Seeking Wu: Operation Gotcha

Wow - 10 days in. We slowly woke up and got ready as there was nothing on the agenda for today other than a group picture at 9AM. We had to really search for a seat at breakfast and eventually found one when the previous occupants left and we swooped in like hawks to stake our claim. You could tell the place was hopping as the pineapple I saw on the buffet was gone by the time I got a plate and went looking for it. Additionally the French toast was out as well. No worries, they have plenty of other food to eat so it’s not like we were going to starve. We met the rest of the families on the stairs in the lobby and took our traditional group picture our adoption agency use on their Facebook and web pages. The rest of the families were going shopping and we opted to pass on that and went back to the room.

Our plan was to have Blaize take a short nap and then go to one of the parks nearby. He fought the nap and after a bit we gave up on it and went out. The heat and humidity here are crazy and while it was 85F the real feel was over 100F with high humidity. We were wet with sweat before we even walked the block to the park. Originally we thought this was the park we visited the last time we were here, but it didn’t take long to see it was not. This is Liu Hua park and as we walked around we

realized how big it really was. There is a large pond with a nice paved path all around, multiple islands that featured different plants and styles. For example one was hibiscus island, other was palm island and there was a rose garden given to the city by Frankfurt in Germany. There is also an amusement park with coasters and rides for small children, a bunch of ping pong tables and plenty of benches. All told we did 2.4 miles of walking and when we were done, we were soaked with sweat. Haha We stopped at a McDonald’s next to the hotel and picked up fudge sundaes and a taro pie. Taro isn’t a flavor we see back home and it was pretty good.

We went back to the room and slowly cooled off and waited for our laundry to return. We looked like we walked through the rain - sort of gross. Our laundry showed up which is awesome and Blaize eventually fell asleep. We have a river cruise tonight and wanted to make sure he got a nap. While he slept I fixed tons of typos on the blog posts and added photos to many of them. It was sad to see how bad the typos were but given the tools I had at the time, I’ll let it slide.

It was time for our river cruise so we we down and met one of our local guides who took us to the river terminal and bought the tickets for us. She made sure we got on and it wasn’t too long and we were off. We marveled at the amount of apartments along the river and the density of people here. As the sun went down the lights on the buildings came on and it was neat to see. There was an entertainer on the boat and she juggled balls and did other basketball tricks. It was a short cruise and we docked around an hour after we left. We got off, found our driver and while heading back to the hotel, ordered dinner for Julie and I using the same delivery service. We ate and watched some of the coverage of the Thai cave rescue situation. The hotel doesn’t carry F1 coverage so was sort of bummed that we will miss that.