Chopsticks, Rice, Us.: Fools at the Beach

Mel had some school stuff to work on, so Jason and I decided to head to the beach today (since she'd already been there).

They were spraying for mosquitos outside of our apartment building when we left... god only knows what we breathed in as we walked to the subway station.

We rode the subway for an hour to Xinxiu, the end of the line, and then hailed a taxi to take us the rest of the way to Xiaomeisha Beach. It's about a 30 minute/$10 ride to the beach. Oh yeah, and something awesome happened on the drive. We were about one minute from the beach, and all of its' amenities (including washrooms) when our taxi driver suddenly pulled his car over on the freeway, got out of the taxi without saying a word, and then took a piss on the side of the road. He got back in the car, and within a minute, we were there.

We were kind of hungry, and once you go into the paid area of the beach you can't leave without buying another admission, so we ate at the same restaurant Mel and I had gone to on our last visit. Jason was starting to get pretty good at chopsticks.

He was also getting pretty good at noticing things. Things like this sign, posted by the city of Shenzhen, giving the restaurant's food safety rating the lowest possible score. When your food safety rating is bad by Chinese standards it's got to be pretty bad! Meh, it tasted good.

I was worried, because the last time we visited the beach it was so busy, but at least there was no line to buy admission tickets. This time, we had to wait in a lonnnng line and there was noticeably more people on the street and in the restaurants. I was wondering if we'd even be able to get chairs, but it was no big deal. Sure, it was crowded, but it was no busier than last time. We paid for our chairs and umbrella, but when the guy took us to the chairs and umbrella that we'd just paid $17 to rent for 4 hours, there was an angry Chinese family sitting on our chairs. There was actually a screaming match while we just stood watching, but then they stormed off and we were able to sit down. It was kind of awkward.

That lady sitting on the other side of Jason knew what she was doing- she was sitting in our umbrella's shade! For free! As the sun moved across the sky the shade started moving more and more away from me (on the other side of Jason) and was covering her more and more. But what were we supposed to do, chase her away? She eventually left, and I pulled my chair over out of the sun again. Freeloader!

We read, made fun of the beach fashion, and ate chips for a little while, and then it was time to get in the water. The water was much wavier than the last time we were there, and as a result, there were far less people swimming. It was great! Every single person was floating in an inflatable tube, so we decided to tubes too.

Since the Keddy brothers don't do anything half-assed, we got kiddy tubes. Not even the kids had kiddy tubes hahahaa. Jason got one with a giant squeaky pear on the front...

...and I got a shark with a squeaky tail. And of course, I hummed the Jaws theme as I swam by just about anyone.

The water was nice, but the longer we spent in it, the more we realized that we weren't alone. After floating around for about half an hour, we were approached by a huge manta ray! I have never swam so hard in my life, trying to get away from that thing! It was freaky! We dried off for a while, and then went back in, but when a school of about 20 big silver fish swam past me I got the hell out. Jason lasted another 10 minutes until he was almost eaten by a giant orange koi and he had to leave too.

As we dried off in our chairs a village of tents appeared behind us.

From the water, we'd seen a pagoda on a hill to the left of us. We decided to walk over and check it out.

It seemed like the most direct path was through this area, where ladies in pointy straw hats were carrying around trays piled high with lettuce. When we couldn't find a way through, we left.

No visitors? Someone's trying to keep all the lettuce for themselves :@

We found another way towards the pagoda: over a bridge and up a hill. As we crossed the bridge, we were met by a bride and groom! I said "congratulations" but they stared coldly ahead :(

It seemed we'd actually stumbled onto some kind of wedding factory. There were 2 other brides & grooms on the other side of the bridge. It looked like there was a field full of sad looking props to pose with for wedding photos, such as a rusty old jalopy with "PARIS" painted on the side, and a heart that said "Nobody, nobody but you" -the chorus from the Korean band Wonder Girls' big hit a few years ago.

A view of the beach from the hill, as we tried to reach the pagoda. Unfortunately, when we got to the top, the pagoda was actually inside the grounds of some kind of private power company or something, and there was a guard post at the entrance. We decided to head back down the hill, through the wedding factory, and into a taxi back to the station.