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Day Twenty-Six
Lazy Time & Trip to the Market
Oh my golly gosh, 12.30pm & I couldn't get out of bed. Every part ached from head to toe & I seriously couldn't sit down. My bum was battered & bruised & every time I moved oh the pain (I blame Andy's adventurous attitude)! I will not be getting on a bike for a very very long time, possibly never again the way I'm was feeling.
I threw some clothes on & got ready in 2 minutes flat, we needed to get breakfast so we could recharge our batteries properly. We walked down the small alley way of our hostel & on to the main street. There was a cafe right in front of us so we dived in there. We ordered 2 cups of tea whilst we looked at the menu. Oh decisions, there was plenty to choose from. We ended up getting a grilled cheese sandwich, some chips & 2 ham & mushroom omelettes (omelettes with a twist). Believe me when I say that the food didn't last long at all we were really hungry.
What shall we do next. We headed to McDonalds to buy ourselves a little ice-cream & we had then decided to go & take a look in the proper Chinese market where you can buy anything you like. Whilst in McDonalds we seen the Hong Kong man called Yau from our hostel & he wanted to come along - even better for us though as he could speak Chinese & help to tell us what's what in the market. We weren't going to necessarily buy anything, we just wanted to nose around.
Walking to the market was good because we chatted & asked Yau all kinds of questions & as his English is great communication was easy. He helped us to understand the difference between culture in China & Hong Kong. It's very surprising to know that Hong Kong is a part of China but they have very different lives.
We approached the market & we walked in to the first section. The market is split in to sections & the first part was fish & vegetables. On the floor lined up were all types of animals from the sea that you could buy. There was everything from carp fish, turtles, snails & lots of other weird creatures which you could certainly not buy in England that's for sure. We walked around the vegetable section pointing & asking questions about strange looking food. There was some food that was the same as back home but I would say that the majority is things that we don't have or use very regularly in our normal day to day cooking. On from the vegetable part we moved towards the meat section, at this point Yau said that he will wait for us in the fruit section because he couldn't face the look & what happens in the meat section. We very intrigued as what we would see although we had read about the market books.
We walked around the cooked meat section & there were cooked duck, chickens & other pieces of meat which was already prepared so people could just take it away. Moving further around there we freshly killed chickens & the were also live ones in little cages so you could pick your own & they would kill it do you. The next section was rabbits & again you could pick the one you wanted from the cages. The next section was quite horrific for any animal lovers. The were cats in very tiny cages & there were also live dogs that very quite big all packed in to small cages. Above the counter work tops were massive cooked dogs & they were just hanging. The sight has bad but the smell was sickening - it looked wrong on every level. Surprisingly dog meat is more expensive than other meats such as chicken or beef.
After seeing that we headed to the fruit section to meet back up with Yau. At the fruit stalls there were all kinds of weird & wonderful fruit. There were typic fruit like back home such as bananas, oranges etc but there was also weird looking fruit that we don't see at home so we ask Yau about them all. We decided to buy some star fruit, dragon fruit & this mad fruit which looked like a massive pear but it is meant to taste like mandarin inside but we'll see hahaha.
Back at the hostel we just chilled out & relaxed. The time passed & we were ready to go out for out tea. We headed down the to main street & just off is a little side street which had nice little cafes & restaurants so we decided to go in to a place next door to a place we have already eaten. We sat down with the menu & the joy on our faces when we realised that they actually had real home made chips. We ate our food exceptional quick & we could have easily aren't 10 times more hahaha. On the way back to went in to the McDonalds to buy some 20p ice-creams - this can't become a regular thing otherwise I will come home having gained an extra 10 stone.
Back on the sofas in the hostel we just chilled out & chatted away with Ana & Yau. Ana was telling us all about South America & all the beautiful places we should visit, she is such a lovely person & extremely helpful. Before we knew it the clocked showed 2am so it was bed time.
Exploring more of Yangshuo tomorrow......
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