Am leaving China early. I can't take it anymore. The main reason is the lack of contact with the outside world. It's soo lonely travelling here. I've met hardly any westerners, just some unfriendly Spaniards. My VPN sucks (hence why I'll probably have left China before anyone other than me reads this) and so can't talk any friends or family without incurring roaming charges. But also, China is just a very uninviting place. I took a 6 hour bus ride down the monotonous highways of Hunan and Guangxi. I got nowhere with the code for my project. So that's going swimmingly as well...

Guilin, Guangxi is now top prize as the absolute worst place I've ever been. It probably doesn't deserve that title based on facts alone but based on my experience of it, it most certainly does. I was planning to be in the nearby town of Yangshuo tonight. It's a backpacker place, but given its much more touristy than Fenghuang am not sure if am too bitter on missing it. On arrival to Guilin I asked about the bus to Yangshuo and was signed up for a private bus setting me back a tenner. So I walked away and got in a bizarre Chinese tuk tuk, who also ripped me off. I went to find an ATM as it started to rain as I was very low on cash. I then headed to the main bus station. There, I was told there's no bus to this town that's just an hour down the road, but I can scam you and get you to pay 60 yuan to go in a private bus.

So yeah, I left the bus station as there was no sign of any official buses and to be fair, the buses looked way to big to be heading just down the road. I headed to the train station where Wikitravel said there were buses to Yangshuo. All that was there were hawkers, incredibly aggressive ones. I almost gave in, thinking well at least I'll get there. But the 60 yuan bus became a 250 yuan private car and I legged it. I was a nanometre away from shouting f*** you in the p****s face. The train was too expensive and so I gave in. Guilin has ended my time in China. I'm too tired to deal with this place. I find the food here utterly sickening and the people quite repulsive. China occupies last place in the list of favourite countries. Not even the splendour of Zhangjiajie or the Shanghai skyline can save it. Even getting to this hostel in Guilin caused drama. About 5 taxi drivers and a local police officer spent about 20minutes trying to decipher the Chinese translation of my hostel address. Thankfully I had my first honest Chinese taxi driver and the ride was cheap. So yeah. China went downhill today. To be honest, overall it's not actually been that bad. Just I feel like I really won't be able to relax properly without access to youtube or facebook and I badly need to before Oxford starts.

I briefly thought of a forray to Vietnam but this seems too much effort and I'd only get another stamp but for nothing. It would be a waste of a country. So the plan is to head to Hong Kong. It has plenty of places to hike and rural areas. Hopefully the revolution, which seeing what the real China is like I support even more than I did before, won't be too much of a disruption! Ciao China! ps. Get rid of that Xi bloke...