Hong Luo Si

(Written on 13 August)

On 17 July, we went to 红螺寺, about two hours’ drive away from Beijing. On the way there, Rosabelle kept saying she wanted to pee, and really did hold in her pee until after we cleared the Beijing gantry, where Wayne also had to ‘do it’ by the roadside as we missed the turn for a proper toilet.

Before we reached Hongluosi, we decided to have lunch at McDonald’s (as the rest of the restaurants on the way looked very dubious, and as if they would charge cut-throat prices for a simple虹鳟鱼…).

That’s her enjoying her simple dessert of vanilla ice-cream after an extremely unhealthy meal of nuggets (we peeled off the fried skin after she decided she didn’t like it – good!), fish fillet fish (again had to do away with the skin before she ate it), and some burger bread. Of course, she always loves the corn (finished a whole cup in the car), and I tried to make up for a healthier meal by giving her fruits that I brought from home.
Love this series of ‘Got milk?’ milk moustache funny faces…
And then we finally reached the place after lunch, where we had a nice family shot at the entrance. The last time I was here was like at least 3 years ago with my ex-colleagues (we even stayed overnight at one of the villas), and it’s nice to visit with family now.
Looking very summery in her pink halter, Wayne wasn’t as keen at posing for shots as it was very hot that day, heh…
We spotted the panda sculptures, and our girl went up on her own accord and asked for me to take a photo of her. After giving her grin, she asked Nainai to stand next to her as they posed for a shot together, haha!
That’s grandma and granddaughter – Nainai hasn’t been following us on our morning outings the past few Saturdays (she prefers to stay in – either that or maybe she wants to give us some personal family time together…), so it’s good that we managed to get a few shots of them together…
We walked around the area, mainly seeing the 12 horoscopes of animals (we only managed to spot a few, and not all – maybe they are on some hidden track that we could not find…). Rosabelle wanted to sit on each and every animal she came across, aiyo…
Of course, we also spotted interesting things on the floor, like her favourite insects, or even this huge millipede.
Thankfully Wayne was around to carry her when she got too tired, but most times, our good girl was walking/exploring a lot on her own. She would insist on going to the toilet to pee even though she was wearing her diaper, so luckily the toilets are surprisingly well-maintained…phew!

Maybe she got too tired, but she wasn’t exactly cooperative when taking shots with Mummy at a mini-waterfall area…

We ended the two-hour walkabout with a RMB10 ‘donation’ for Wayne to ding-dong-bell, reciting auspicious sayings for every single time he knocked the bell. I thought it might be fun for Rosabelle to sit on the boulder, but as it turned out, the sound was rather loud, and she kept saying ‘不要’ after hearing it the first few times, so Nainai had to carry her away, heh!

Our girl was rather tired-out at the end of it all (way past her usual nap time), taking her afternoon nap at 4-plus for an hour after I nursed her in the car, waking up only when we were reaching home. That night, we ended up at Malacca Legend for a well-deserved dinner (to make up for all the junk food we had for lunch, haha…).