Sorry about the lack of updates over the last few days – I haven’t had any chance to get on the internet until now.
I am now in Guangzhou after having had a great few days in Hong Kong with Siqi. We stayed there for about four days and visited Chang Zhou island, Lamma Island as well as many of the sights in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island. It was also nice to meet up with Ajun (a HK classmate from Beijing) who had just flown home – and she took us out to taste some delicious Dim Sum and other Hong Kong specialities and even invited us round to her house for dinner where we enjoyed some tasty home-style cooking!
Getting a Chinese tourist visa turned out to be no problem – so after picking it up yesterday, me and Siqi took the train to Shenzhen… only to find that there were no tickets at all left for the train to Guilin (not even for the next couple of days). Not despairing, we took the train to Guangzhou but upon arriving last night, we were once again disappointed to find that all seats and beds had been booked up for a good few days to come. With that in mind, we had no choice but to retire for the day and took a bus to a surprisingly pleasant YHA hostel in the heart of a rather unpleasant city (Guangzhou is heavily industrial and very crowded). After a good nights rest, we got up this morning feeling somewhat refreshed and managed to book a long distance bus to Guilin that will leave this evening. It’s not ideal but the bus will have air conditioning and it’s considerably cheaper than taking the train – with a journey time of 10 hours in total. Unlike my last experience with sleeper buses (Shenzhen to Guilin), we bought our ticket from an approved ticket office so hopefully it should be a smooth ride overnight to Guilin – with no bed bugs, bumpy roads, police checks and lack of toilet stops. From Guilin we will take a boat down the Li River to Yangshuo and chill out for a couple of days… maybe do some cycling and swimming, have to wait and see.
That’s it for now. Best go and get some food shortly and then head over to the bus station. More updates when I next have a chance to get on the internet I guess.
Here are some highlights from the trip to Hong Kong:
