Woke up fairly early as Sam had to get herself to the airport earlier than us for her flight over to Borneo. Sam and Phil went over to the post office straight after breakfast and got boxes for us to send back to the UK as we had bought quite a few different souvenirs already and also had out winter stuff from Moscow to send home. Hopefully this will give us a bit of luggage allowance available to buy more stuff as we were over on the last few flights.
When they got back from the post office we started to pack out stuff. I had to get a bigger box as I had bought a large silk Chinese scroll which wouldn’t fit in the small ones cos of the length. After we’d packed our boxes and said goodbye to Sam we headed over to the post office to get them sent. My cost $33 and Phil’s was £30.
After sending back our stuff we had a walk around and I found a hairdressers as my hair was in desperate need of shaving (as some of you have already noticed). Found one quite near our hotel and 10 minutes and $10 later it was done. The woman tried to get me to have a number 3 but I kept explaining I wanted number 1 as it would last longer. She kept saying “oh army boy, army boy”, I thought “fancy dress maybe”. After the haircut I’d lost Phil as he went for a walk around so I decided to have a quick look around the hotel and market and then head back to the hotel as I didn’t have any money left to shop with.
When I got back to the hotel I thought I would get some food as they have a buffet lunch for about £10 (a bit pricey for here but I needed to pay by Visa so I didn’t need to draw out any more local currency). The restaurant was empty apart from me and one fella so I had my own waitress who kept trying to get me to try the different foods. I was sat eating my main course and she came to see if I wanted soup. I said yes so she brought a bowl over. I meant later but never mind, it was kinda like hot and sour soup so ate it in between mouthfuls to keep her happy. Then she brought me drinks and then tried to get me to eat ice cream and while I was getting cake was asking if I wanted some spring rolls. That one thing I have noticed with Chinese people, they don’t seem to separate out sweet from savoury. They don’t think twice about getting a plate of curry and rice and just dumping cake or fruit on the same plate :-/ Not for me.
Anyway there was a bit of hoo haa after I’d finished my meal as my visa card wouldn’t go through, she tried it a few times and I think she ended up blocking it. I explained I would try to get Phil to use his when he came back. When he did come back though and she tried his did the same and kept saying invalid transaction. I think they must have been doing something wrong so Phil ended up just getting the cash out and paying them that way.
We decided to set off to the airport a bit earlier than normal so we could try and use the free internet in the airport, but with the credit card fandango it ended being about the normal time so I barely had time to change my status on facebook and it was time to go to through. Got on the flight and was absolutely goosed so slept through most of it off and on. Did manage to catch a nice sunset as we flew through the clouds though (see pics).
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