It was a hot, sunny walk to the bus stop Tuesday morning as Nareesa and I headed to Banciao Station to catch the train to Fulong Beach. With weather like this, we knew a hot and relaxing day in the sand awaited us. The day started off with a bang, as Santa Claus himself drove the bus that took us to Banciao. Instead of a beard he was wearing a surgical mask, but this is Asia after all.
Our train didn't leave for a half hour so we grabbed lunch at the 7 Eleven (potato wedges, cheese and corn- yum!) and then got on our train. This was not an express train and it wound up taking 90 minutes to get to Fulong because it stopped at every dinky little station in the country, but at least we had plenty of time to play Skip Bo and Spit.
The station at Fulong was being renovated- looks nice, doesn't it? I saw a woman move a bag of cement out of the way so she could push her baby's stroller through the station.
Oh, I forgot to mention- while we were on the train the sky clouded over and the temperature dropped. No big deal, it's not like we were going to the beach or anything. Wait... what.. we did go to the beach and I was damn cold!!! I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops. I didn't bring a sweater or anything!!! I had to wear my towel to keep warm :(
Actually, the water wasn't too cold so we did wind up jumping some waves.
The sky eventually cleared, though the sun never really came out to make it as warm as it was. Nareesa collected some sea shells and I, stilled wrapped in my towel, read my book for a few hours. We also spelled out a certain four letter word (easily mis-pronounced as "clap") in the sand and Nareesa kicked it to pieces. What a relaxing afternoon.
This temple is located right next to the beach so we took a few minutes to say hi to Buddha and smell the incense.
For supper I had planned to take Nareesa to a stirfry restaurant that Mel and I had gone to the first time we were in Fulong, but it was all chained up (Fulong was DEAD on Tuesday- possibly because it was a weekday in December...) so we got bento meals at a restaurant by the station. For around $1.25 CAD you can't go wrong with a box full or pork, rice, sausagey, bamboo, cabbage, seeweed and eggy. Nareesa kindly traded me her pork for my eggy and we both left satisfied.
Here's my tip for the day: if you are traveling overseas to teach English you can only bring so much with you because of the weight restrictions on luggage so I highly recommend stealing the blankets the airlines give you on the plane. We've used these blankets as curtains, offered them when friends sleep over, used them to lay on the beach and now they've even come in useful when I ridiculously underdressed on the subway.The train back home was much busier than the one that we took to Fulong so there was no Skip Bo-ing for us. The AC was on full blast so I wrapped myself in the China Air blanket that I stole from our flight to Taiwan and with my purple blanket and purple shorts did my best Grimace impression all the way home. Also, my flip flops starting getting really uncomfortable so I wound up walking home from the bus stop not only dressed head to toe in purple, but also with Nareesa's size 6 flower-covered ladies flip flops on my feet. Lookin' good, Keddy.
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