Finally after seeing windmills like in the movies, we arrive in the city of Dong Ping and had our first introduction to summer heat. And I meant it. This is worse than my time in Dubai, Doha and Bahrain. Here it is about 35 degrees celsius but the humidity is so high that the moment I stepped out of the damn AC place, within a minute, sweat is dripping all over! I kid you not. From morning until late at night, it is sweat sweat sweat
We arrived at our hotel and checked in. Then it was a quick change before we headed out to our first and only attraction of the day - the movie studio city amusement park. Initial impression was good as you see these massive walls and you are reminded of those chinese period movies of olden day kingdoms. However, when we stepped inside, it felt vacant and empty. There are a fair number of streets with proper buildings. Every now and then, there is some re enactment going on. But that is about it. Nothing much. There are no side show stalls, no studios for you to catch movies, etc and the retail is generally lacking
There was only 1 good part where they were making hand puppets from scratch. Aside from that, it was generally bleurgh right to the end. I guess they needed to be clearer in their minds on what they are actually hoping to do with this, right?
Then we had another shower and the no 1 guy in charge of tourism and his cohorts hosted us dinner at the best restaurant in town which is also the local govt building. There is a wall covered with photos of the place, there is a stall near the entrance selling everything including their govt uniform of white shirt (?!?!?!?!), a guy playing piano and we dining upstairs
Now this is what I call a meal. We sat down at a side table, had watermelons and cooling tea. Then we moved onto a huge table that had a huge lazy susan and dish after dish were being ladled. I counted more than 40 dishes and stopped counting. Similar to lunch, rice is not one of them. They do have all sorts of bread and paus at the end though which was a nice change but just not my kind of thing. You know you feel full but not 100% satisfied. And the pride of place ? Salted duck's egg and a huge fish dish (river fish - ugh - not my thing)
Red Man did his usual by generally keeping mum and just observing proceedings, eating and drinking a wee bit
DareMan? He was in his element. He was chugging down toast after toast of rice wine, not just base sips but whole full to the brim glasses and easily out drinking all the China people. And as for food, he munched down everything that was set on his plate and even went for extras round the table. He whacked down at least double of what I ate, I kid you not. I was impressed
Finally, we went home and all we could think of was ... sleep! Hehehe! It has been a long day
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