So this is actually the first of hopefully many entries to keep you in the loop of what is going on in this rather crazy country that is China. Admittedly its taken me a while to start this but i did do a whole entry on Hong Kong then my computer crashed. Well anyway, so far i've spent 4 days in Hong Kong, which is a really cool place, except for the 95% humidity and the smog which meant that most days were cloudy thus i didn't go up the peak to get those ever so amazing aerial shots but hopefully i will on the way home weather permitting. So what did i do? I spent most of the time just wandering around trying to take evrything in, it such a busy, big place. At first it felt a bit surreal that i was actually in hong kong, it was like being in a extension of Britain, driving on the left, british road signs, people chatting in english, fellows from the sub-continent trying to sell you things, once i got off the bus at my hostel it was evident that this was no longer british, the swarms of people were unbelieveable, literally seas of bodies moving down the pavement towards you. And walking around the streets with all this neon signs ,which seemed like goobledigook to me, i felt a bit confused and lost, i suppose. A bit like Bill murray in Lost in Translation. Whilst i was there i met a guy from stirling who was also a solo traveller so i spent a couple of nights with him in an irish bar, drinking boddingtons until the realisation that tsing tao was a third of the price and even tastier than the cream of manchester(doesn't take much). I was there right in the middle of a festival to celebrate the Buddhas birthday so on one day i visited a temple which had the largest outdoor buddha in the world atop this hill, but again due to cloud it was a bit obscured which was a bit gutting. Then after scoping out central hong kong and visiting the tailor for a fitting, i head to the south of HK island which feels like a world away from the centre, the beaches are nice, the breeze makes it feel less tropical and there was a huge market to browse which sold about everything you can imagine. On the way there we passed the Hong kong cricket club which was a nice reminder of days gone by. So after spending a ridiculous amount in HK i headed to the mainland and a place called Guangzhou, not much to speak of, a nice Taoist temple, and an encounter with a stir fry crazy local who tried to show me around, but spoke no english, and hanging out on a island in the middle of a river(sounds nice but actually it was surrounded by industry). Then i headed to Guilin, about 13 hours west of HK in the Guangxi province. This is the reason i came to china, the scenery is just beautiful, karst mountains rising from the earth like phoenixes from the ashes(or a salmon, if you will). Here i pick up (or he picked me up, not in the gay way!) a english teacher who wanted to show me around his home town, which was fine by me as his english was perfect unlike the other guy, so i visited a park in the town centre which had a palace from the Ming dynasty(1200s) and which they held for 15 generations before being pummelled by some one else, and a peak with a pagoda on top the views were nice over lookiing the city, but better ones could be found, so i we went to moon hill which was a hill with a hole in the middle in the shape of a three quarters moon. Tyhis was also in its own park with the river running through it, and the hill reflected in the river, simply awesome. From here i came to Yangshuo, a travellers paradise of unspoilt villages and more hills to go climbing, which i am yet to explore as i just arrived today, so will tell you how it is. I did however go on a river boat ride and the scenery was breathtaking, i would definitely rank it as some of the most beautiful i have ever seen. So off i go to drink the night away with an israeli guy i met in my hostel. The next entry may be sooner than this took. Apologies at the length, it could've been longer but i'll spare you that horror. Matt