Hi all!
We took the night train to Guangzhou which is South China not far from Hong Kong. There was no one to pick us up like the hostels usually do because there wasn't any so we had to book a hotel instead. Its a lot hotter down here as well, around 25C which we weren't really prepared for, so we were lugging our massive backpacks around the city in boots and hoodies! Theres not much to do here and isn't really any culture so we took a day trip to a nearby city called Shenzhen. Shenzen is the fake capital of the world and you can literally get whatever you want. We saw a documentary on it before we came and wanted to see it for ourselves. When you get off the train there are guys that ask you if you want to shop and take you to the shopping centre. It's like a normal shopping centre which is 5 floors high and all the shops just have normal things in them. However as soon as you walk in, they sit you down and bring out catalogues with every designer bag, watch, shoes etc you can imagine. Then when you've picked a few that you want to see, they go to a storeroom and collect it from there. There has been a massive crack down by the government so there are police parolling the area and all the shops inform each other by walkie talkie. We were also told that the shopping centre is rife with pickpockets, drugs and prostitution so we are supposed to carry our bags on the front. It was a really surreal place and nothing like we imagined. We didn't stay long because every single person you walk past tries to make you go in their shop and won't stop pestering you. We were also being followed round by various people who kept 'bumping into us' and saying 'oh hello again' at every opportunity. This was so they could make conversation with us and then say 'oh come to my shop!' We didn't really feel safe there so decided to head back.
When we were about to buy tickets for the train, we went to an ATM and Alistair's card had been cut off. This was apparently due to the 'abnormal actvity' around the card being used. It didn't seem to matter that we have been in China for three weeks now so it's a bit late if someone had stolen his card! We didn't have enough money for the train and my card had also been cut off in the first week so we sat for ages trying to remember the PIN for the emergency card. Eventually we did, but goodness knows what we would have done if we couldn't get back!
We got back to the hotel and called all the banks to get the cards sorted out then went for tea on this island called Shamian Island. It had previously been taken over by the French and English so it kind of felt like Paris when you were walking by the river. We had tea outside at this bar and the place was full of Americans and they were all carrying chinese babies. After some hardcore earwigging we found out they had come over to adopt them and were planning on taking the babies back to America.
Whilst we were eating, some of them were having a conversation about people in China. One of the women was 'shocked' because people in China were constantly approaching her in the street to get her to come into their shop even though it was........wait for it.........late afternoon! She was so shocked that people would do this at such a time, that she even spoke to her guide about it. He informed her that it was actually their job to do that and she couldn't believe that people actually had jobs like that, i mean honestly, why aren't they all investment bankers! We had a laugh over some of the ignorant conversations that were going on and then went back to the hotel. We didn't bother going to any bars in this place because it's a lot more expensive in the south than the north.
Our next plan was to go from China to Laos, but after working out the route we would have to take, it works out to be quite expensive to see a lot of places that we don't want to see. Instead we are going to Vietnam and will work our way back up to Laos afterwards.Our next stop in Nanning where we can get a Vietnamese Visa from and then enter the country from there.