Sam's 40th birthday!!!! Woo hoo!!! The day started with coffee and singing to the birthday girl. We had a range of yummy steamed buns and dumplings for breakfast, then jumped on our trusty 58a into town with Sam's friends, including a newly arrived teacher, MJ, for a massage afternoon unlike any other!!!

The massage place was a huge room - the size of a small school hall - full of mirrored posts and reclining easy chairs and stools equipped with tv screens, plates of watermelon slices and drawers of free cigarettes! We all opted for the 'foot massage' which actually consisted of a full body massage over your clothes with your feet immersed in a bowl of scalding water.

The masseuses were all girls who looked about 18 and were all six stone wet through but somehow had thumbs of steel. They prodded and pummelled us, stretching our necks alarmingly and randomly putting their knees in our backs. However, the comic highlight of the experience was the application, with the use of liquid gas and flames to create a vacuum, of jam jars to our legs and soles of our feet!!!! - see pic above. This curiously bizarre and painful treatment was apparently supposed to suck toxins out of the body. It must be noted that a certain 40 year old wailed like a baby throughout. We then treated ourselves to having the dry skin removed from our feet by a little man with a lamp and a selection of razors!! We emerged two hours later, having parted with less than ten pounds sterling each, feeling remarkably bouncy and with slightly smaller feet!!

Just time to run back to Sammy J's flat, via her little local eatery for joutzer (dumplings) with peanut sauce and chilli, to get changed for the big night out!! We all emerged made up and freshly coiffed, yes even Sam deigned to have some mascara applied, and got a lift to Shamian Island, the historic site of all the foreign concessions in Guangzhou, with Betty, who works at the school, and her boyfriend.

The Birthday Dinner was at the 'Orient Express', a French restaurant, complete with train carriages and a French owner who sounded like a parody of an "'Allo 'Allo" character. Twenty-three people attended to help Sam celebrate in style and she was presented with some suitably cheeky cards and presents. The wine flowed and we ate beautifully presented French food in very dainty portions compared to the Chinese food we were used to!!! The food was generally excellent although Angie was rather offended by the smelliness of a particularly ripe blue on the cheese platter!! The evening was rounded off back at Sam's with a gossip and a bottle of birthday vino.