I went to Tianpingshan this weekend which is the first time for a few weeks and it was good to be out of the city once more. The mountain was looking rather bare in places which allowed me to see it a different way. The paths look different and the lay of the land has new colours. I came across a new path that I had not seen before and only stumbled upon it because I could see through the trees and see a few colourful hikers climbing up a large chunk of smooth rock with a slight resemblance to Bald Rock in Australia. It was certainly challenging in places as it was quite easy to lose traction,which I did a few times and I ended back where I started, but it was good to try a different route.

The mornings are fresh and sometimes there is a light frost but the last few days the temperature has risen and it feels very mild. The sun has been shining and is supposed to until the end of the week and then the rains will arrive or maybe snow if we are lucky, but I won’t be here because the following week I’ll be heading to Singapore for my visa run, where I am hoping to see my first solar eclipse.

In the park in the mornings we have the usual crowd of misfits. There are the dog walker’s that colour coordinate with their dogs coat and some wee dogs even have little boots on. There are many that come and walk slower than a sloth and watch the phone as they perambulate and every so often an arm will twitch or stretch so that they can actually not lie when someone asks them about the morning workout. Many just stand with legs stretched, hooked around a bar at shoulder height and they too will be watching their phone.

One guy leaves his backpack on the park bench and then walks around the park for almost an hour. Leaving a bag unattended in China does not seem to bring with it any concern or worry from the public; they don’t even seem to think it is at all strange. Can you imagine doing this in a western country, the moment you walk off someone would call the police and by the time you had completed one circuit your bag will have been cordoned off and the park would be getting cleared or there would be a robot moving in to dismantle.

Yesterday I went to the bank to buy some currency, which is usually a straight forward process in many countries………but not here. I had gone in a few days earlier to order the money which is ok but then the process seems to take forever. I hand over my passport and my bank card, it’s my local bank and they know me. They fill out the details on the computer and then I enter my password, we do this a second time and a third time and in between all of this my bank card and passport are photographed and scanned multiple times. I was in the bank for nearly 30 minutes just waiting to buy $400 US. This is the maximum amount that I am able to buy in one transaction in China. When I did my visa run to Korea a few months ago I went into the bank there to change some money and it took all of about 5 minutes and they didn’t want to see my passport, so so different. China seems to watch everything that you do in great detail. It seems that things are signed, countersigned and then done in triplicate before being complete. A friend of mine was kind enough to go to the bank and change some cash for me but she said that she too got asked 20 questions as to why she wanted the money.

And so one more week to go of routines and having to put up with Sissi’s mother who is just driving me mad, I’m really looking forward to a break from China and to taste a little bit of freedom and of course having a really tasty Indian curry when I get to Singapore.