thank you, Mark… 
and thank you, dear and always caring parents! 
you know, most of my selfies are blurred, but most of them are too important for me to delete them….
It was raining in the morning and when I came down for the toilet, I didn’t see anyone and thought that Mark would sleep longer because of the rain. But at 7, he came to fetch me and we went to the garden for an unexpected last time.
Betty came after a while with a breakfast and also helped for a while.
I cannot report many news until afternoon, but then Mark wanted to go with me to a village. I had packed my bags as far as possible and didn’t want to unpack it, so I went with him just in t-shirt and shorts. But because of the weather and the wind it was a bit cool. I thought I could stand it for a short tour, but later Mark told me we would go to a beautiful garden and dinner, too. So, I was glad that he had an extra jacket that he could lend me.
First we made a pineapple cake research. The situation is this: everyone knows them in those small packages, but no one so far knew fresh ones and my theory was that before you could get the factory-made packed once there must have been fresh ones, too, and most probably still exist. We went to a bakery with so many beautiful cakes that I would need 2 weeks for testing all appealing ones and found a pineapple cake with the diameter of a CD and one in the typical square size of the packed ones. I am scientist enough to know that I must have both to get any meaningful result and bought them. At a booth at the afternoon market, I found another species, tiny things, a third of the volume of the industry standard in slightly modified cylindrical form. With this data base we could move on.
We went through a landscape looking like a mixture of park and nature and got the first cold shower, but not from rain, it was an automatic lawn sprinkler that “blocked” the road for those who want to stay dry. We saw a new built big temple and I wonder how all those old and new temples can be maintained, renovated or even been built when thy depend on donations.
We made a stop for a dessert, a very soft tofu variant with sweet red beans (in my case, Mark took the pure one) and a brown sweet liquid, in some way made from sugar cane.
Mark has a friend who is manager of the garden of a very rich couple half an hour from there and we went on. The garden is big enough but even more remarkable is the composition.
these fruits must be brown, then they are ripe and (according to Mark) delicious
There are little hills and paths on and between them, even the stones of the path looking expensive, a pond with water lilies and most remarkable, very old trees, huge bonsais although the garden only 3 years ago was a banana plantation. I could enlarge this list of display of richness, could mention the house, but you also can let your imagination run free, it makes no difference.
It had started raining and we stayed in the office of the manager, drinking hot water to stay well-tempered. At 17:00, the restaurant, that Mark had chosen for dinner, opened, the rain was a bit less so we went there.
Rain:
I had no rain for many weeks and in Taichung, Gorilla had cleaned my bike two times from head to toe (or so) and I could have bet, it will get dirty again before I reach the ship. It is like cleaning windows to provoke rain. I hope the farmers can appreciate my contribution to plant growth….
It is essential for arriving in Australia to have clean shoes and the shoes of my bike are the tires, so I will (have to) clean them again on the ship.
We went home in again stronger rain and I tried to go smoothly to avoid dirt sprinkling on the bike, but this was more a matter of feeling than of effectivity, I guess.
here some notes, regarding the ship… (partly copied from a facebook post)
planned departure to Australia: Thursday
THU morning, agent calls:
ship to AUS belated, new information in afternoon.
no new information in afternoon, so, in the evening I plan to leave FRI, at 6:30 to be at the port authorities’ office at 8:30 or 9:00.
30min later, call of agent:
ship is in waiting position for a free place in port. berthing might be at 8:00 but could be even Saturday.
I hope that the schedule of the ship and
the opening hours of the authorities overlap and I hope that the agent can find
a window of opportunity for my to embark and I hope he is aware of the
situation! (last
time, in Dubai, it was a matter of minutes that I came on board before the ship
left, and I had been waiting the whole day – dont want to have this again….)
so, plans again changed, stay longer in Pingdong