We were up at about midday and had melon for breakfast, Michelle was hungover and melon "wasn't going to do it."

We went in hunt of stodgier sustanance and Liaocheng's famous lake. Lunch was had in a double barrelled shotgun of restaurant floating on famous lake.

I ordered up assorted dishes including a 'mystery vegetable' as Michelle is vegetarian and doesn't get to participate in mystery meat action. The mystery was a dissapointing plate of lettuce.

On the other side of the lake we saw an old man painting with flat sponges, each sponge was dipped in a number of colours so that each swipe at the page formed a techicoloured dream stroke.

I asked him to do one for Michelle. He handed me a pad and pencil asking me to write down her name. Having looked up how to write it I handed him back his pad with a badly scrawled 茉莉.

He got to work and after a short while we realised that the mountains, sunsets, dragons and birds were coming together to form Michelle's Chinese name.

It was pretty cool! I didn't get one, there was no way I'd get home in one piece.

The local Laowai hangout in town was having a pizza night that evening so after a bucket shower for Michelle and a cold one for me we picked up some wine and headed on down. It turned out to be more of an English Corner, where local English students come and use things like "Can I practice my spoken English with you?" and "Can you tell me something about your hometown?" as icebreakers.

Michelle seemed a little embarrassed that she had taken me there as she didn't realise it would be like that. It was good! I hadn't been in that kind of a situation in some time and turned out to be good fun.

Once the students bedtime came at about ten we were able to bust out our alcohol and get down to business.

At 6 the next morning we called it a night. I was moving on that morning and didn't see the point in going to bed so I picked up my stuff from Michelle's and got out of there.

To the bus station!