Day 10: Our return to DG, Flying in style, and the Reappearance of an old friend.

Mission: Second Honeymoon

Day  10:  Our return to DG, Flying in style, and the Reappearance of an old friend.

 

Wake up was a painfully early 6:30 am.   At least there was a morning fog on the river that let me take a couple of really good pics of the large bridge upriver of the hotel.

 

 

We had a quick breakfast and shoved carefully placed the last few tacky souvenirs priceless cultural artifacts into the suitcases.

My darling had found the number of a very helpful driver while reading hotel reviews.  He’d been scheduled to collect us at 7:30.  It was getting close to 8 and there was no sign of him.  I speculated that he was across the bridge waiting for us and we were sitting in the hotel hoping he’d help with the luggage (helpfulness with luggage was mentioned in his reviews).  After some initial snarling at me for being silly, my lovely wife decided to check.  It turned out that the driver was patiently waiting for across the river, as I predicted.   He was more than happy to come to the hotel and help, but since that hadn’t been specifically requested, he was waiting for us by the car.

With the extra bag, his slightly delayed help was deeply appreciated.

The trip back to Tongren was great.  It was bright and sunny.  Something that my lovely wife (who had read up on tons of things about the Feng Huang area) had never mentioned to me was “The Southern Great Wall”.  I did manage to get some photos as we sped past some of it.  One more item for the next visit.

 

 

I also got a few half-decent pics of some of the buildings we’d driven past in the dark on the way in (along quite a few shots where the item I was attempting to photograph had just exited the frame ).  It looks like there’s plenty left to explore.

 

 

Since it was our second honeymoon and only cost a modest amount more (probably due to the shortness of the flight), we decided to splurge on flying in style.  We flew first class on the way back.  Compared to the big airliners, it was closer to business class in terms of seats, but there was a lot more room and all the free apple juice we could drink. 

 

 

Since we weren’t in any hurry, I was amused and pleased to find our driver from the airport to home was Captain Slow.  He’s the one who drove us to the Dongguan Chapel Civil Affairs Bureau of Love Harmonious Family Relationships (twice!) on our wedding day. 

We had lunch on the way home.  Spicy tofu, Hunan style.  It was much spicier than all of the food we ate in Hunan. 

I was pleased that the house appeared undamaged by the typhoon.  A few unused plastic pots had been blown around the roof and one of my loofa plants had died.  Most of the other plants seemed pretty happy.  Two that had partly fallen over needed to be propped back up.  Both are recovering nicely.

I think we need a couple weeks off to rest up after our vacation.   

 

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