My first stop in China was the big city of Guangzhou. I caught a bus from Hong Kong, reaching the city at about 9pm. First thing i realised was that i didnt have a clue where i was and couldnt read any signs. I tried to ask a few people where i was but no one spoke English and i didn't have a phrase book!

Trying to catch a taxi was difficult too as again none of the drivers spoke English and after a few minutes of pointing at my map they would drive off! After about half an hour of this a lady came up to me and luckily could speak some english. She wrote on a piece of paper in Chinese that i needed to get to a tube station - which i gave to the taxi driver and I finally got to my hostel about 2 hours later!

This was the first time i've felt completely useless and in trouble. Up until now there has always been people to ask for help and point you in the right direction -it was quite a shock and i quickly got a phase book!

I went for dinner with 2 guys from the hostel and we decided to explore the streets, ending up in a seafood market - it was busy, smelly and dirty which i could handle - but seeing live turtles ready to be eaten and watching a crabs shelled alive upset me.

The next day I also went to Qingping Market - one of China's most notorious markets for selling anything and everything. Chinese herbs and medicines, fish, turtles, birds, monekys, rodents, cats, dogs - both as pets and for human consumption. Its cleaned up its act in recent years and i tried to avoid the worse parts. It was just really weird to see one stall with cutest puppies all fluffed up with bows on and with all the doggy accessories - being sold as pets, then the next stall selling these poor skinny dogs in horrible cages as food. It wasn't nice.

Buying a train ticket out of Guangshou was hard aswell - again because of the language barrier! I can't yet pronounce any of the words because if you use the wrong tone the word means something completely different! So i circled all the words i needed to buy the ticket - Guilin, one way, 2nd class, today, etc - this seemed to work - except once i had the ticket i realised that it was for the next day! So ended up spending an extra night!

Love
Sophie
xxx