Guest blogger - 2nd last day

From Mark and Tina

This is the last of Karen's post from my family's trip to China. We resume our regular posting tomorrow.


Well this is our second last day before we head home. Today was our free day. The day began with a hearty breakfast for all - sausage and eggs. we ran into a problem with the cutlery. Since we were eating Chinese food for the last 2 weeks we were using chop sticks. Dad tried, but it wasn't meant to be, we were lucky that most restaurants understood his gestures for a knife and fork. I had a feeling his luck would run out and it did last night. I did bring him a cutlery, and he was quite pleased. Now back to breakfast. Since Tina only has a set of 4 , she is now down to 3. Dad left his at the restaurant.

Once we finished we headed out to the material market. This market is amazing, a seamstress would be in heaven, every colour and texture. I picked up linen for pants - 4.4 metres and it cost me 80RMB, which equals $12.00 approx. Tina then took us to her her tailor, where he is going to create for me 2 pairs of linen pants and 3 blouses at a price of 200RMB. This in dollars works out to be approximately $22.00. How could I resist. We picked up her goods and headed back to the apartment.

For lunch Tina took us to a restaurant for dim sum. Yummy!! These are little Cantonese dumplings. Tradition says that dim sum is to be eaten with cups of tea. You drink the first cup of tea to warm your digestive system and you drink tea to complete your meal. These dumplings are filled with a variety of ingredients, there could be vegetable or seafood or port or beef. Again, yummy.

Once lunch was over it was time to head out to Gulang Yu for some last minute shopping and a little walking on this island. We finished and headed on the ferry to go home. On the way, we stop off at a t-shirt store and Christal picked up some shirts. We took the local bus and headed home, not before Dad has his last shoe shine. Tonight we are going for our last dinner in China, as tomorrow is another traveling day, only this time its going back to Canada.