Very early start today ready for our 8am rickshaw ride! Considering we laugh at the tourists in the rickshaws at Covent Garden we must have looked a right sight for the locals - 14 rickshaws riding along the road. We first took the rickshaw ride to the park. Honestly, at one point the cyclist was driving into head on traffic! We arrived at the park to a group of ladies fan dancing. Wandering around there were people doing Tai Chi which Tracey says is easy to remember by motioning a circle to show the watermelon, divide it in half for you and half for me! Good way to remember it! There were people dancing, aerobics and one lady in a baby pink Chinese suit doing some kind of Tai Chi with a sword - she was amazing and looked exactly like a character from street fighter or tekken. Definitely in kill bill training mode - wonder what her mission is?
So after this relaxing time in the park we re boarded the rickety rickshaw for a ride to the manic market. And what a market it was! Fruit and veg as you walk in, then meat at the back including trotters and chicken feet and in the back corner live chickens and birds - you could chose your own. We went for a walk around the fish section - all still alive - was so busy looking at a bag of frogs trying to work out if they were alive or dead that i didn't spot the fish trying to escaped and jumped out of its tank to another covering me in fishy water! Ewwww smelly, oh and the frogs were alive! The fish later escaped to the floor and had to be rescued by someone on our tour. It was now time for our last leg of the rickshaw ride back to the hotel. Our cyclist was just as risky as the other legs of the journey though i did feel sorry for him, at one point he got off and dragged us along the road. He earned his tip for sure - don't think we actually gave him enough!
We then went to a silk factory that was actually quite good. We saw each stage of the silk making process from the silk worms chomping on the mulberry bush leaves like the hungry caterpillar, making their cocoons, sorting the cocoons into good and bad ones and removing the twins which are extremely large cocoons, then the machine that heats them to kill the pupa then the machine that finds the end of the silk thread and winds it around a real ready to be used to weave. Interesting really. Then another person soaks the twins and removes the double pupa, then stretches the cocoon over a stand, this is used to make the silk duvet as its too hard to find the end to use for clothing and fabric. The shop was good too, had some trendy gear and some not so! Bought some bargains for pure silk.
Tiger Hill was our final stop today. Named so due to the brothers that founded it as Tiger was their surname. At the peak of the hill was a 7 level pagoda - which leans slightly, it is the leaning tower of Pisa of the east! The leaning tower of tiger, ha. Just as we were leaving the peak we heard a massive rumble, then a flash, then another rumble. Oh dear! We walked down a little when a few spits of rain appeared. Wendy decided we should pause just in case - wise move - it hammered it down. Constant thunder and lightening for what felt like forever. Tracey is saying this is a regular shower but the building we were sheltering by started to flood! That's never just a regular shower! Eventually it eased off and we made it back to the bus before it started again! We have now truly experienced the Chinese climate and the jack in a pack was definitely the best £6 spent for this holiday!
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