Ni Hao from Guangzhou.

Last night we had an authentic Chinese meal at a local restaurant where everything was in Chinese but it was real good fun using our 3 words that we knew in Chinese plus hand signals, we ended up with Fried spare ribs, chicken with fish and vegetables plus broccoli in garlic and of course rice and 2 beers. It was good fun and we even got a Chinese lesson off the owner before we left.

Today has been a real challenge in more ways than one, we felt like 2 contestants from Anneka Rice's treasure hunt (old show, i'm sure some of you will remember it!!)

So we got up and ready for the challenges ahead for the day with number 1 accomplished (getting up and washed) it was out onto the mean streets of Guangzhou for a day of booking train tickets and maybe a little sight seeing.

As there is no ticket agent at the hostel we had to do this all alone today and were up for the challenge of the language barrier. We turned the corner into the ticket hall at Guangzhou East Station and the place was heaving with people everywhere,15 kiosks with queues 50 people long in each but we queued and waited our turn.The line gradually got shorter and shorter till we could hear the guy behind the window through his speaker barking at everybody. We also had people spitting on the floor in the station which we found a bit bizarre (poor cleaners!!)

Then it was our turn or so we thought, as we stepped up people sprang in front of us from the next line and ours so we got muscled out. After a while he called us up and with a lot of hand waving and pointing we got our 2 sleeper tickets to Guilin for tomorrow evening, the guy was really helpful and the only thing we then had to sort out was which staton as they have two!!!

As we had had so much success we were buoyed and surged to the next desk to ask which station but they could not help, we didn't give up and tried another window but the 2 ladies there just looked at us then got up and walked away till we went then they returned to continue serving.

It became clear that we needed an interpreter and we decided to try our luck back at the hostel and left for our afternoon sightseeing.

The Nanyue tomb is where Zhao Mo was buried who was grandson of the kingdom founder and it is over 2000 years old. The tomb itself wasn't that amazing but all the pottery and the jade suit he was buried in was pretty spectacular and also over 2000 years old, so we are talking before Jesus was around!!!!

Back at the hostel we cleared up the mystery of the train station and all was well again in our world. Tonight we are going for a walk along the river as they light up all the riverside and it looks really nice and still quite festive.

Lots of Love

M & M

xx