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Published: August 31st 2012
This will be my final blog from China.
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<!---->Yesterday (Monday, 27 August) we met a guide at the Hyatt Hotel whom Mum had organized the day before. He was a young Chinese bloke called Kimmy whose English was better than any other Chinese person we had met. We took the metro to Yuexiu Park, a lovely old place where we saw lots of old, retired people dancing. We also saw some people playing a little traditional Chinese game like hacky sack. It is played with a little thing similar to a shuttlecock, which has a series of plastic discs that are slightly curved so that when pushed together they become flat. At the top are colorful feathers that help the Chinese hacky sack fall nicely. Below are some pictures of the one we bought.
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After having a good play of this fun game with the local people and having a walk around the rest of the beautiful park we saw a large statue of five goats that were said to carry the gods down and give the people the grain and advice to start this city and the farmland around it. Then we had lunch at yet another noodle house that was not overly nice. After being force fed noodles by Mum we went to a temple and learnt everything I know about Buddhism and Buddhist temples, which are quite amazing indeed.
After that interesting experience we went to Dr Sun Yant Sen’s memorial hall. First we went to take some photos in front of the memorial hall and some young guy came, took our photo, which happens a lot here as we are a bit of a novelty here because there are not a lot of white people. Two minutes later he came back with our photo framed in a lovely information card. The rest of the memorial was a very interesting conference hall but the story of Dr Sun Yant Sun is incredible.
That was yesterday.
Today, Tuesday 28 August, which is our last day in China, we went up a mountain overlooking the city. We got the cable car up the mountain, which was quite scary; it was really high and looked really old but we saw a school and some other interesting things towards the bottom of the mountain. When we got to the top of the mountain we had a look around. There was not a lot to see, but we saw some of Guangzhou although it was virtually impossible to see into the center of the city because of all the smog. We took some pictures then we followed the signs to McDonalds!!!!!!!! And to mums great dismay we ate lunch there. It tasted the same as back in Canberra, which was good, and it made a lovely change to noodles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then we started the long decent on foot. It was interesting walking down under the canopy of the trees, having seen it all from the sky. It was not long before we ran into a series of shops and an outdoor adventure park. We went on a luge. We each had our own and it was great fun. We went on two tracts and they were both good. We also bought the Chinese hacky sack in the pictures above before continuing down the mountain. Further down the mountain was another temple. At the front of the temple there was a pond and in that pond there were many turtles and fish and the turtles and fish seemed to interest dad a lot so we now have about 7 hours of video of these turtles that are going to end up as dinner for some lucky person! (Turtles seemed to be on the menu of the local restaurants that we went to). There were lots of lovely plants and flowers all the way down the mountain but what was really interesting was that there were a few gum trees and paper barks. When we reached the bottom we were all hot and bothered and so we decided not to go on the underground and to get a taxi straight back to the Hee Fun Hotel Apartments where we had been staying for the last three days. The taxi was really cheep like every thing else here; the 20-minute trip was the equivalent of about five Australian dollars.
We then went out for my last Chinese meal ever before we rushed home, packed, and then jumped into another limousine taxi to the airport.
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Jessica
non-member comment
FYI
Hey Charlie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sounds like youre having fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just by the way, the photos didn't show up, just a whole bunch of letters and numbers. Might just be my computer, but I doubt it. Will comment again soon.