Spring took us for a meal!

When we got back from Hainan we bought some presents, including a lovely present for one of the teachers in our office, a coconut carved into a hand sized sun, wearing a lovely hat! Spring, the teacher, was so happy, that she wanted to take us for a celebratory meal somewhere we hadn't been!

She is from a nearby small town that used to be separate town but is now being assimilated into this town. Elaine drove and Chris, I and Spring all piled in and off we went, it was only half an hour to drive and when we arrived spring picked up some special food from her friend and asked her friend who brought the food to join us. Her friend spoke no english but at least good practise for my chinese!

We arrived at a small restaurant and ordered a huge variety of food with accompanying "wow foreigners" from everyone around. The restaurant was completely deserted apart from us in our small room and luckily the attached KTV room was luckily quiet, despite springs offers to the contrary! 

We had a lovely meal and chatted in English, Chinese, Minan and a local variant of Wenzhou hua, not bad, 4 language between 5 people! Chris and I offering the least in the language competition. We ordered way too many dishes, including possible the best fish I have tried! The food filled a table for 8-10 with plates stacked on plates, and with only 5 people it was never going to happen! Including some special dishes, one of which I guess deserves a separate blog post (coming soon).

After the meal we went to take a look around the town a bit and went to a nearly deserted temple. We walked along its high imposing walls and springs friend knocked repeatedly on the door but to avail, nobody came to let us in! Luckily Springs friend went to the back entrance and managed to open a service door and let us in, she seemed to act like she owned the place so we just copied her lead. 

The temple complex was big, and completely deserted, I am not sure a tourist had ever visited, and definitely never a foreign tourist! The few temple workers and monks around didn't pay us any notice as we looked at a large state over a tutle pond, looked into the main halls and took pictures wherever we wanted with nobody giving us bad looks and nobody telling us off (like they usually do in the touristy temples) I even took a picture in the main prayer room in front of the most important statue in the temple with no problems! 
After having a good look around and being joined by Springs friend's mother and young (7 or so) cousin we carried on out the bank into a second huge building. On the ground floor was an active prayer room and a yoga type room we skirted by with a just a look and made out way to a back staircase, up several flights of stairs we entered a large room taking the whole top floor which was filled to the rafters with small golden statues of Buddha! 

This room was amazing, apparently for 200RMB (£20) you can buy a small statue (although not remove it) and then it will stay in the room in your name. Very amazing and beautiful even when you realise they are obviously not real gold! but still amazing! Pictures, of course, to come....

After this we made out way out and back to the car but stopped off to drop of Springs friend and mum and take a look around their house, they insisted that we take home some freshly grown vegetables from their back garden and before we knew what had happened we were loaded up with 2 carrier bags of fresh greens that she stomped around her backgarden allotment picking in the rain in her wellies, unfortunately we have no idea how to cook them! But they look very tasty... I think she was very happy to spend some time with some foreigners, and in fact had several pictures taken with us to show off to her daughter (who is at university) that she spent the time with us! she was lovely, as were they all, and the meal was lovely too! A very nice day!

First a few pictures of the restaurant and Elaine and Spring eating away!