GUANGZHOU

On arrival from Macau things don't start well as I'm dropped off in the middle of a busy street as opposed to the bus station, which is the place from my map that I'd planned my fumble across the city!

After the mission that was finding and getting booked into my hotel, this was my first "Welcome to China" moment in which I realised now that everything imaginable that I wanted to do would involve some kind of episode of arm waving, picture drawing and internationally recognised hand signals!

After not too much longer this was totally correct, and it felt like I was playing the largest game of Pictionary, Charades and "make a fool of yourself" (made that last one up) known to man!!

Guangzhou itself, although only supposed to be a stopping point is actually quite nice, the Pearl River circles half of the city where huge Neon advertsing boards face eachother across the river, as well as the usual precession of cars and horns that I think will be everywhere from now on.

Unfortunately, a dead Camera and no power points in my room meant that I wasn't able to get any photos of the night at Guangzhou, although it an effort to get something I managed to get some photos of the bridge crossing the Pearl River and one of the may parks dotted about the city centre the next day.

I had intended on a full photo-tastic day two when leaving my hotel at 11.00, all I needed to do was book my train.....suffice to say that I was clearly not the winner in this game of Pictionary etc. as I was sent all over the city trying to book my train when it turns out (as these things often do) that the correct train station was the one I started at...100m from my hotel!!

Although this still wasn't the end of it all, upon asking the lady at the ticket booth for a ticket to Guilin (please) I was met met with several disapproving looks...my only conclusion being that "Can I please book a sleeper train to Guilin?" must roughly convert to Mandarin as "do you mind if I kill this sacrificial goat in the queue please?"

2.30 rolls around and I have a ticket. Nice. After a celebratory pot noodle thingy (train stations aren't known for their cuisine anywhere it would seem) I took the metro to various spots in the city in an attempt to get some photos before I leave.

As it turned out the park shots and the bridges were all that were worth posting aside from millions of busy city traffic which we've all seen before....my stumbling however did lead me to one of the most frustraing shopping experiences on my trip so far.

When walking down one of the main streets I notice a sign saying 'Shoe market'. "Awesome!" I think to myself, and anyone that knows me knows that I am particularly fond of a pair of footwear or two...so I keep walking and it's basically trainer mecca!!
Millions of different brands and styles, and when asking the price they all appear to be between 5 and 10 pounds a pair!! Did I get the exchange rate right?? Have they got their English numbers wrong??

The shoes themselves are of course 'less than genuine' although the quality was that good I would not have bee able to tell if they were in a normal store!

So whilst working out how many pairs I'm going to buy and how to spend my millions of eBay profit, I try to buy a pair only to be ushered out of the door. No worries I though, plenty of others if my money isn't good enough!

This then continues to the point that I was trying to buy the sorts of shoes you would find in the lost property bin in school (and have to wear if you forgot your kit!) until I realised that the entire market (at least 200 stalls) was all wholesale and they would only trade with peasants like me if I bought pairs by the dozen!!

So after a fruitless attempt to once again waste my money on shoes that I don't need, I left empty haded for the train station again where my train would take me 12 houirs overnight to Guilin.

The plan from there was to head 1 hour South to Yangshou, which is supposed to be a main spot out this way although only slighlty larger than a village.

From there my planned (so far anyway) route will continue to take me West and into Tibet for a week (via Kunming and Lijiang) or so before heading back into mainland China and on to Shanghai and Beijing.

If time allows I will head South down the East coast before flying out to Bangkok on 6th May.
I'll try to get a route map together as per my very first post as China is practically the size of SE Asia anyway!

Photos are still proving an issue out here, I've also discoeverd that some PC's aren't earthed properly, meaning that any USB device plugged in suddenly feels like a bolt of lightning when you touch it!!!

Photos to come soon if I haven't been taken in a freak camera electrocution incident....