For a more relaxing holiday (and to save money as travel this holiday is expensive), I visited friends, Amber and Michael, in Shunde. Our holidays don’t always coincide and I have not seen them in months. We met at brunch and then I traveled to their place in Shunde.
We watched movies, walked around a local village and found great food to eat.
Okay, these are rats. We didn’t eat them but this is some of the original Cantonese food in the area.
I then went to panyu to participate in a bike tour. We started at the Shawan ancient village and visited a local artisan who carves wood.
The side of the house has oysters embedded in the concrete to help with cooling and to deter insects.
From there, we ride on Phoenix bikes reminiscent of old Chinese bikes (but safer). We traveled to Baomo gardens, approximately 16 km.
Another short ride and we ended at an old sugar processing plant that now has art installations and some artists in residence.
A great mini vacation with friends and fresh air visiting ancient towns.
I did make it to Macau if even for two days. After crossing the border it was nice to see Portuguese. We are in a different country.
We checked into the Venetian. Such a beautiful hotel…..
A few dishes were recommended and one of these was crab porridge.
We ate in taipa and after dinner walked back to the hotel through some beautiful streets.
A view from the 32nd floor.
The next morning we took a cab to the old city to the Ruins of St. Paul, an old church. The front and the crypts are all that remain.
The streets are cobblestone and the buildings in colors and style of small European villages. We found a great little restaurant with amazing food.
We walked along the streets looking in some stores. It reminds me of Hong Kong and the international beauty products you can buy. I was able to find brown mascara which I cannot find on the mainland.
We looked inside this old church.
We were also able to see a race with servers from the various hotels as they raced through the street.
Sights along the way to the MGM Grand to grab a shuttle back to the Venetian.
We headed back to Taipa for dinner. Noodles with crab and salted egg yolk fried prawns.
Portuguese egg tarts are another food to eat here. They are amazing especially when just out of the oven!
Walking after a great dinner.
From there we went to the Parisian to see the Eiffel tower.
A quick trip but happy to actually finally make it here. Avoiding the holiday rush was the goal.
As one of my friends, Heidi, is leaving China soon, I wanted to go to Macau with her and Elaine and Donnie for the weekend. They since opened that border for foreigners as it had already been opened for mainland Chinese. As a special autonomous region like Hong Kong, it is leaving the country.
Despite what would be a rushed visit, I was excited and left for the metro straight from school to get to the high speed rail station. Foreigners are again asked to show more than just their green code since a Chinese man went to Germany, had sex with a man, and brought back the first case of monkeypox. Of course, before those specifics were reported the head of the CDC gave this warning:
The last four are sound advice. But the first… From a doctor…
They eventually walked back that first statement but the damage had been done and has brought some more anti-foreign sentiment. A person on the metro who could not just stand and had to sit next to me like this:
Back to the Macau story. I was able to leave school early so Heidi and I decided to move up the train booking but we did not notice that lineup had already happened and they would not let us through (totally our fault). Because of this, we took the next train. No problem except they wanted our passport information 20 minutes after we left the station which I thought was odd and then as the train slowed they locked the doors in the front and back of our car. They announced that the code of a person in our car of the train had turned to red in transit. Heidi is from Canada and speaks Cantonese. We did find someone who spoke Mandarin and Cantonese and a couple that could speak English. That helped but the information kept changing often.
He was possibly a close contact of someone who did test positive. Maybe…. We were herded to a gated area on the street where we were tested (2 nasal/1 rapid) and our passports/ID were taken. People who lived in Zhuhai were allowed to go home but isolate and get tested. The rest of us were to be sent to a hotel. When we asked questions, we were given a variety of answers but mostly a day in a hotel. The man’s test came back negative as we waited and we were told we would have to pay for the required stay now. People were upset. When I heard that noise I was just hoping the man did not test positive. No one was happy.
This is actually inside the gated area.
But it gets better. It’s not a hotel. It is a quarantine facility with cameras and sparse interior. We had to pay 1500 rmb ($210) deposit which is roughly a 6 day quarantine. That irked me along with the smell and pond of bleach sprayed everywhere on the floor. We were told the money was a deposit. We started calling it the “Ritz”.
For the record, not as bad as Shanghai. The central room here is all the space I had in Shanghai for 2 weeks. At least there are two bedrooms and I could take the mattresses (only a couple centimeters thick for each one) and put them together. With the two comforters on top as an added mattress, it made for a more comfortable bed. And there is a balcony…
Those are the two mattresses.
Food was meager (and we had to pay) but you were allowed to order food from outside. But setting up any Chinese app for delivery is difficult. I have resisted so far as I feel I should cook my own food and walk to eat out. Healthier that way. I contacted admin and HR about my predicament and they had an IT guy walk me through. HR had to buy me my first meal as my app wasn’t set up in time to make the delivery window. I do know enough words to type into the Chinese keyboard to search what I want. Will I use it back in Guangzhou? Probably not. But I was pretty happy to know how to type in salad (shala) and eggs and tomatoes (jidan he xihongshi). Oh… And coffee (kafei) but had to look up the translation of coffee powder.
I also contacted the consulate, just in case. I only have so much asthma medicine with me and worried about the lack of communication with us and staff here. My HR is actually wonderful at calling to find information for me.
We were told at one point just one day… Then two days… And at the end, two tests in three days. We were tested Friday night, and each of the next 3 days.
Usually I pack extra things just in case this happens but let my guard down, so I did not have coffee or some other things with me. Lesson learned….. But I am adaptable and so grateful to be able to order in. A few people on the train did not have anything with them. I gave one person a summer dress to wear and others loaned their clothes too. I am glad I had my computer to do some work and read.
We were released Monday afternoon. They refunded some of the money and then just let you find your own way out of the complex.
I had to take a personal day for missing a day of school. I was able to get my Macau hotel refunded. I decided to take two more days off as well. I have already missed my scheduled China trip with the 11th grade and will join a 2 day trip at the end of the week with the grade 12′ s. I also plan to call the government hotline as people are not to pay when they were found in this situation.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been teaching it is still a sprint and a marathon at the same time.
More responsibilities as a science PLC leader (professional learning community) and coaching cross country had kept me pretty busy. I also choose to teach IB environmental systems and society and give another person a chance to teach IB Biology. Crazy, right?
I looked forward to a full year in the new building.
And we finally had our 40th anniversary gala which was postponed several times (it is now our 41st year). As usual I don’t have many pictures as once the music starts playing I don’t leave the dance floor.
I booked a hotel room there at the Garden Hotel which had beautiful snacks ready and concierge service where they take you to your room to check in. With a late checkout whatever time you wished, it was a nice stay.
Unfortunately, COVID is still messing with schedules. Our sporting events cannot compete in person this year outside of the city. We have had a couple of meets scheduled with other schools near us and a virtual meet planned for the schools we usually compete against. One day at a time….
I always started school when it still felt like summer but soon morning would be cooler and the days shortened. This year, my 35th year, we started a bit earlier and it was still summer hot. As the humidity doesn’t start to break until October, it feels like an endless summer just with diminishing daylight.
I didn’t travel much this summer, spending time eating out with friends….
Learning to play mahjong….. There are three kings of tiles. The rules are to get 3 of a kind or 3 consecutive. You can only pick up from the discard pile if you can play it right away. Otherwise the standard rules are similar to other card games. It is fun to play the rules fast and listen to them click…. And I won the game!
Each row is a set of tiles that are related.I won. Play continues until one is left. You get chips depending upon when you go out.Won again…… And again
DragonBoat on the weekend… Great arm and cute exercise and brutal two days in a row…
Stand up paddle boarding at a new place with friends on a 3 day weekend… Beautiful little village….
And of course running around the river or swimming in the rooftop pool with a view of the river…..
October will bring warm days but less humidity. Always something to look forward to. It still seems like an endless summer as the trees do not lose their leaves here and flowers bloom all year long…
It is only 10 days until school starts again and I’m taking a quick trip to the beach for the weekend. We traveled to huizhou which is in the province and just a few hours drive away to snorkel and visit a national sea turtle refuge. The food for lunch was great: tofu, green beans and eggplant, and lotus root. I have not had lotus root this way and it is more like the shoots.
We took a speedboat to Xiaoxinshan Island. The water was pretty murky as we had a typhoon a short time back but we could see sea urchins on the rocks. It was good to swim in salt water and I was not really expecting to see a large amount of marine life as I have in Thailand or the Great Barrier Reef.
We took the speedboat back and then a short ride to the turtle bay hotel. It is not where the beach is which is just fine. It is quiet and right next to where we are visiting the next day. We cleaned up and went to the village for seafood.
The next morning I went to the pool for a swim and caught the sunrise.
After breakfast we walked to the double moon Bay. We had taken the speedboat from the left side the day before to go snorkeling.
We then walked to the national sea turtle breeding ground facility which was near the hotel. Despite removing mangrove forests and disrupting the actual places sea turtles need, they do have a breeding program here.
They are able to leave the large tanks during breeding season to lay eggs on the attached beach.
It was a very relaxing weekend. Fire the test of the time I’m going to relax in my new apartment, do some work, and enjoy swimming in the pool. COVID cases are making travel unpredictable as it is the summer holiday. I will have a six week holiday in December and January and hopefully cases are much less by then.
I didn’t plan many trips this summer. I and excited for this one as the hotel is amazing and I have not been in the southern part of this province. To get to Guangxi, we took a high speed train and then transferred to a bus. A COVID test was required but many of the places when we arrived did not know what to do with our passports so just let us through. We took a COVID test at the final train station just in case it was needed. So Guangdong is the province I live in and ends in dong, which means east. I am visiting guangxi, which ends in xi which means west. Guang means vast. Guangxi is the province just west of where I live. We stopped for lunch at a rest stop.
Near the village there was a border checkpoint. As we are close to Vietnam they take it seriously due to trafficking. It takes a long time for them to input the information and take pictures of everything. Of course, Chinese ID holders they just take a picture without uploading anything. Crazy, since in the news Chinese men have been arrested for coming back into China from Vietnam after illegal activity.
The hotel in the village is beautiful. Large rooms with a huge bathtub and full windows on two sides of the room. We faced the mountains and the fields for a beautiful view from the window and balcony.
Of course we went to the rooftop pool first.
The villagers were sowing the rice seeds when we arrived. The next morning I went for a run to look around the village.
We also rode bikes the last day. it was a beautiful 15km ride through the villages and fields. Gorgeous area. I would definitely come here again.
Our first place to visit was Tongling Canyon. There were several checkpoints and the road was along a river where you could see much barbed wire. We were right along the border to Vietnam.
The canyon was average with a waterfall. It was great to be in nature. The rain which was heavy earlier stopped as we began the hike. After 4km of walking the highlight was walking behind the waterfall. Of course we were not supposed to be there. It was roped off as a lot of rain made it too dangerous to go behind…..
A butterfly was intent to stay landed on my leg and feet….. I’m easily amused.
After lunch at a nearby restaurant, we headed to Detian Waterfall. It is on the border between China and Vietnam.
We waved at people across the river and they waved back! So exciting…. It was sad as we all want to visit other countries but can’t… We really miss that.
Houses on the Vietnam side.The boats only run from the Vietnam side.This is considered the Niagara falls of Asia.Detian temple.We took a special escalator to the top where there were awesome views and a great slide to get back to the bottom. It was pretty fun.You put on these great pants which helped you go down the slide much faster….Some of us chilling at the bottom waiting for others.On the way back, you could see the houses and people in Vietnam.
An end of the day dip in the pool, barbeque, and beer rounded out the day.
This is a classic recipe you will love and can make with a variety of mushrooms. Here I show with two different mushrooms.
Trim the bottom of the cabbage by cutting off the bottom part of the white stems. Also trim the bottom of the mushrooms.
Heat up 1 TBS oil in a skillet or wok. Fry 3 cloves of garlic until light brown. Add about 3 to 4 cups of Napa cabbage and 4 – 8 ounces of mushroom and stir fry for about a minute. It may be a few minutes if you are using a skillet. Add 1 tsp of oyster sauce and combine well. You can add some water if needed at this point. You want the cabbage to have crunch, so don’t overcook the cabbage.
Here is actually the favorite mushroom I use in the dish!
The Leshan Giant Buddha is 71-meters tall. It is a stone statue, built between 713 and 803 AD. It is carved out of the cliff face of red sandstones found at the confluence of the Min River and Dadu River in the southern Sichuan province.
The entrance is beautiful.After climbing 36 steps you are at the top of the buddha head. It is suggested to not look back as you climb, only look forward.You can see the Buddha’s head on three sides before going down to the feet and back up again.The back side of the buddha head shows the detail of the hair. It is designed so that Easter runs off the back or side of the head and not in the face.You can see on the left side the zig zag stairs going from the head to the feet. On the upper right is okay of the path to return to the top After descending all the stairs, you can see the buddha but the light was not the best. We will be seeing it by boat as well. Check out the toenails!The pagoda at the top of the hill along the way to leaving the park.You can pay to burn a candle for prayer at the Temple.Back of the Temple.The Buddha’s taken from the top deck of a boat.Some of the Buddha’s were destroyed during the cultural revolution.In the bottom right is the tail of a dragon and right below the sun rays is the head of the dragon with water pouring out of its mouth. He is curled inside of the mountain.Symbol for happiness.Dragon fountain.Dancers at the entrance
