My belly has settled down a bit and I am no longer leaping to the toilet every five minutes, although I did have a very sleep deprived night. I am still unwell though, and don’t venture out of the hotel, so I don’t see Dali.
Laurie is French, spent her formative years in a French school in Holland, and has spent the past few years at university in the US, so English is not her first language. Discussing linguistics, she tells me that as English is not her first language, she finds it hard to think.
There is a swimming pool at our hotel by the reception, but it has been emptied for the winter with just a puddle of dirty water at the bottom. This is the second day we are in this hotel, but Laurie gets excited when she reads of the presence of a swimming pool in the hotel leaflet. When I point out that she has passed it every time she has come to the room, she objects that that’s just a pool for floating leaves. Not when it’s filled up Laurie.
Added to that, she has accidentally made up yet another new word. Appropriately, this is ‘idioticity’. It’s a triple whammy. She runs away with the recently initiated ‘numbskull of the day’ award. Again.
Laurie shows me pictures of the walk she did today around the walled old town of Dali. It’s impressive looking but would have been more so if I hadn’t spent five weeks in China already.
If I wasn’t ill, I would have been tempted by a boat ride on ‘Eary Lake’, so called because of its shape, but Dali’s attractions are expensive for China. The boat ride would have cost 140 Yuan (c. £14).
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