I write this quickly as I prepared to go to the gym, to run off some of the excess noodles.
Of course I had turtles! Didn’t I mention them before? We released them into the wild and watched one sink like a stone to the bottom of the lake. I don’t hold out too much hope for them.
Since I only updated you on yesterday morning’s happenings, I shall also update you on the afternoon in this email. We spent 6 hours on a train from the farm to Guang Zhou. I had inhaled enough clams to empty a pond, only to remember that I am positively allergic. The low point of the trip so far, you ask? – leaning over one of those hole toilets in the train station that I raved about earlier has got to be one of them. As I gagged I thought to myself: ‘perhaps this is why we elevate our toilet seats’, so our faces don’t have to be so close to the floor.
Today we visited another place with another Chinese name that I cannot remember. We got the train 6 stops to a place where they sell a (small) variety of fake items. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything to my taste. That is, something that is so obviously fake that it serves to amuse you. Annoyingly, on the way back into the hotel I saw a girl with a GUGCI T-shirt that had be green with envy.
My Uncle had some more stories to tell, but it saddens me to say that the majority involve stunning displays of gullibility and misplaced trust. He seems to give money away to anyone who needs it. Of course, because people know this it seems a queue of people who ‘need’ it forms. He has also got to be one of the only people that I have ever heard of that has fallen for a telephone or email scam. I’d imagine that a poor Nigerian man had asked for his assistance.
Off I pop now to seek out a treadmill (do they have those in Chinese gyms..?). I’m sure i’ll be back shortly with bad news, as I have yet to see fitness being promoted anywhere here and I find it rather hard to believe that it’ll suit my purposes.
Love from,
me
A little bit of a Hou 