Man, what a kick ass day. I’m soaking wet at the internet place now. Lets see, where to start.
Me and the Kims woke up at 10:30 this morning and were out by 11am, headed for the huge park in Guangzhou. It was listed in my Lonely Planet guide, but we didn’t really know what to expect, but it certainly exceeded all of our expectations. By the time we got there it was insanely hot and humid. We paid 3 kuai to get in, and as soon as we go through the gates, we see a giant temple at the peak of a mountain, maybe a few miles in the foggy distance. That was our goal.
We spent about an hour and a half climbing up the side of this mountain, probably each losing about three pounds in sweat. The scenery was unbelievably gorgeous and not like anything that any of us had seen in China. Kim said it reminded him of the rainforest in Malaysia. Walking through the dense forest was really loud – we were surrounded by various wildlife; probably mostly birds and insects and a few monkeys. We made it to the top of the temple and rested there for half an hour before setting back. Naturally, the trip back was much easier.
Once we were near the bottom we found a place to buy some water and we sat and had another rest. Not ten feet from us was a golf cart, presumably the property of the park management. It had the keys in it. Kim climbed in and was about to take off but I told him to hold up because there was a guard walking toward him from behind. He said okay and sat there for a second, and then accidentally tripped the gas pedal, launching the cart downhill and away from all of us. I was laughing hysterically and I could tell that he was also, but his laughter faded as the distance between us grew. He took it for a spin for a few minutes, while I was filming it, and then came back to two guards laughing at him.
Then we tried to go to a pool but realized that we didn’t have enough money on us to go swimming. Forty kuai to go swimming is a lot, but the pool is tremendous and we’ll go back tomorrow. Today is no good anyway, as it’s raining very hard outside. We went back to the hotel after the unsuccessful pool trip and build another set of poi at a local street-side hardware shop, then walked to get some food, as I was headed here. On the way we were caught in a torrential downpour. I got a plastic bag from a guard and put my shirt, camera, cell phone, and money inside it, as we both walked down the street getting absolutely soaked. The rain actually felt great though, after sweating all day. Just before getting here we passed a McDonalds which had a giant umbrella for a table outside which was overturned. Of course we picked it up, removed it from the stone enclosure which kept it from blowing away, and started walking down the street with this fucking enormous 7′ diameter McDonalds umbrella. We made it about 50 feet before a guard came running after us yelling in Cantonese, none of which we understood. Hey, we were wet.