Saturday July 5th

We thought we would be wakened by the cleaning team around 9h30, but apparently they changed their planning and only came around 13h, so with no concrete plans for the weekend, we slept until 10h30 or so. We had a lazy morning, just playing computer games or reading or just doing nothing. But when the cleaning team arrived we had to get out of the house. We ‘planned’ on just going to the supermarket, but in the end we had dinner in the restaurant next to the swimming pool. The price: 114 RMB, that’s 11,40 euro, for a meal that would cost like 50 euro in Belgium. And then we even got a coupon (value 10 RMB) for a discount next time. Afterwards, again no supermarket, but we took the bus to Guangzhou to visit the Pagoda. So a lot of decisions without planning are exiting, but the result was that we’ve forgotten our camera. And we had no maps or whatever to help us. It was guessing all the way.

When we arrived in the city, it was already too late to visit the Pagoda, so we decided to visit the Yue Xiu Park, one of the largest city parks in China?. We didn’t know exactly with metro stop we had to take, but as proved in the past, we are very good at guessing. (Also because the name of the park was in the name of the metro stop…).

<>Before we entered the park we bumped into a Tourist Info (this was our lucky day), where we had several nice experiences. Rule number one, never step into a Tourist Info (as a white person) without knowing what you really want. Because you will be attacked by 2 Chinese people who want to know what you want to know and “we are just looking” doesn’t count. Rule number two: if you have to make up something, avoid something with a too recognizable name. We said we wanted to know something about Ocean’s Park (it’s an amusement park in Hong Kong) and before we realized it, the whole building knew that we wanted to go to Ocean’s Park. So in the end, the Tourist Info wasn’t such a help. So we bought our big city map (it’s huge!) in the 7-Eleven across the street. Finally outside the Tourist Info, we discovered a Lamborghini and a Rolls Royce garage, resp. with one and no car in it. Strange. But the yellow Gallardo looked very nice :) A pity that we forgot our camera…

In the Yue Xiu Park we bought a small camera. Not a digital or a disposable one, just a simple camera with a film and batteries included. For 128 RMB. Nice. So I think we took very nice pictures, but we can only tell after a while. It was quite silly to walk around with this non-digital model where zooming happens by walking closer or further away… Thank god for technology. In the park we saw the statue of the 5 goats, where the city is famous for. I don’t know the exact story behind it, but it something with 5 goats in the major parts :) So around 9h we took the bus back home and finally went to the supermarket.