Mainland

from macau to mainland u physically walk over the border, no boat or plane international territory just a walk through the provisional passport, health, customs and final passport post. we got the bus from zhuhai which is one of china's new economic zones so it is basically just a big market. the bus took something ridiculous like 3 hours to drive 50 miles and eventually we got to Guangzhou at about 7pm. as we expected for the capital of Cantonese China the air was pretty bad and we were thinking of walking to our hostel but looked on the map and realised it was about 2 miles. fortunately bruno wasnt with us so we didnt SAS it instead we spent what seemed like hours looking for a cash point and then got a taxi to our hostel on Shamian Island.

Shamian island is a really nice escape from the city, it used to be the trading post (yes another one) that the british and french built on a sand bank of the pearl river but now its just a leafy relaxed paradise in an otherwise packed and poluted city. the first night we went for dinner in a place called lucy's which was basically an american diner where all teh staff were chinese but dressed like american waitresses from the 90s. what was wierd about shamian and especially lucy's was that there was always an american family with a chinese baby which they had obviously just adopted, one pair of parents already had 4 children. that night we planned to go to the bar street and so we got a couple of beers to drink in the hostel where we met dave, an australian guy who was out in china trying to make a go at the whole teaching english thing. to get to the bar street we had to cross a bridge but as we found out what looked liek a bridge on the map was infact a tunnel, so dave took us to a club about 25 minutes walk away. luckily for us dave could speak manderin (or mando as he called it) and he talked this chinese business man into giving us loads of free drinks which all his women poured for you, he also bought us a few shots as well. in the club there was no dancefloor justa podium and the waiter kept egging us on to dance on it eventually we did but this guy came up and stroked my inner thigh. in the cab back i was telling dave about it and he just came out about how he swings both ways which was pretty jokes. next day pierre payed for a few of my tube (which is so cheap and fast and useful cos guangzhou is huge) journeys and was like ok u owe me 4 rmb now and i was like yeh but i payed ur cab fare and he was like 'we got a cab home???'

apart from that night guangzhou was a bit boring we did see a pretty cool buddhist pagoda, and i played ping pong with some random guy which was cool, but our strangest day (morning) was spent in the countryside...

on our second night we had an early(ish) one cos we had to be up early to get to quinyan in the morning to get the ferry to check out some amazing temples only accesible by boat. we get the bus and end up in quingyaun which is some shithole city, as we left the bus station about 40 people all start calling 'hellooooo' which you get a lot over here. we get in a taxi and the woman doesnt put the fare counter on, so we're like ok we gonna get bumped. we end up paying 30 which is like 2 quid but it should really be more like 10. we get to teh ferry dock and the man wouldnt sell us the 50 cwai ticket and teh only otrher option was paying 350 for our own boat. FUCK THAT. we only had 150 between us, so i buy some peanuts and we assess our situation. ok we are in the official arsehole of nowhere (the ferry dock was 4 km out of quinyuan,may i add), these arseholes here i just laughing at us going silly laowai (foreigner), and there are no taxi's oh well time to walk. 50 metres down the road a pick up drives past us i stick my thumb out, ask if he's going to quinyuan, ask if we can get in the back, they say no sit down with us inside -sick one - they even dropped us off at the bus station - there are nice people in this place. back at the bus station, 'helloooooo' we try and get the bus to one of the temples which is possible but after the ticket woman was giving us screwface we realised that the bus to the place was across town and after consulting a map which was all in chinese we decided fuck it lets go back to guangzhou. whilst waiting for the bus, some cool young chinese guy was like 'hey man, u guys are the first westerners i ever seen in quingyuan' i wonder why....

the train we got to kunming we thought was 22 hours which is long, hard sleeper, top bunk (of three) 350 cwai turned out to be 26 hours. everybody said hello, hello, hello, other people just talked to us in chinese even though we didnt understand a bit, the family beneath us kept giving us random shit, some good, some bad, the dining car was fucking awesome, for dinner i had fried cabbage and next day lunch i had spoicy tofu, both delicious. but 26 hours, 1600 km is just too long.