Seven years ago Simon and I tied the knot. It has been bliss ever since… (choke, choke, gag, sputter, cough, cough) OK, bliss is not a word that should be used to describe daily life, but we are a fantastic duo and our lives are richer for having met.

We started our afternoon off with a trip to a REAL coffee shop, and had a coffee, tea and lemonade for the girls.

After lunch with the girls, we left them in the capable hands of one of our translators, Candy. They were happy to go back to our room at the hospital and watch movies galore! Simon organized the rest of the day, keeping it a secret until this point. Up to now, we have been with the girls 24-7, this was our first time alone. So we giddily skipped down the street to the hair salon, Simon got a haircut and after we both had full massages together. The Chinese use the ‘tui-na’ style of massage, which is kind of different. You are clothed, for one, and there is more manipulation of the joints and pressure on Chinese acu-points, as well as some slapping movements. At one point I was on my back, feet and legs pulled up above my ears and my coccyx was being slapped. An interesting position! In the end, it feels pretty good. Gotta love the wallpaper in our massage room:

Our next stop, hours later; was dinner at a fancy place called Vivian’s. They serve both Chinese and Western fare at this restaurant. We were very cozy as our table was in a little room surrounded by curtains and we sat on comfy couches.
After waiting for a while for a menu and a server, we tried pressing the button on the little table display. Lo and behold we got service! We were in business!
Some of the fare on the menu was less than appetizing…

Originally we had cashew and bacon salad, lobster and a New Zealand rib-eye steak in mind. The bartender had stepped in to help our shell-shocked server, and he relayed our requests directly to the kitchen by walkie talkie. We were denied all of these wonderful things, not available. Vaguely in my memory came up something someone at our hospital had related similarly in the past, so we did not make a fuss. We both settled on the only available Western dish, a peppercorn t-bone. For the bottle of wine, Simon had to follow the bartender to the storage area and was told to pick it out from the boxes. Of course they were all written in Chinese so he told them that he had to actually SEE the bottles to be able to choose from them. We ended up with a half decent Chinese Cabernet. Haven’t seen an imported wine on our travels yet.
Everytime we needed the help of our server, we pressed the button on the table display. Coincidentally, we both had been hitting the same button in the middle, and I finally realised that meant we wanted more water! So we had a bit of a water stockpile…

So, being a bit devilish, and a bit tipsy, we thought it would be rather funny to hit ALL the buttons at once and see what happened.

Ok, we didn’t actually do it, but it would have been funny.
Our steaks were very good. Cooked a nice medium-rare, and the peppercorn sauce which they poured on the steaks was very tasty. You should have seen the look of horror on our servers face as Simon motioned for her to put some of the sauce on the ‘mashed potatoes’ on the side plate. I now understand why she gave her friend the look, it was, in fact, a sweet coconut bun!

We ended up a lovely meal with a mango sorbet, which looked an awful lot like a mango milkshake but at that point, we thought, who cares?

We had to have our photo taken under the funky lights as we left.

Another funny experience in China, but as we said in our vows,”‘Every day is an adventure!”