A day in Meizhou

This morning Rebecca suggested that we take a trip to the nearby larger city of Meizhou (pronounced May Joe), since it was bright and sunny outside (though a tad chilly). Always up for an adventure, I agreed. We got a few things together and took a motorcycle taxi to the bus station. We got there a few minutes before a bus to Meizhou left, so just in time! The bus ride took about 2 hours, with some of it being on rough roads currently under construction, so a few slow, bumpy parts of the ride.

From the bus station in Meizhou we just started walking. It was about lunchtime and we were hungry, so we stopped into a nice restaurant and ordered a couple of dishes - a plate of chicken and a plate of fried tofu squares in some good sauce, along with the rice and tea they give you. A good meal that only cost about $6.57 US altogether, also nearly what our bus tickets to Meizhou cost.



We walked around some more and found a really cool park where we stopped to take some photos and chill out for a bit. Check out this cool rock island thing on the pond that can walk out on.



We stopped by some shops where I picked up a couple of 3-star ping pong balls, a guitar strap, deck of cards, and a "shuttlecock" that is kind of like a badminton one, but is made for kicking around like a hackey sack. I've kicked one around a few times with people on campus so I decided to buy one. I'll likely buy a few to bring back to the states. Also, I regret not bringing my hackey sack.

I decided to stop into a DVD store to browse around and I found tons of cheap (and likely pirated) DVDs of American movies - DVD sets of 2 or 3 discs that contained between 10-20 movies. I found collections that had all the Godfathers, Star Wars, new releases, Harry Potters, ect... I was tempted to pick up several at this time, but decided to buy one for now to test out. I ended up buying the entire Band of Brothers miniseries for a buck 75. I tested it on the computer here and it plays fine, and is in English. Not sure whether it will play in the United States though, but I'll probably pick up more DVD's just because they are so damn cheap.

We were surprised to run into Lily, one of the teachers from our school who is helping us, just outside one of the stores we came out of. Small world.... I got a quick bite to eat at a KFC and then we took a 3-wheeled motorcycle taxi to the bus station, but the taxi guy took us to a college instead, and then to the wrong bus station. We got off there and got a ride to the correct bus station from a guy on a motorcycle. It was my first time on a motorcycle ever, 3 of us packed on the little 125cc powered machine as we rode through the city to the station.

Meizhou is awesome for a day trip, and we plan to make a few more trips back here to this big city to explore and shop around some more.

You can see more of the pictures I took today in this album, also posted on the right side of this page.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2089086&id=36105183&l=9321e