Zhuhai - Part 4 - Ariel and Janice

I had hope that we could pick up Ariel before saying goodbye to Joyce and Almen since she was arriving with the boat they would leave with and about 20 minutes before that too, but because of check-in times, a slight delay and of course the migration process I had to wait alone for a few minutes between leaving Joyce and Almen at their gate and picking up Ariel at hers.

It was interesting to see Ariel, we have actually only met once before but we have talked so much online since then that I felt I have known her for a much longer time than I actually have. We went to her hotel first to check her in and wait for Kaj to come back so we could have dinner, it was already after 5pm after all so it shouldn't be too late. It wasn't very long after we had gotten her room that Kaj called that he was on his way back but we would still have to wait for his transport and getting ready, and after waiting in the room for a while we decided to take a walk instead. We took a taxi over to the shoreline and walked and talked along the coast for almost an hour, that is when I found the tandem and even weirder thri-seated tandems that I know Joyce would have loved to try if we had know about them earlier, for me and Ariel it was too late for that though so I quickly put it out of my mind and we just walked instead.

With the wait in the hotel and the walk it had already been around two hours when we decided that we were both really really hungry, but Kaj still hadn't called and he didn't reply messages, so we tried to get a taxi and just crash his room instead but we found out pretty quickly that the shoreline is not a commercial area in any way, it's is more like a transport route and the taxis driving there were all occupied and there were nowhere to stop anyway. So we had to keep walking and getting more and more hungry. We finally did get a taxi, by then it was already around 8pm so we were starved and when we finally got to Kaj's room he mostly seemed surprised.

Being so hungry and tired too we just had dinner at a Chinese restaurant at his hotel, it was pretty nice and not at all too expensive so it was totally fine. After dinner we where just all so tired so we only said goodnight and goodbye.

Of course I missed breakfast again on Saturday morning but we went out to have dim sum with Kaj in a place not far from his hotel when it was still quite early so I didn't feel starved at all. And dim sum is always nice. We had made a quite nice and flexible schedule for the day, dim sum in the morning (that is brunch), then go to some place where there is a nice statue in the water and after that we just walked, that is when we found the park with the kites and I bought the big one and it crashed into the tree and it was not windy enough etc.

Before we went to meet Janice at the boat we went back to dad's hotel for some rest, and dad had do do some unspeakable things too. Meeting Janice was as nice as meeting everybody else, we still had to wait for her a bit though but that was fine, just things you have to live with sometimes. I think all four of us were quite hungry when she came, or at least going to be soon, so we went off to have dinner immediately at a quite fancy Thai place that dad's colleagues had recommended. The food was real Thai-food, at least as real as I've had anywhere else and so much better than the not real stuff I found here in Chengdu. It was hot and curry and all good and nice, I just avoided the seafood that dad had to get like I always do. I really love those curry-coconut-milk dishes they have, mmmmhmmm.

After dinner we walked around a little in the area around there, it was close to the Macao border where Ariel and Janice would be going when they left and we were trying to find some kind of tea for grandma and would need some translation help with that so they stayed with us for a while there. The tea store we found was a bit too fancy so dad ended up buying tea for 180 kuai / 500g tea, he bought some other stuff too, candies and some weird jasmine flower and finally he payed up 400 kuai. It was fine though I guess, it seemed good enough and I think grandma might like it.

After that we went over to the border and said goodbye to Ariel and Janice, after the usual hugs and come to Chengdu and stuff it was once again just me and dad.