One of the things we were looking forward to when making our way to China was spending quality time with family and friends - as much fun as it is travelling around discovering new places and faces there is nothing quite like spending time with your family and friends and sharing your journey with them. As you know we were basing ourselves in Guangzhou with my sister Julz and her boyfriend Dave for a couple of weeks before meeting up with my folks and the Parsons to travel a little bit around China.
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| Our hosts Julz and Dave |
We had a surprise visit from Kelly my older sister, she flew in for a fly by visit, where we spent the time finding me the perfect wedding dress, setting up her maternity business and spending as much sister bonding time as we possible could! Her trip flew by but we had an amazing time and I will forever be grateful that she made her way all the way here just to help me sort out the wedding dress saga - I am a designer but a designer in interiors, who knew wedding dresses could be so complicated - throw in a massive language barrier and you have a nightmare on your hands. Fortunately Kelly, being a part of the fashion industry managed to hurdle us over the language barrier and I have a beautiful wedding dress in the making, with awesome memories to go with it.
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| The Three Sisters Living it up in China |
On the 9th of June the 'wrinkles' flew in to town. Now before you are shocked and horrified, that is their terminology, not mine. Let me introduce you to these awesome animated characters, who added so much fun and humour to our China leg of the trip.
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| Charlie (left) and Jimmy (right) - first class clowns of the trip |
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| Ermie (left) and Annie (right) the sisters |
We spent an awesome weekend in Guangzhou with the wrinkles, drinking copious amounts of South African red wine (got to love duty free), hours on the phone trying to track where their luggage had ended up because it certainly was not with them, more time in my very limited toiletry bag and wardrobe along with Julz very much bustling toiletry bag and wardrobe trying to find something for mom and Annie to wear until their luggage arrived as well as make up - not that make up is really necessary in this town as you sweat it off the minute you put your big toe out the front door. But besides all the admin we went shopping at the export market, we squeezed in a yoga session much to Annie's dismay, dined in some of the finest restaurants in Gaungzhou - Teppenyake and Roku Sushi to mention a few. Drank more red wine, lots of beers and laughed A LOT. Where are the boys in all of this, doing boy things like going to the electronic market, drinking beer, drinking beer and drinking beer. As you can see the theme was set for our next adventure, this trip through China was going to be all about learning about the history of China and spending most of our days in museums and historical sites........... not quite. This holiday was really about making memories, laughing,drinking and eating a lot. Beer plays a very important role in this trip and often helped us make decisions on where to eat and when.
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| All together at last, happily indulging in some SA red wine |
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| The three taches |
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| Jimmy trying his hand at cooking up some Japanese cuisine |
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| The boys demonstrating the Chinese built in air conditioning system |
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| Meeting up with old friends in Newtown |
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| The morning after |
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| 1 too many beers were had... |
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and the boys were feeling it!
Sadly Jim and I were not able to join the team to Beijing and Xian due to visa extension issues, so remained in Guangzhou for an extra couple of days before heading off to Dali in the Yunnan Province to meet up with the team again and explore 'rural' China.... |
