan had disappeared to the morning market again today to assist the ladies with fish and shellfish. While she was out I decided to take a few screen shots and show you my counting fags charts. What do you think?

Huan arrived home with prawns and shellfish, the prawns were still alive, as they usually are here. Her morning’s work today was to prepare two more dishes for lunch. Here are the two ‘ingredients’ prior to preparation and cooking.

Our lunch today was not in Zōushūxián’s apartment but in another that they borrowed. It’s a ground floor apartment that belongs to someone not back for the winter yet. I guess you could call it a studio, although it’s bigger than ours in Sanya.

Today’s lunch, although they initially told me it was to celebrate the 1^st September, was actually to celebrate the two year anniversary of our new maintenance company. Sixteen people were invited, we ended up with seventeen, the ‘spread’ was certainly big enough!

More vegetables arrived later and of course there was rice on the side. Thankfully there was no Báijiǔ today, only Píjiǔ (beer), this was my view.

Of course there were still far too many toasts and within a very short time I lost all understanding of whatever conversation there was. It was too fast, too loud and too omni directional! Here are fifteen of the guests, three committee members, ten ‘workers’, one boss and Yú guì lán. One guest had left and the other guest, me, was taking the photo.

One of the ‘workers’, who shall remain nameless, had to go back on gate duty after lunch, I doubt he would have been able to keep his eyes open very easily. When I got home I closed mine for a while, as did Huan. Being a glutton for punishment Huan was back out at six to partake of the leftovers, I didn’t need any!

September 2^nd Rain stopped play today so we didn’t get out at all. The only photos we have are of a butterfly, or possibly a moth. Huan found it outside our front door, it seemed to be on its last legs. I was able to pick it up and put it on the windowsill for the second photos and then I moved to the outside window ledge. Normally the birds would have found it but they were all away hiding from the rain too. It had gone by night time, whether it flew off, fell down or was snatched by one of our feathered friends we will never know.

September 3^rd Our morning was rain free so out for a walk we went, not far, I’m still on, light duties. Open wounds heal slower in humid climes. First Huan had me taking photos of ‘small’ birds again, too small to share. Instead, here’s a view of the river you haven’t seen before.

Some black and white photos next, the first showing workers at the sluice gates, one is going down the other side, perhaps to clear some of the debris. The second shows one of our markets with absolutely no workers whatsoever although there were a few behind me. It’s time they closed this particular market and put it to another use.

Next I took Huan along a route that she didn’t remember, some of the ‘back streets’. We do have them too but unlike big cities they are quite safe to walk down.

Huan then pointed out a tree, which means in Huanspeak, “Take a photo of that tree!” I must admit that it is rather unusual and does look a little out of place. Perhaps someone in the past brought it from up north. On the other hand, it could well be a native species, I wouldn’t know!

The next one is my choice, such a beautiful flower.

Finally, for today’s walk, Huan had me taking bird photographs yet again. I wasn’t so far away this time so I was able to snap a couple. I had to do a lot of work in Picasa though so that you can see its beak and its eyes.

Being a Friday it was ‘date night’ again and time to do another restaurant review. With the rain now bucketing down we didn’t stray far from the house and settled on a nearby dumpling restaurant. As always, if you’d like to see it, check here - https://youtu.be/bsHmC3lqhNU

September 4^th What rubbish weather we are having this week! We did manage to get out in the morning though, only got caught in a very slight drizzle. The rain came back in force after lunch and dinner. This was tea street on our way out.

The riverside market was open again today, I guess the powers that be have decided we don’t have to worry quite so much anymore. This stall reminded of little girls in the USA with their roadside lemonade stalls. There were young ladies here rather than little girls, and the drinks were just a little stronger than lemonade. From the left, and probably going by colour, they are turmeric wine, mulberry wine and mountain wine.

We didn’t buy any wine but I did coerce Huan into buying some seeds. Like many Chinese people Huan enjoys nibbling on seeds, I don’t, I call it bird food. Too much effort is required for too little reward. Today she bought pumpkin seeds.

On the way home, after the drizzle, we bought some rambutans for me. In this case I tell Huan that she is not really Chinese because she doesn’t like them. On the other hand she is from the north so probably as a child she never had them. As for me, well in Singapore, Chepstow Close if I remember rightly, when I was about nine years old, I used to play with the Chinese boys at the end of the road and we used to pick rambutans fresh from his and neighbouring gardens.

As is normal on most walks Huan had me trying to capture birds again, this one took a fair few attempts but I think I got close enough this time!

No more walks today, I was head chef so had to make the weekend stew, Huan practiced making a noise. To be fair, the noise is actually improving!

September 5th We beat the computer today, it said that there would be clear skies in the morning and that the rain would come at noon. Looking at the sky we disagreed and we were right. It rained all morning and the afternoon was perfect for walking. As usual Huan had me trying to photograph birds and as usual I failed. However, I did accidentally catch this lizard racing across our path, and I mean racing.

Our route today was in fact a lizard hunt, past the three legged dog, who wasn’t there, probably away for lunch. Looking out across the river, where the stream merges with it, I was amazed to see that there were no mudflats at all, they had all been overgrown.

A few minutes later we thought we saw a bird, or Huan did, but as we got closer I could see that it wasn’t. Very shortly Huan shouted “snake” and tried to push me forwards to take photos of it. I couldn’t see a snake anywhere but was very reluctant to go forward ‘just in case’. It seems that what I had already decided was a plastic bag Huan thought was a snake coiled up and rearing its head ready to strike. Thinking that she still tried sending me towards it! Maybe she thinks I am braver than I am or maybe she was trying to get rid of me!

Before long we came upon a little goat, I’m not sure if it was the same kid we saw before, it doesn’t appear to have grown much. It’s a shame that it will probably end up in someone’s pot, but we can hardly criticise, seeing as how we are partial to lamb now and then. Somehow I don’t think I would ever make a good farmer.

Our last photo of the day is another little creature, with more than four legs this time though. I’ll show you two photos, one that you can hopefully see a lot of detail on, and the other with part of my sandal included so that you can see the size. It’s the largest caterpillar we’ve ever seen.

September 6^th Last day of the week, a day where we normally don’t show you any photos. Today we thought we would, just for a change. First of all here I am with next weekend’s dinner in my hand, chicken stew, complete with head and feet. (They are for Huan, not me!)

Maybe we’ll show you bits and bobs of what’s available in our local supermarket as well. Today Huan needed to top up her rice jars, she needed black and red rice. Just think, way back in our younger days we all thought rice was always white.

Apart from shopping Monday is always a lazy day but today, for me, it was worse than normal. I got stuck down the Facebook ‘Watch’ hole. It’s probably worse than the Youtube hole because the videos are all so much shorted and you keep thinking “just one more”…

Hopefully my ankle will have healed enough next week to be able to put my boots on and travel a little further afield. Until then, stay safe all, look after your nearest and dearest, if they’re not there with you, they give them a call. They’ll thank you for it and you’ll end up with a big smile, or maybe even a cheesy grin. I know I always do. Bye for now!