Happy National Day, everyone!

What is National Day? Like the 4th of July for America, it is the date modern China was founded by the Communists. What does it mean for me? Hot damn, a week off of work. Yay China!

Unfortunately it came at a somewhat bad time, as I came down with a cold right before. So the first few days of holiday were spent at home feeling bad. But, Ella and I managed to get away for a few days, first to Shangchuan Island!

Shangchuan is situated at the southern end of China, a bit west of Macau. It is actually a twin island along with Xiachuan - kind of a fun naming, since "Shang" means on top of, and "Xia" means under. Anyway, we decided to go with Shang, which may have been a good call. The boat for Xia had a really long line, but who knows? That may be an opportunity for next time.

So just to get it out of the way, Shangchuan Island is nice. But, and it feels unfair to do so, I want to compare it to Thai islands. At Shang, they kind of funnel everyone into a designated "resort" area, which is actually fairly small. Of course this means everything there is more expensive, because it's sort of far from everything else and you have to buy a ticket to enter. However, they do at least go to some effort with that cash to keep everything clean - although people certainly try their hardest to undermine that. The beach area is quite beautiful, and comparable to anything you've seen in Thailand. The one thing I seriously have to complain about is whoever decided that renting dune buggies would be a good idea. It's an otherwise quiet beach, with "Vrrooom vrooooms!" constantly charging back and forth. Also, this is not a complaint, but this place was heavily geared towards families. I think we were the only couple in the entire place, and even the bars were pretty much empty. A much different vibe than Thailand for sure, but for beach life, still quite nice.

We didn't do much at Shangchuan aside chill on the beach and in the little resort town next to it. Of note was Nine Dragon Cave, a nice little temple up on a hill you could check out. It was really beautiful up there, as it had an amazing breeze and awesome view of the whole area. Plus a naked mermaid. And this really creepy cave with strange statues in it. And a bat. So let's just throw a few pictures in here before I talk about our next destination.

Zhuhai is a mid-sized city in China that is right across the border from Macau. It has a reputation for being the "lovers city" of China, with lots of things for couples and singles from Macau escaping for the weekend. Overall though, I have to say that reputation is a little embellished. I expected it to be like the Pattaya of China, but its more like the shopping and eating center of China. It does have a nice park, a few cool shopping centers, but overall, there's really not that much to do there. We mostly just walked around the different alleys, sampling food here and there. It has a famous statue that we went out to visit, which by itself was nice enough to look at. But what I really liked is that the walkway out to the statue was submerged by the ocean. So, it looks like you're walking on water as you venture out the 50 or so meters to get up and close to this thing. That may sound dangerous, but apparently this is a common thing, as it was packed with families and little kids.

We also went to see the Zhuhai Museum (not really notable), and Oxford Street. (A small street of coffee shops - also not really notable since they were pretty much all closed). The other sight of note was Yuan Ming Xin Yuan, a giant temple in the middle of town. I know, I know. "You've seen one Chinese temple, you've seen 99% of them" -Mike. But this one was the 1%. Kind of like a Chinese theme park, it had water slides, cosplayers, and a cable car up to the mountain. Why? I have no idea. We took the cable car up, which didn't have much except a really amazing view of the city. It's actually the start of a hiking path that takes you all around the mountain, but we didn't partake in that.

And then, it was back to Guangzhou. We had a chance to take the brand-spanking-new Zhuhai to Guangzhou Express Train. It is worth taking for the novelty alone, as it is basically a metro - some seats, but mostly standing room with some bars to hang on to. And it stops at 4 or 5 stations between Zhuhai and Guangzhou. Except it is an elevated train, and gets up to nearly 300 kph. So we were back at Guangzhou in less than an hour, which was pretty awesome. I'm sure we'll have another chance to take that train when we go to Macau. But until then, it's back to work.