Sunday 11 July 2010

I awoke at 9:35 for a 9:45 departure, and re-set the alarm for 9:40.  We went to Marisa's hotel again for a Dim Sum brunch.  Even finding the room for this was difficult, complicated by the Chinese inclination to say 'yes' to questions to which the correct answer is 'no'.  The food was quite OK, we all stuffed ourselves in preparation for the day ahead, particularly Amelia who demolished a large put of Congee.


We took a taxi towards the tea fields and walked the last stretch.  The landscape was again picturesque and with plenty of Chinese tourists and their expensive European cars.  It was cool to see tea being grown, the tea fields full of unusual flowers and many dragonflies. It was sweltering which made everything hard work though.  The area had some nice temples and pagodas but we were interested in the cool beers more. Amelia bought some lotus fruit which we enjoyed shelling but turned out to be largely flavourless but for the very centre which was supposedly "too sour for foreigners".  They wanted £20-30 for a small box of their tea - they charged depending on the day that they claimed it was picked.

We saw workers in the fields, one of whom had a long pole with a large net on the end.  This made for a cool photo, less so perhaps when we later saw that it was used for removing tourists' litter from the streams!

We wanted to hire a boat that we could row around the lake, but apparently a storm was coming in, so we had to hire one with a driver.  Or rower.  Or something.  It was short but sweet.

We took a taxi to the 'old street', a huge tourist trap selling unusually good things.  Sellers made glass ornaments in the street, health and safety entirely forgotten again.  Tiny words were inscribed on £1 gifts.    Clay models of people's faces made perfectly in a few minutes.  Very cheap tea.

Next came my first trip on a tuc-tuc.  A bike with a shell and a bench attached.  Larger people were distributed evenly between the vehicles - me with Amelia then.  I felt like I raised the centre of gravity too high while putting the vehicle entirely off balance but we got where we were going without a hitch.  I managed not to squash Amelia dead. It was fun ride.  Neither one-way (four lane) roads nor the pavement formed any kind of obstacle.

At the electronics shop I bought a battery charger for my camera - I never expected to get through two batteries in the whole trip, let alone this soon.  We examined the magic arse-cleaning toilets in awe.

We had little time left so after picking our bags up from Marisa's hotel, which by now we were almost certainly abusing the privilege of, we took the easy option of Pizza Hut.  Sorry, Chinese culture.  Disappointingly the menu was only slightly freaky.  I guess their pizza crusts were shaped in quite an oriental way.  Shame!

The train home.  Read some more of 'One hundred years of solitude' and wrote this.  I don't think we're up for staying awake for the World Cup Final tonight at 2:30 am.  Busy one tomorrow.