Day 4: Early wake up call and other weather related entertainment

Mission: Second Honeymoon

Day 4:  Early wake up call and other weather related entertainment

 

First, let me mention that I didn’t really pay attention on Saturday when someone told me a typhoon was going to hit Dongguan at any moment.  That was about the 10th time this year that I’ve heard DG was hosting a visiting typhoon, and most of the time there wasn’t even a simple rain shower.  Besides, my house has brick walls that are 30 cm thick, so what’s the worst that could happen? 

My day began not with a bang, but with a whimper (a rather sad and pathetic whimper at that).  At about 3 AM I was trying to burrow under my pillow to escape this annoying ringing sound.  It was from my lovely wife’s phone.  Then she brutally kicked me  awake and asked me about the location and function of sensor #19832-74K/x in the command and control system at our house back in the village.  Lacking a handy abacus, I had to mentally envision a 3D map of the house showing each of the sensors while using my incredible mental computation abilities counting on my fingers.  After losing my place several times and restarting, I narrowed the cause of the alarm down to one of two sources.  It was either a motion detector in the 3rd floor dining room or else an inbound killer asteroid alert from NASA.  Either way, this wasn’t good news (especially at 3 AM).

After some discussion, punctuated by the alarm system calling back with repeated activation of the same sensor, there were four possible explanations:

1. A burglar decided to break into a very inaccessible window in the middle of a storm and then thought that jumping up and down in front of only one motion sensor in order to keep me from sleeping was a very fun thing to do.
2. My darling wife’s fear of stale air causing asphyxiation meant that there was an open window (part of the system design was based on allowing windows to be opened and closed while the perimeter was armed) and the typhoon was blowing the drapes quite violently.
3. Sensor #19832-74K/x had decided 3 am would be a really cool time to suffer a massive malfunction.
4. An asteroid really was about to wipe out the Earth, and I wasn’t going to be allowed to sleep through it. 

By this point, I was slowly regaining enough consciousness to get my brain working.  Considering the typhoon, I decided to test option 2 and asked my wife to reset the system to perimeter only, disarming all the internal motion detectors.  Happily, that did the trick and we got back to sleep for a few hours.

In the morning, my lovely wife called the maid and asked her to please check the house and close all the windows.  Problem solved. (or was it???)

So, after a mere 6 hours of online work, we finally got to head outside.  Our first real day of independent enjoyment of the Feng Huang old town.  Instead of the beautiful sunshine from the day before, it was raining. 

Feng Huang has these really cool stretched golf carts that act as buses.  It’s only 1 kuai for a ride, and for reasons I haven’t figured out, you pay when getting off instead of when getting on.  To make it even more fun, there’s no rule against hanging on the outside (making it a free ride if you fall off and get run over ).  The issue was that when it’s raining, they fill up really fast.  We couldn’t find any of the golf carts that weren’t already overloaded with passengers. so finally grabbed a taxi instead of walking to the old town.

 

 

First stop – a local grocery store just outside of the tourist zone to find a second umbrella (we’d only brought one).  Weather reports before we left said temperatures would be in the 25-30 degree range, with only a little rain later in the week.  It was only Monday and it was raining hard. 

For some reason, all prior entries to town brought us into a square with a huge metal Phoenix, and then down the same road to the river.  We were back in the square.  I decided it was time to explore. 

We started down the same road, but as soon as I could find a side street, I took it.  There were good omens.  The first shop had a cat, so I got in some much-needed cat petting time before continuing further.  Then my luck ran out.  My wife found something she loves far more than me.  It was a large shop that was a wholesale supplier of traditional clothes and other cloth items to many of the smaller shops in town.  My lovely wife was so happy.  My wallet and I were in serious trouble. 

 

 

Happily, she started out just by pricing everything.  I foolishly thought I was about to escape, then she decided to try on a pair of pants.  There was no changing room, so I ended up guarding the open end of an L-shaped alcove while she tried them on.  The pants were ok, so she bought them.  I tried to head for the exit.  Then she spotted a shirt that would look nice with the pants.  After some arguments about price, she bought that.  Again, I tried to get us headed out of the store.  Then she got something else and I ran off with the remaining money after paying for that. 

After some wandering around in back streets, we found our way back to a road we recognized and headed to the river.  Some of the snack shops had some dofu that was very similar to the kind we’d had on our first honeymoon in Yangshou.  The taste was only slightly different, but it was still very good.

 

 

Unfortunately, they also had one of the ultimate horrors of Chinese cuisine – stinky dofu.  The most amazing thing about this substance is that it actually tastes even worse than it smells. 

 

 

We ended up heading back to our hotel a little early.  We’d started later than planned, and finding a ride in the rain took up a lot of time.  We were hoping the weather would improve the next day.  After all, what could possibly be worse than an all-day rain? 

 

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