CAITA Day 12 BeiHai 'Well Earned Rest'

Day 12, 25th Oct. Free and easy in BeiHai, China

Got up at 9am today and feeling well rested. The breakfast- which had changed from ABF to CBF, rice porridge with condiments, yu-tiao and soya milk, beef noodle soup, hard boiled / fried eggs, bread, fruits and weak tea. Not bad, at least we can take our time to taste them all.
After the leisurely food intake, we headed to town to walk and have a look-see. The taxicab was a smallish 1.3 hatchback, and the cab driver was real expert in fuel economy driving – shifting gears before 2000 rpm, yet not labouring the engine. He took us to the largest shopping centre where we alighted.

I walked to the basement supermarket as I needed to get some fruits and guess what I saw on display in the meat section when I passed by:

A DOG!!! URGH. The poor thing was cleaned and shaved. Some parts was cut and sold

Cat meat are also sold here but didn’t see any. I will spare you the trauma by not show the pic of the dog meat but the POS display instead.

The shopping centre is typical like what we have, clean with wide aisles; prices are much higher than SIN for imported goods.

The gentleman next to me is Mr Nguyen Duc Hieu, a really humble guy, does not speak a word of English, but helped TEAM SIN cleared Vietnam Customs by signing as guarantor. Can't thank him enough!

I walked by a car wash outfit and had to show you a hand-held car blower drier. They even washed the carpet mat and then spun dry the mats

We headed back to the hotel for lunch as a meeting was scheduled in the afternoon.

A sumptuous lunch was served – fresh sea food – steam fish / prawns / flower crab, roast pork / Hainanese styled chicken, assorted vegetable dishes, and a soup. SHIOK

A post mortem meeting was conducted and chaired by the organising committee. They thanked everyone for the cooperation received, and apologised for the hardships which everyone had endured throughout the journey. They realised the driving time for each day was too long and thankful that no accidents occurred from it. The daily fried rice lunch box was not bad except that a vegetable dish should have been included. As it was their first such attempt to organise a drive of such a long distance covering 11000km, they have collected much data and are wiser from it.

The program for the next day is to complete the drive to Nanning City. After arrival, lunch will be served, followed by a rehearsal for the Award Ceremony in the evening. Wow. Everything is a big wayang here

Cheers

William and Harold