Lvchun

After the shit news of dads passing and a morning packed full of phone calls, emails, copying, forwarding etc the weather lifted and the upper management decided we could have the afternoon off to explore Lvchun which we had made a specific place to go to.

The weatherman was obviously on strike as no sooner we saddled up we were refreshed yet again however it was not heavy just annoying enough to pull the curtain on the great views.

Our mish was to go to some terraced rice fields, our turnoff sent us up a single lane road which was smashed by weather and the subsequent road works, it was Xiao Lyus first time to dip her boots properly in mud.

This was going well up till it wasn’t, we came across a large mound right across the road with a digger on top, game over go back to home base.

Back at Lvchun we continued our part afternoon off with a decent wander through town and get some food, I was the subject of attention from four wee kids in a supermarket, they were pretty cool and in the end they plucked up enough courage to ask for a photo with them and they seemed pleasantly surprised when I said no problem at all.

Some random pics.

At least we had an air change in our lungs and a bit of time out to enjoy before hitting the paperwork again. Did mention Chinese like paperwork, mighta done prior LOL, Immigration (renamed irritation) were not being entirely helpful, our New Zealand Embassy based in Beijing were doing what they could as much as their hands were tied tight as to what they could do.

On the road, one of three trucks carrying window turbine blades

Heading back to Mengzi to the irritation we arrived there with an encyclopaedia load of paperwork, we had to have JP signed docs, passports, bank statements, NZ Embassy stamped paperwork, verifications …and that was for the first part.

After much negotiating, toing and froing and discussions they gave us an S2 VISA for 30 days, now the speed that things normally happen here at a bureaucratic level would send a sloth to sleep so it will be interesting to see what happens, there is NO compassionate leeway here, again it is exactly set up to fail every which way you go as they could easily give more time on compassionate grounds which didn’t seem to exist,  seems they give someone a uniform and stupid fucken hat and they think they are Starsky and Hutch.

Anyway, it took from 2.15 pm till 5.30 pm but we got there, now it will be a sprint photo finish to get family stuff done and make it back to the Laos border for another attempt.

Now we are headed back to Kunming so Ellen can fly to Beijing to take on the onslaught of tidying up.