Wedding Madness

Well...we continued walking....we had been told about a nice place to get a drink and something to eat by the sea, so we set off to find it. Little did we know what we would find when we got there...

 We got there to find the beach....full...and I mean FULL of people in wedding gear having their photos taken, by professional photographers, with lighting and props and make-up artists etc.

It was such a bizarre sight. One of those cultural things that just makes you smile and scratch your head.

Yeas that's a faux grand piano in the background,
dining table and arbour in the foreground

 How they managed to take pics without other couples getting in the pic I'm not sure.

The bicycle was a very common prop for the ladies.

Qi Ao Island

So we went for a day out, to an island just of the coast of Zhuhai, connected by a rather large bridge. And came across a few surprises. Firstly the bridge itself is a bit odd... huge suspension bridge connecting a relatively small place to the mainland...why?
Well the owner of one of the local bars informed us that... at one stage there was a plan to build a road bridge across to HK, and this large 6 lane suspension bridge to the island was the starting point. They didn't get any further or they scrapped the plans or they ran out of money...who knows.
So anyway, we caught a bus over the bridge, no real idea where we were going or what to expect, we just stayed on the bus until it stopped (it actually just did a 3 - point turn) and all the locals got off, then we walked.
Well.. what we found was a quiet and quite traditional village, small single story houses with walled courtyards attached. Locals just going about their daily lives and wondering (no doubt) what the hell we were doing there and why we were taking pictures of bizarre stuff (doors, numbers, piles of bricks :))

Here's a smattering from the village.

Old door in the village

These 'shrines' peppered the village, all had incense burning at them

This lot followed us for a while thinking we were hilarious

old derelict building

back alley

great hat

and another great hat

Boys and their toys

They were brilliant with their yo-yos

like the hat

Galle road

In a Car on the way back from Hikka, and got the driver to turn off the a/c and we wound the windows down and took pictures from our moving vehicle as we went. He'd turned up 1.5 hrs late, and then proceeded to drive like a crazy fool for the whole journey back. Difficult to take pictures when the cars moving in this bizarre jerky-brakey-acceleratory kind of way. Plus the added joy of all the other suicidal maniacs that so make the Galle road a pleasure to travel along.

Here're some of the things we saw. .

Should call this bikes of Galle Road really.

Here's some other stuff that isn't bicycles.

The things that are missing: drug crazed bus drivers overtaking another bus that is already trying to overtake yet another bus, all with hands glued to horns and a refusal to stop even though there's nowhere for you to go to avoid death. Trucks doing exactly the same thing, potholes the size of the grand canyon and traffic police.