Ran away with mm for weekend to mm’s home in Shunde. We met yesterday afternoon at the bus station, the 3.30pm bus took around 3 hours, including stopping for the straightforward border crossing. I daren’t take any pictures but there were at least 4 groups of young children who commute across the border every day to go to school. They were chaperoned, and then their mothers were waiting at the gate just over the Shenzhen border. Imagine doing this daily, wow.

We headed straight for dinner. I wanted lamb, but to our disappointment, the place is gone, only an empty shell of a building remained. We then headed to another nearby restaurant where we had seafood, veg and cheung fun. Equally good. The rest of the evening was spent getting foot and body massage, it was late when we got home.

Saturday we dragged ourselves out of bed and went to pick up a rental car. That was an experience. Because it’s not very common, the place couldn’t accept mm’s credit card so we had to go to the atm to get RMB10,000 in cash for the deposit. Eeek! The car was a BYD car, neither of us had heard of the brand before. It’s a fairly large salon that was just like a Japanese or Korean car. We drove to an outdoor restaurant where the speciality is chicken roasted in clay pots in a fire pit. Very succulent, with crispy skin. We could have the chicken whole or chopped up; we opted for the whole one so we could Henry VII it. The restaurant has its own farm, so the chicken and vegetables didn’t have to travel far.

After lunch we drove to chuan loo (giraffe) theme park. We thought it’d be a farm, but it turned out to be much commercialised with roller coasters and thrill rides and arcade games. The one interesting show was of pigs diving off a short platform. Hmm.

More massage in the evening and we were too full to have dinner. Bought a few cheapo DVDs, had popcorn, and mm fell asleep watching The King’s Speech.