Guangzhou to Li Jiang

Day 4
We went to breakfast near our hotel and had fantastic food again. Fried potato with mustard and wasabi, red bean cake, shrimp dumplings, sweet peanut buns, millet porridge with pumpkin red bean buns.

The service was slow and Andrea and I had a rare moment of disagreement over whether to complain. I was upset about how much she let the irritating inefficiencies bother her and how much she voiced it and I let her know. I didn't want Li Feng to feel that we were unhappy. That was our 5th argument in 32 years but who's counting?

We then went to see the sights. The kids frolicked in a park, dancing with a group of women and playing Chinese hacky sack. We saw statues and canals with long boats and an ancient mansion.

We headed back to the hotel,  packed up and checked out. Yan picked us up and drove is to the airport. We ate lunch at Starbucks in the terminal,  chicken on a salad with baby corn; definitely not on the US menu, and had fresh lychee for dessert. The TSA should take lessons from the Chinese.  Not only was it 20 times faster, they caught the scissors that Zachary had in his pencil case which the TSA completely missed.

The plane was delayed for an hour which gave me some time to catch up on writing this and to read more of my current book,  Lab Girl,  which is interesting and relaxing to read.

I could tell that Li Jiang would be much different from the air. It's at an elevation of 7,500 feet and the terrain is mountainous.  We piled into a couple of old minivans that took us to the old city. It is a maze of narrow old cobblestone streets lined with small shops selling traditional foods and crafts. Cars can't drive in old Town.  We're staying in the middle, so we got out of the vans and hoofed it for a solid 15 minutes to get to the place.

Our hotel was described as a family hotel,  which I didn't really understand until we got there and saw it.  There is a central courtyard surround by the bedrooms, each with an attached bath and an upper level with a large living room and bedroom suite. Andrea and I got the suite. Li Feng's sister Lina meet us there with her 2 year old son, Evan. Lina is 29 and works on construction budgets.
The hotel's courtyard had a few mosquitos and the kids were freaked.  The buildings construction was thrown together. Sliding doors didn't really slide, there were no screens, when they needed to plumb a pipe from the hot water heater to a sink or shower they ran it through an open window, ensuring that it would never close all the way again.

We settled in and walked to dinner at an outdoor barbecue place where we ordered plate after plate of grilled vegetables, shrimp, and fish.  Grilling is a specialty of the Naxi minority that is indigenous to the region and it was beyond delicious.

We walked back to the hotel to howls of protest about the lack of dessert, but managed to find a slice of chocolate cake to sooth the savage beasts. When it was time for bed neither Andrea nor I could find the switch to turn off one of the living room lights.  Between the earlier insect sightings, the unscreened windows that wouldn't close and the light that we couldn't shut off I expected to wake up covered in bites and with a swarm of insects. I went to bed exhausted,  too exhausted to look for the melatonin but I figured it didn't matter because I was so sleepy.  At about 4:30 I regretted that decision.