Sending the Mexican on his way, but first....

...we needed to go to Gu Lang Yu. Some friends had made requests for some purchases, and since time is of the essence, Sunday was the best bet. We went to our favourite watch guy, and since he was quite busy, we told him we would come back later. That gave us an opportunity to wander around the island and see parts we hadn't see for awhile as well as new alleys we never saw before. I know, crazy, no?

Love the lanes on Gu Lang Yu

This was their version of a path to go down to the beach! The path of rocks..

The beauty of Gu Lang Yu, one never gets bored taking pictures of this island. As we continued walking around the island we came to the other side where we had to walk down to the beach, over rocks to continue making our way around the island. It was actually our first time walking on the beach. We made our way back to our friend, made the purchase and braved our way back to the ferry. This past year, has been nuts with all the tourists going over to Gu Lang Yu.

Xiamen from the ferry

Next on the to do list, was to find some luggage. We were becoming those people that have luggage the size of a small child. Actually we got side tracked, favouring the idea of picking up DVD's instead. Mark bought the luggage the following day. I did manage to show Mark a new DVD store, that my friend Laura showed me the other day.

Later, we met up with the Mexican as it was his last night in Xiamen. We took him to our favourite place, the Sisters. One day we will get the actual name before we leave. As always the food was excellent. It was great catching up with him for the past few months and seeing his family again, but alas all good things come to an end as we shall experience in about 4 weeks.

A trip to Haicang...

I took this Monday off, making up for working last Thursday and Friday while those we know back in the States were stuffing themselves with Turkey. I've still got a lot of vacation time that I need to use up before the end of the year, and we also have a lot of errands that we need to complete before movers come to pack up our belongings and ship them to the back.

Todays main errand was to head over to the mainland, the Haicang area of Xiamen, where there is an artisan-type village. We had a painting that we purchased from our friend Yogi that we wanted to have framed over here at a lower cost. We thought that we would head over and leave the painting with him so that we could pick it up in two weeks - the next time we would be free to head over there again.

Nope, we showed him the frame style we would like and before we could say anything else, or even discuss costs, he had rummaged around his back room and was working at tacking our painting to a frame.
Within 30 minutes he was done and it looked great. He wrapped it all up and then sat us down to have some tea. Then came the price - an unbelievable 60 kaui (about 9 USD).

The taxi rides each took 30 minutes, and the ride there and back cost us a total of 56 kuai. So, not bad for getting our painting quickly framed.

The rest of the day I spend running around the local alleys and markets pickup up all sorts of thing. The most important being buying a new large suitcase, that we are hoping can at least survive the trip home, for 210 kaui (about 30 USD) and getting my shoes repaired at the cobbler for 20 kuai (about 3 USD).

A busy day of running around, but we're slowly making progress.....

Trip update...

A few weeks ago we asked where we should head on our last long weekend trip before we leave China at the end of the year. We listed the following places:
1. Quindao
2. Hongcun
3. Sanming
4. Tiger Leaping Gorge

All of the information we that received pointed to option #4 but we were still thinking of just tossing all the names into a hat and seeing what we pulled out. But the other night we were talking, and actually listening to each other this time, and we came up with a fifth option.

The fifth option instantly won and we quickly called up our travel agent and booked the flights...

Off to Gulang yu

Lately is seems like there are more and more tours to the little island off the island - Gulang yu. Last time we wanted to head over the lines for the ferry were packed, heading all the way up the ramp, and as much fun as fighting the crowd is, we decided we wanted no part of that.

The solution? Instead of a free 8 minute ferry ride is to hop on one of the many speed boats that are always running back and forth...
It's a quick trip, just about 1 minute, and for only 25 kuai each (3.60 USD). It's worth it at that price, and we don't have to spend the 1 kaui that we normally do on the ferry for first class.

Next time we go we will take a video of the ride, as one does get bounced around quite a bit....

Thanksgiving...

Since yesterday was the nice American holiday of Thanksgiving, and we are without a real oven in our apartment, we were forced into going out if we wanted to enjoy a nice turkey meal.

Luckily there are enough places on the island that offer up Thanksgiving specials, and we decided that we would go over to the Coyote for the full buffet that they were putting together. Coyote makes sense since it seems like we are there at least every other weekend enjoying their brunch menu, oh and their margaritas.

We arrived over there around 18:00, grabbed a seat and ordered us a nice bottle of wine. The food came out at 18:30 and within an hour we were completely stuffed and a sizable dent had been made in the buffet offerings.

Unfortunately we didn't think to get any photos of the great meal, our heaping plates, or even of the crowd of people that showed up to enjoy a holiday meal in Xiamen. We did manage to remember our camera after we had eaten and we were able to snap a photo of a well picked over feast - you'll notice that the tray with the sweet potatoes is completely empty...