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For the girls out there who like handbags marginally more than home-delivered BLTs and breathing, the Guangzhou leather market is the place for you.

There are so many stalls here of handbags upon handbags upon shoes upon handbags that cows literally come here to die to save the slaughterhouse transportation costs.

The place is about a dozen stories high and takes up a good five blocks. Naturally enough, I’m not able to find quite the perfect clutch, and everything Wilken likes is for bulk order only – though buying satchels here in multiples of several hundred is probably cheaper still than the op shop in downtown Maastricht.

The salespeople here are not shy either, and their English usually extends impressively far as “Hello, you want? Vely cheap plice! Real, genuine! No? Ok – this one real!” Which is really all one needs in a place like this, other than the ability to count notes deftly and regularly fail to return change.

After the satisfying purchase of several cows’ worth of leather goods, we had planned to indulge in a spot of massage but don’t feel particularly sore, at least not until we decide against it then circumnavigate the city countless times on foot trying to find a taxi.

Guangzhou, China. Super-far south.

I wake up at 4am and can’t sleep, so take sunrise photos from balcony like a right tourist. Order a BLT from room service and rearrange my clothes in the drawers to make room for all the stuff I’m planning on buying. Then take a morning swim and dripped on Willy so that he wakes up.

We catch a taxi to the cloth market tailor where we mime the sewing and wearing of business shirts – more difficult than it sounds – then realise we don’t have any cash. Catch a second taxi to the “nearest” Bank of China, which according to our driver is some 15 kilometres away, and wonder what the hell the annoying ding-dong tune is that seems to be playing everywhere – in the taxis, in the bank, at the market and in the tailor’s shop.

It’s some kind of socialist brainwashing technique, Wilken suggests. Then we discover it’s actually his new mobile phone ringtone on full-volume autoplay.

Next morning. I wake up at 4am again and can’t sleep again. I take another morning swim and drip on Willy. He gets up to call the man to fix the leaking roof, then we present at the breakfast buffet for eggs and bacon and waffles with maple syrup. Make serious plans over breakfast then proceed to waste the day, sleep right through the night and much of the next day. Wilken appears pleased at the quality of Chinese workmanship on the leaking roof.

Germany to China.

The first thing that goes wrong happens some 15 seconds after I’ve farewelled my airport entourage and stepped into the departure area: first I set the beepers off with some bobby pins lurking in the depths of my back pocket (which take a good ten minutes to locate); then, true to form, I leave my passport holder (complete with 2x passports and €100) on the counter as I go through security check. This, of course, I don’t realise until minutes later when I spott a pair of security men wandering around calling out “Ellison Edvards? EdVAAARDS, hallooo??

Soon it’s time to board. I traipse through business class – the obscenely wide and cushy armchairs, the foot rests, the whole kit and kaboodle – en route to economy, and cosy up in a space of perhaps four square metres which I share with two fat Poms and about 25 Singaporeans.

Thankfully, we’re blessed with an in-flight entertainment package that involves Bridget Jones’s Diary (original and sequel), Charlie’s Angels (also original and sequel), Sex and the City, assorted cheesy Hilary Duff flicks and the entire second season of the gripping America’s Next Top Model.

12-hour flight? Give me a break – I’m an Aussie. This is too easy.

Pros

- sampling assorted culinary delicacies of various nations eg. chocolates crepes, currywurst etc.
- being able to justify spending €30 on a Viennese concert ticket in the name of cultural enlightenment but not €3.50 on lunch (or is this a con?)
- consuming copius amounts of beer, coffee and other dubious substances in the name of research, eg. when in Munich/Paris/Amsterdam
- the fact that sleeping in dorms and living out of a backpack for months on end makes you appreciate coming home, even if it’s only to a home away from home in the form of a shoebox with a falling down roof.

Cons

- sharing dorms with assorted teeth gnashers, grinders, snorers and other people with severe adenoid problems, or Swedes with ultra-liberated views on nudity.
- cold hostel showers and 25-bed dorms
- wearing the same jeans everyday for three months
- when large chunks of your heels start falling off after spending weeks on end walking 12 hours per day.
- getting stuck on in a bus/train/tram carriage for prolonged journeys with assorted freaks, including self-proclaimed Mormon prophets, obese neighbours, randoms with rank BO, Americans, etc.
- never being able to pack light/finally figuring out how to pack light and then realising you’ve got nothing but jeans and sneakers to wear to that fancy opera/ballet/symphony.

Today I got up, tripped over a lone shoe on the floor and crashed head first into the wardrobe. I gave up on breakfast after I poured my tea all over the muesli instead of milk, then went downstairs to the laundry to find I’d accidentally dyed all my clothes a nice shade of turquoise (which just about covered the violet from the last washing machine incident).

Heading into town, I dropped 65 one-cent pieces as I was counting them out for the bus driver, then forgot to validate my ticket and had to talk my way out of a 40 euro fine by pleading fignorance (foreign + just plain ignorant).

Next I waited out the front of the bank for 20 minutes for Lozz, tapping my foot impatiently, before remembering it was the coffeeshop I was supposed to meet her out the front of. It started pouring as I made my way there so I spent three blocks reaching around on my back like a wayward nutter for the hood of my jacket (which I’d zipped off that morning), then tried to take refuge by ducking into a department store and crashing headfirst into the sliding glass doors.

Home at last this evening, I started preparing dinner of eggs and rice for the girls before remembering I’d been delegated the crucial task of buying the eggs and rice. So off to a restaurant we went, where I managed to ask for foreplay (vorspielen) instead of an entree (vorspeisen).

Back home, I successfully emptied the contents of a red wine bottle on my doona cover, bade farewell to the girls and promptly fell asleep with my hair in a gooey tub of brie that had somehow made its way onto my pillow.

Who would win in a blue between a monkey with a funny looking head and a … well, a regular-looking tiger? Frankly, it’s too bad the chimps we saw yesterday were too busy leaving pungent feces deposits about the place to amuse the humans. But this little guy is quite the – irritating – showman.