I love the random nights out that creep up on you. They’re always the best and this week while I was meeting up with my friends Agness and Cez from eTramping, we had a cool night out in Da Lang, which is in Dongguan in China’s Guangdong Province.

Being locals of the area, Agness and Cez decided it was night market time for some top notch Chinese barbecue food. It reminded me of the night markets in Xinying Taiwan some 5 years ago.

After some cycling out to Songshan Lake and a few beers watching sunset, I was really looking forward to a night out in Da Lang, which is a part of Dongguan. It was a new city for me, despite having been to the Guangdong Province over 15 times and toured Danxiashan, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and the amazing Dialou at Kaiping.

We head to the night market which is everything you’d expect. Full of Chinese locals on either side eating a variety of food and sitting outside in the heat without a care in the world. In other words, travel and relaxation bliss.

We find a table and some seats outside opposite a barbecue which boasts trays of spicy oysters. These spicy oysters become my pick of the night and are by far the most delicious food I sampled in Da Lang.

We order some beers Cez and I as well as a mixture of:

– Tofu
– Chicken wings
– Chicken legs
– Spiced and stuffed aubergine
– Barbecued fish

Cez and I drank beers and we chatted away about life in China and Hong Kong, favourite foods and of course some blogging chat. Then later on we ended up in a cool local bar for more drinks and “the dice game”.

When I counted, this recent visit to China was my 20th separate visit in the last 7 years, which is crazy. While I’ve only managed to see some of 13 of China’s Provinces, I felt it was a good time to put my China backpacking stories on a separate site, so we’re working on this as one of my new projects as I continue to be hungry and thirsty for my travels in China.

Thanks to Agness and Cez for showing me round a town they know all about. Here’s a video I took in Da Lang: