Ni Hao (hello)

We have just arrived in China on what we thought was going to be a 3 hour jouney but was in fact only 2 hours (the Chinese are so efficient!!!)

The journey out of HK had us passing not too much scenery as everyhere around HK and China seems to be in econmic boom and there is building work going on all around you.

It took around 2 minutes to clear formalities at Guangzhou East train station and then the fun began on the underground. We paid our 5 yuan each/30p and were issued a little disc to swipe over a turnstile to enter the station. Both of us felt like we had something written on our foreheads as people could not stop staring at us, I told Mel it was because we were beautiful and she agreed!!!!

The underground journey was 30 minutes of more inquisitive staring before we arrived at Fungcun (pronounced Funshun, silly people we are!!!)

It took us 10 minutes of wandering around till we arrived back where we started and Mel spotted a sneaky little road that we had been looking for, from here it was a 10 minute walk to the riverfront and our home for the next 2 nights.

The Chinese are really stern and have not smiled much so far but we are going to work on that in the next month or so!!!!

I left Mel for what I thought was a quick trip to the bank to change money and it turned into a 20 minute fiasco but I got my money in the end and got to watch the security guard spitting into the bin in the bank which was nice and noisy. I think this is a Chinese thing and sometimes you turn around thinking it is a great big guy and it is the smallest/oldest woman you have ever seen!!!!

There is not too much to do here it is more a stop off for us to acclimatise and sort out onward train tickets (tomorrow mornings fun job!!) before taking the overnight train to Guilin (pronounced Gweelin)

Got to go need to practice spitting in the bin!!!!!

Lots of love

M & M

xx