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The day started with a breakfast of steam buns and pickles chez Eva. We then had, sadly, only a few hours left to wander the magical and now crowded cobbled streets of Lijiang.
We saw a baby of maybe 8 months, with split bottom pants, being hoisted over the edge of the pavement and weeing on the command of a whistle!!! (seemed slightly more like training a puppy than a baby and also a challenge to conventional wisdom in the West that a baby of that age would not be able to control their bladder?!)
Ange and I then started sampling some street food which involved much random pointing and smiling. It was quite brave, as Sam had gone to the cash point so we did not find out til afterwards what had been eating! It turned out that our favourite - some kind of fish/meat wrapped in banana leaves - was in fact eel. We also enjoyed yak, squid and spicy rice vegetable rolls. A suspicious lump of brown stuff wrapped in a leaf was sniffed, licked and then dutifully ignored.
I also had the bizarre experience of having a small Chinese child shoved into my arms by a proud father who then proceeded to take photographs.
More meandering in the streets, purchasing of jewellery and gifts for friends back home, a pot of ginger tea and a quick bowl of noodles and our time in Lijiang was at an end.
The journey to the airport was the same as before only in reverse - same jovial driver, same battered minivan - except with traffic, so more hair raising in that it involved random overtaking, and mild road rage.
Conversations at the airport were enlightening, revealing the confusion by one of our party between Sylvia Plath and Cynthia Payne. An easy mistake to make.
The two flights were uneventful. Chinese airlines appear to like to feed you to within an inch of your life and the food was tasty too. Some cultural differences were apparent on the flight too - we were surprised to see Chinese children bouncing unrestrained around their seats during take-off and landing.
We eventually arrived in Guangzhou and have been warned by Sam to prepare for the madness of a city of 14 million people. We were delivered to the English School by a mad taxi driver who appeared to be trying to impress his passengers by driving like a boy racer and then hugged us all as we got out. We spent the rest of the evening settling into Sam's two-bed 4th floor flat - this involved much-needed washing of laundry, playing cards and drinking of both beer and of 'milk tea' with sweet gelatinous bits in it - probably noxious but entirely addictive.
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Cath Loved the bit about the baby weeing on the command of a whistle - hilarious!! Read it out to Phil, and he thinks we're going to try it too - ha ha, not!