LAST NIGHT IN YANGCHUN

We spend a quiet day strolling through the streets of Yangchun, taking tea at a local teashop and ending up in a hair salon where Pei Pei - did I mention she has gone all local - gets her hair plaited and styled. We have decided to treat everyone tonight and so a banquet for ten at the East Lake Hotel is planned. Finish the afternoon walking around the lake and wondering what the new houses being built at the far end would cost

We are delighted that Miss Yu is going to pop in as she has a present of a Chinese knot for Pei Pei. Everyone is really pleased to see her again and she has made us promise to keep in touch by email - more favours to ask of Daisy Z

Anyway food and drinks for ten come to £60 so no need to worry about expensive hotel prices and we all say our goodbyes.

Meet up again in the morning at the bus station to begin our six hour trek back to Hong Kong. Fond farewells and promises to keep in touch with our new found friends, and I am sure we will. Everyone has gone to a lot of trouble to make Pei Pei's experience a positive one, and she has had a really great time and doesn't want to leave. However time and tide and bus waits for no one and so we are off, but not before Pei Pei gives a gift to Timmy so he can have some fun.

So now begins the six hour coach trip. Thank goodness for the iPad as Pei Pei doesn't bat an eyelid as we make our way back to Hong Kong. Negotiate the MTR with our backpacks on a busy Saturday and arrive at Disneyland fit to drop, but happy.

Couldn't have asked for a nicer time or a more positive experience. Regret leaving Yangchun.

DRINKING WITH THE LOCALS

Tonight it's boy's night out. Grab a motorbike taxi from the hotel with Les, with a driver who decides it would be more fun to make the trip on the wrong side of the road against the oncoming traffic. That certainly gets the evening off to an interesting start.

We head for a roadside bar and BBQ where we sit on wooden tables and benches and meet up with three local teachers. Two have good English, one has none, but we all get along great. After a few beers the Liar Dice game comes out and I am given a beginners lesson in this dice gambling drinking game.

Suddenly finger food arrives, aubergine with garlic, mussels, chicken wings and mushrooms. All of it tastes fantastic. Much drinking continues until we realise it is 1.00 am and we had better head for home.

I decide it is polite to pick up the tab. So an evening's beer and food for five comes to a whopping £10.

Note to self - must come again!

FINDING PLACE

Change of plan, now not springs visit Having found out from the file that DR's finding place of Songbai Road is actually a suburb of Yangchun some 25 miles away, today we are off to visit it. DR has been prepped and as usual seems to be taking everything in her stride.

So as they used to say in the L'Oreal advert, "and now for the technical bit". Danielle one of the Yangchun Internet group put us in touch with our local guides who are living here and teaching English in a local school. One of their local friends is Laura, who is acting as our local fixer, and she is friends with Miss Yu's younger sister. One of Laura's school friends, Sandy, is also an English teacher at a school in Songbai and has offered to show us around today. OK, following so far?

So we get to Songbai and the first thing is we are taken to eat in a street side restaurant where the starter was fluttering around outside a minute ago, and in fact you step over the remains of his brothers and sisters as you come in off the street.

Songbai is very poor but very safe. Just really a one street town. We are taken to the local junior school where we meet up with a load of kids DR's age. Now I am feeling very weird as the local children have clearly never seen a European before and don't know if I'll bite!

It is all very friendly although a bit startling for DR but she eventually comes around and disappears with Laura to look at the classroom, while we have tea with the headmaster while a bunch of urchins crowd around the open windows staring at the aliens.

We spend the day walking around the back alleys and it is a weird thought that somewhere in these streets a link to DR exists.

She has enjoyed her day and we return to the hotel where we order pizza, which turns out to be a club sandwich!

A restful day planned tomorrow.

TWO FAT EUROPEANS WANT ME TO TAKE THEM WHERE?

Private dinning with Miss Yu and her staff ends a really great day. After the meal we jump into a motorbike / trike type taxi. You know the sort that looks like someone has welded a garden bench to the back half of a moped. Before we leave our driver politely tells our guests that she will not be able to get up the last little bit of hill. What she actually said was 'My taxi is not built to take two fat westerners up the hill'

You may have thought she was joking, but as soon as she pulled away you knew this machine needed a long run up to get going! Crossing the intersections was great fun as they have a digital countdown in large red or green numbers indicating how long before a change in priority, or in our case, how long you have left to defy death in the piece of mechanical wizardry you have decided to entrust your family in!

Tomorrow sees us go to the local hot springs - more excitement

THIS IS WHAT WE CAME FOR

So today we walk down from the hotel to the SWI to meet with Miss Yu. I am beginning to realise what it is like for our daughters to be constantly under the stares of people as we are attracting quizzical but friendly looks wherever we go. I am sure we will cause an accident as the scooter rides crane their necks in disbelief as they pass us by.

DR seems relaxed and has rehearsed her 'Thank you for looking after me' speech in Mandarin.

Miss Yu is completely as expected, warm friendly and very welcoming. DR seems OK and is more than happy to take her hand and sit on her knee for pictures. Miss Yu gives us open access to the file and we are allowed to xerox information that we did not previously have, including copies if her footprint!

We are told that the finding site, which we assumed would be in Yangchun is actually around 40kms away and we are hopeful that we can travel there on Friday.

We get shown around the orphanage. Mostly it is SN kids and a couple of very young babies only weeks old. We also visit the HOG as DR was in that building and get to look around the rooms she was in.

Tonight we are dinning with Miss Yu at the world renown Golden Rock Hotel - the place of legend in Yangchun adoption.

It's weird, but being here makes me feel good inside, whatever that means.

Popped out to the supermarket this afternoon to buy some drinks and stuff. Stopped by a couple of kids who wanted to take our picture and have their picture taken with us! Got some great pictures of Life in Yangchun.

COACH TRIP

So, here we are sat on a coach in uptown Kowloon waiting to head off. The three of us, five locals and approximately forty empty seats. Next stop boarder control, "hop off the bus Gus" run through passport control, hop on the bus, no-mans land, hop off again, passport control Chinese style, hop on and we're in.

Blow me, we've done it. Now sit tight and don't get off until the end.

Ever wondered why you can't get cement at home? Well it's because the first 100 miles is like a construction site. There is so much building going on.

Eventually we start to see some greenery and the trip turns out to be uneventful, perfectly safe and very straight forward.

Arrive in Yanchun early. Walk out of the bus depot under a spotlight of stares and find a cab that takes us to the hotel for £1

Meet up with our local guides from the Colonies. Great little rustic restaurant ten minutes walk, up around the lake. Full of locals. No menu. We ate tofu, greens, lotus root, pork, fish soup, yams and whole fish. £24 for the six of us ;-)

Arranged to visit SWI and Miss Yu tomorrow morning with dinner in the evening

AFTER THE NIGHT FROM HELL

So this jet lag malarkey, how does that work?

Your child wakes up at 1.00am completely wired and refuses to go back to sleep, preferring instead to fidget in your oversized bed until morning whilst all you want to do is keep your eyes shut tight hoping you can quickly get back to sleep.

So there we were ready for breakfast at 6:30 and as the hotel restaurant was still closed off we went to join the early morning commuters. Not sure where we ended up but there was set menu for breakfast based on pictures of what the food was meant to look like The three of us ate for a tenner. A delicious bargain!!

The day was spent sightseeing. The peak 7/10 now that you have to pay to go on the visitors platform, but the views are amazing. Repulse Bay, generally a nice beach to visit if you are passing, but don't go there specially. Then off to the Police Officers Club for a spot of Dim Sum followed before arriving back at the hotel absolutely cream crackered

EVERYONE'S SPEAKING CHINESE

Yeh we arrived!!

As we walked up the skybridge from the plane to the arrivals terminal at Hong Kong airport it was really heartening to see our very tired 7 year old look up at me and say with a big grin on her face "Everyone's speaking Chinese". I suppose sometimes it's too easy to forget what it must be like being different, and we certainly got a few quizzical stares as we lined up waiting to clear immigration.

Suppose that's something WE will have to get used too.

Very impressed with the YMCA on Salisbury Road, although slightly disappointed that there wasn't a camp pop group performing in the foyer.

Great room with a bed big enough for four, or if you are from Florida, it's a single!, plus a separate sitting room and both with great views across to Hong Kong. Looking forward to the free Light and Sound Show across Victoria Harbour staged every evening at 8.00pm

Tomorrow beckons with a day sightseeing.

LESSON NUMBER ONE

You can't blog in Yangchun and you can't wi fi in Disney HK. which means that this blog has been really quiet.

But I am now able to post updates!!

BLOG ONE POST ONE!

Follow us as we learn to blog on our first return visit to Yanchun SWI in Guangdong. Not only do we not know about Blogs, Facebook or Twitter which will mean our blogging will be 'work in progress', we also know very little Mandarin and so will attempt to navigate our way from Hong Kong to rural South West China on a wing and a prayer!

Special thanks to Daisy Z who has spent a year teaching us Mandarin. This now means I can ask for a bottle of beer or a hamburger (but probably not at the same time) and if we get into linguistic hot water we will sing our way out of trouble with our repertoire of Chinese nursery rhymes.

Three days to go. Still so much to do, but we have passports, we have visas and we have money. Surely that's enough?

See you in Hong Kong