During coffee in Starbucks this morning I chatted to Sunny on QQ and agreed to meet her after work (she works a half day on Saturdays). So took the metro to Panyue Square where she works close by and had another coffee in a nice restaurant and waited fro her to join me. As ever she looked lovely and we had a nice lunch there and then went to visit Shamian Island where she hadn't actually visited herself before.
What a strange place!!
Old European style building and ladies everywhere getting photographed , it was surreal, models and brides every where, its clearly very different to the rest of the city.
There are loads of small museums/antique stores and we visited a few, in one of they places they had pictures made from donkey skins and then painted, weird !! We spent a very pleasant couple of hours there and then had some fruit drinks at a riverside place (Pearl River). She also thought me how to do Tai Chi..its involves a watermelon story haha, you would have to see it to get it haha.There were people swimming in the Pearl river and old guys doing the Tai Chi and as usual in China, where ever there is a green area people just dont loaf around they do stuff.
There as old ladies singing in the old Chinese style while old folk shuffled around dancing to it, there was people playing tennis, there were men fishing in the river, there was boats going up and down. It was pretty romantic I suppose.
When ever I look at Sunny she breaks out into a big smile as do I, so there is the beginnings of something there I think.
After that we took the metro to meet up with Yamaha (my friend that introduced me to her).
The dinner party turned out to be a private room in an gigantic restaurant, it must have been about 5 storeys high with hundreds of private rooms and massive open plan dining areas. Stunningly beautiful girls in traditional clothing shouted out greetings and waiters literally ran around ferrying food around the place, i can only imagine what the kitchen was like. There were other coordinators with earpieces and mikes that constantly talked coordinating the frenetic activity, I've never seen anything quite like it, there must have been around 1000 if not more people dining there at any one time.
So anyhow, Sunny knew which room was booked and we were directed there by the army of fresh faced , traditionally clothed, did i mention stunningly beautiful?!, girls.
In the room was Yamaha and two men from her company, one spoke pretty good English so its was very interesting. I was clearly the important guest as as the array of foods arrived I was always the first one they wanted to try the food. The food was served onto a rotating glass table so it was easy to swing a dish you liked right around to you. My chopstick skills no longer make Chinese laugh haha, they were very impressed!
One of the dishes in particular they got very excited about when it came. There was a hushed silence and they all stared at me to see would i eat it. It was a brown circular thing, it tasted kinda fatty but like pork, quite nice.
I asked Sunny why they all looked at me eating it and they all burst into conspirational laughter. They wouldn't tell me what it is, and apparently they wont tell me what it is until I'm going home haha. I'm guess its pig intestine or something i wouldn't normally touch with a bargepole, but when in Rome do as ... I didnt recognise anything on the table, noodles were apparently actually mushrooms and it went on like that, i have given up even trying to guess, i just shove it in my gob and see if I like the taste. After eating snails out of their shells (they give you a glove to hold the shell and a wooden steak to stab into the flesh and pull from the shell, you then bite of the brown end and leave behind the white gooey bit) last night there is no going back at this stage!
So dinner was very enjoyable and Yamaha kept talking to Sunny looking of at me and the two of them would then burst out laughing and glance at me every so often, haha.
Yamaha's two male colleagues from work paid for the dinner and we all then went to "foot massage" (Sunny said I should pay for the foot massage which seemed fair enough).
Again this place is hard to describe, multiple floors with dimply lit spotless rooms , water fountains, stone sculptures and girls with microphones and earpieces coordinating it all.
Fellas...you need to experience this to believe it.
All five of us went into our room , and took a chair each and watched a huge plasma screen with some ping pong. It was China versus Japan and China was winning and the men were loving it, cheering every point China won!!
Then spot on the turn of the hour, five gorgeous girls came into the room in a kind of parade armed with towels and other bits and bobs, one to a man or woman.
So, my beauty enthusiastically washed my feet, rolled up my trousers to the knees and then rubbed moisturiser in and then basically tortured the soles of my feet hahh. However once that was done she did my neck shoulders and back and then told me to sit in front of her and she then pulled me back down unto her chest and massaged my eyebrows, rubbed my earlobes, and rubbed my forehead and face and scalp for a while, fellas, this as not the most unpleasant experience I ever had let me tell you!!
She then did the upper part of my lgs and all I kept doing was a Homer Simpson "think unsexy thoughts,think unsexy thoughts,think unsexy thoughts etc" ...it was touch and good but my modesty was preserved just about haha.
After all that (about an hour) they raped scalding hot towels around our feet for a few minutes and then washed them again. Interestingly my masseuse told Sunny that i had a tender spot in my right foot that corresponds to my kidney, i heard her say "bu hao" (not good) and she then jabbed the point to demonstrate to Sunny and I of course jumped much to Sunny and her amusement. Sunny takes this stuff seriously and said I should have my doctor check my kidneys for problems. I'm not sure i believe it but I will mention to my doc and see what she says, i am due cholesterol tests anyhow so they can test the blood for a bunch of other stuf at the same time.
After the foot massage I paid for it and it only came to 275 RMB for all five of us, great value, I would normally spend around that on dinner just for me and one lady
The men their ways after that and as it was now about 22:30 the ladies took the train in one direction and I the other.
Sunny is going to help me check into a new hotel that she says is better value and nicer rooms tomorrow morning. We are going to do the Pearl river cruise tomorrow evening and I'm going to see if a bit of hand holding can be initiated there
After moving hotel i'm not sure what we will do but it will be together so it will be fine. I find Sunny very interesting and intellectual, which really appeals to me, she can hold a conversation thats interesting and I dont constantly have to be the one starting the conversation as was the case with Ling 2. She doesnt mind at all the slight touches i make now and again to see if she flinches, in the metro she sat right beside me leg to leg shoulder to shoulder.
Yamaha has told me not not to force it with Sunny - she is thoughtful and wont be rushed into anything.
To be honest thats perfectly fine with me, i've learned from the past that sometimes you have to walk even when you want to run. On the Pearl river cruise is going for hand hold time I think, kissing, if it happens, might be about a week i think if even then. Sunny doesn't have a chnlove profile but knows all about chnlove, I'll expand more on that later, now isnt the time.
Ling left some documents in my bag and texted that she wants them back, i know that meeting isnt going to be pleasant, I know where she works so might just ask Yamaha to give them to the front desk there as she works near the building, there's no point in me trying to do this as there are many companies in the sky scraper Ling works in and only one front reception not used to dealing with laowai.
So I wont be getting engaged this trip, but i will hopefully have made a new friend and the beginning of something great, I've also finally broken with Ling 1 and now know that it was the right thing to do so no regrets.
I've two weeks left to get to know Sunny well, its started off great, hopefully there will be tears on the way home
