Another photo update

I've got a lot of photos I need to upload so I shall do them in this entry.

The first set of photos are from about a month ago when I went to the Pagoda on West Lake. I think I've mentioned this in a previous post so I won't talk too much about it. It wasn't that interesting but it was quite pretty.

The next set of photos are from last week when I went to the beach. I don't know the name of this beach but it's about an hour and a half drive from where I am now. There were 12 of us that went and we left as soon as we finished teaching on Sunday night. We camped out on the beach and kept on going to a nice seafood restaurant 5 seconds away from where we were sleeping. We didn't really do much, we ate seafood, played football, swam in the sea, played Frisbee and I chatted with some locals. It was just a day of bumming around really, it was quite nice to be on the beach for a day and I felt very relaxed at the end of it but it wasn't really anything special. It appears that a beach is a beach.

The next set of photos are from yesterday when I went to Guangzhou. Since I've come to Huizhou I haven't seen Aussie Joe from Zhangjiagang, he was originally meant to come with me to Huizhou but he decided to take a job on the outskirts of Guangzhou in a small town/city called Panyu. So yesterday I went to visit him. I set off on Sunday evening and after a 2 hour bus journey and a 30 minute subway journey I then got to the nearest metro station to his house where I then had to get a motorbike taxi for the rest of the journey. Unfortunately this being China - where I should have to pay no more than 5RMB for this journey - they saw me, a stupid foreigner and decided that I should pay 20RMB. Sure this isn't much money by English standards, but when you're on a Chinese wage and need to save money it is important that I do not allow myself to get ripped off. So I haggled it down, then he lowered the price, then I very cheekily asked for him to lower the price a bit more and he told me to go away, so I did. Then he told me to come back and offered me a slightly lower price and I said "No, bye bye!". Then another came over and offered 9RMB, and I said 8RMB and the guy hesitated. I was about to accept the 9RMB fare but the original motorbike guy then said something in Chinese which was along the lines of "You foreigners always want to pay less than us Chinese people!" or perhaps I even mistranslated this and he actually said "You foreigners always want to pay the same as us Chinese people!". I was really pissed off when he said this, because I am having a "I hate China" phase and am really, really, REALLY sick of people trying to rip me off because I'm foreign and don't know any better. So I just walked away from them all. I was very close to shouting and swearing at them in English because I am sick of people ripping me off over here. But unfortunately I didn't shout at him, I just waited on the corner for Joe to turn up on another motorbike taxi. In hindsight I probably could have saved a lot of hassle if I just said I want it for 5RMB and not budged from that. Instead the guy said 20RMB and I said 10, then he said 15 and I said 7 then he got pissed off with me. Everytime they lowered the price I then lowered the price a bit more which is pretty cheeky. So, my fault!

I didn't do much else that evening, just chilled out at Joe's place which is very nice, although pretty far from anything (including a metro). He's acquired some pets since he's been there, a lizard (who is very, very jumpy), a snake and some fish. We caught up a bit and then both went to sleep. He went to work the following morning until 11 and then when he had finished we both headed into the city center to meet a Chinese friend in Guangzhou called Fay. Fay is cool, I've met her before in Huizhou, she knows Wade (a fellow teacher at the school I'm at now). She took us to a cool restaurant where, for the first time in about 10 months I ate Chicken in Lemon sauce! God it was good! Then we wandered around the city center a bit more and I was a bit more impressed by Guangzhou this time. We went to a fairly modern area of Guangzhou with lots of tall buildings. Me likey big buildings! And we went up to the top of the Citic Plaza, the 7th or 8th tallest building in the world. Unfortunately this building was crap. It's a pretty building but, being one of the tallest buildings in the world you'd think they'd make a tourist observation deck at one of the highest floors but no! The highest floor you could get up to was the 48th floor where the view was a bit crap because I chose a day with vast amounts of rain to go there. It also was blatantly not a tourist attraction, I was the only person I saw in that building wearing shorts and a T-shirt, apart from Joe and Fay everyone else was wearing a suit. I felt very inferior! And I got a lot of weird looks! But hey, I've now been to two of the tallest buildings in the world and there are 3 more I will visit in the coming months.

We didn't do a lot else really, just wandered around and stopped for food every so often. It was a nice day, it was good seeing Joe and Fay again and Fay is very helpful. She's a good person to know if you're going to Guangzhou and speaks great English! So if you're reading this, thank you Fay!

And then on the way home, much to my egos delight I got the phone number of a girl who was working on the bus that was taking me back to Huizhou. She was amazed that I could speak any Chinese and said we should go out together sometime the next time she goes to Huizhou. And then a few hours later I went for a massage with Wade. A pretty rough and painful massage but good none the less. My masseuse was very pretty and so I got her phone number aswell and I will go out with her sometime too! As much as I hate China I also love it. Being a foreigner I experience many attempts to rip me off and take me for a fool and generally have to listen to the ignorant attitude so many people here seem to have been given. But at the same time being a foreigner, the people all love me and treat me so nicely and I can get girls phone numbers oh so easily!

Again sorry to Chinese people! There are more things I love about China than hate about it. It's just the things I dislike about this country are not very easy to avoid and tend to be an everyday experience, all of which can become incredibly frustrating when you're still not 100% sure about the way things work in this country.

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