On our first night we took a boat cruise along the river and out to sea. It had a buffet dinner followed by dancers on the open-top, apparently with a Portugese theme, as we sailed past Macau and back (formerly a Portugese colony - a bit like Hong Kong but with more casinos)
The 'Portugese' guy was very funny! Later on the people on the cruise got involved as well, and at the end there was a magician - all slightly strange but good fun!
Macao off to one side. It returned to Chinese control in 1999, two years after Hong Kong.
The next day we went to the Yuan Ming Xin Yuan, a partial rebuilding of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, burnt by invading forces in the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century (still a sore point to the Chinese apparently, in the catalogue of foreign abuses of Chinese soverignty drilled into all of them from a young age). It was very pretty and quite large - easily a day's work to enjoy fully. There were more dancing performances, including my highlight which was a re-enactment of the emperor choosing his newest wife - with the emperor chosen from the audience! Also a Chinese orchestra, after which it started to rain and we vacated (it was getting late, anyway).
There were also lots of shops selling typical touristy odditys, and lots of places with costumes selling photos that I got talked into buying one of:
Me as the yellow emperor, much to the amusment of all nearby people - a foreign emperor!
Another area had a great exhibition of most of the various imperial lines in China - in fact, many of the emperors were 'foreigners', Ghengis Khan's descendents who founded the Yuan dynasty and the most recent Qing dynasty to name a few. Chinese culture became very effective at sinocising various foreign powers throughout the ages, like the Greeks in the West. China had one emperess in about 700AD, and after realising their mistake they never let it happen again, although in various periods the cheif wife of the emperor was in defacto control after his death, most recently in the late nineteenth century, the infamous emperess dowager CiXi.
Downstairs was a darkened chamber with pictures of emperors in various naughty poses with wives and misteresses (and often a combination thereof) - photos had recently been allowed but none are online or for the faint-hearted!
Today we went a little further afield to the 'Pearl Spring Resort', an amusment arcade a little out of the city. After paying RMB 110 for a ticket to get in I felt slightly like I'd fallen into a tourist trap, but the rides inside were all free so it wasn't so bad (Yuan Ming Xin Yuan was RMB 120 a ticket, again the performances and things inside were mostly free, and apparently we could trade the tickets inside for a free goodie too, but we never found the place - no big loss though, it was the usual tourist bangles and jade buddhas).
Spring Pearl Resort
Continuing the Guangzhou themes, there were dancers and paddling boats, and lots of rides (I went on what was possibly the first roller-coaster I've ever been on, quite fun!)
and the aftermath of the rollercoaster! Thankfully breakfast was some time ago.
And another ride, this time a vertical one with a very good view from the top.
The surrounding area was very pretty, much less clustered than the city. There were lots of fishing boats on the river/sea around the resort and the sun was slowly going down. The beaches were rocky but nice to look at (the resort itself had fake sand beaches with swimming areas, but sadly I'd left my trunks at home and didn't want to buy the over-priced ones they were selling
The resort's hotel (NOT where I was staying!)
Tomorrow we're leaving the Pearl River Delta and going a little further inland to ZhaoQing city.
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