China - Guangzhou

Just had a nice chilled day to recover from the traumas of the travel day and treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the Latin restaurant. All you can eat meat of skewers, a bit like Churascaria in New York, but we got to try camel hump this time!! Lots of other meat, possibly the best was Cow hump. So tender and melty!

China is definitely oppressive. I'm sure I'll be using that word a lot, but it is so apt! No facebook, no youtube, no blogspot. Nowhere that you can see other people's opinions. Nowhere that you can express yourself. Stories of people disappearing if they don't conform. People are generally unfriendly and there are only a few exceptions to that rule. Not a place that once I have been here and seen I shall be rushing back to.

Next day we headed for Chimelong wildlife park and theme park for the day. It was chucking it down again but it didn't deter us. We took lots of pictures as we went round the animals, got to fuss and hold baby tigers for photos and Jenni got a second fuss of the white bengal cub, who was very cute!

We also spent some time looking at Pandas and other new creatures on our list (seeing the elephants was sad though)

We moved on to Paradise, the theme park, and had a wicked time on the rides. No queues = more fun! Jenni doesn't like the rides, but is excited to see other's enjoyment. So Sam and I jumped on some terrifying looking rides – Dive Coaster and 10 Inversion coaster and motorbike coaster amongst others – straight to the front, no waiting, awesome fun! We got Jenni on the teacups before eventually heading home, tired and hungry.

Next day was about relaxing on the whole and in the afternoon we went to “the Mountain”, Baiyun Mountain was just on the edge of Guangzhou and we took a cable car up to the top. The views were nice across Guangzhou and we could appreciate the size of the city. We decided to walk down the mountain, followed the road before heading off and along the foot massage path. Basically reflexology for the feet by walking over stones and pebbles! It killed! Sam did the whole path, I did most of it and Jenni laughed and took pictures! It was still oppressively hot and humid and we got to the bottom after being bitten loads.

Once at the bottom we went into the park, not expecting much, but it was a place of beauty and tranquillity that we spent a while just sitting by the lake and relaxing. It is a one of a kind place around the area.