After nearly a week in hk soaking up the city and meeting some interesting people, including a crazy canadian and some jahovas witnesses (but unfortionately not snowden)... I'm finally in china. Its very rare that anyone here speaks even one word of english (I probably should have learnt some mandarin) which makes things interesting.

I'm currently on a sleeper train from GuangZhou to Guilin listening to a nice bit of Buckethead. Racing through Chinese countryside dotted with dilapidated little concrete buildings. And the occasional town full of ten storey tower blocks.

I left hk last night and crossed the border to ShenZhen which turns out to be a bit of an unfriendly place, everyone looks very grumpy. Desperate for a pee I found a toilet which turned out to be locked. For some reason the cleaner had Locked himself in and wasn't letting anyone else in - he just shouted angrily (I think) when I knocked.

I decided to go to GuangZhou. As I was trying to buy a ticket from the self service machine some bloke thought I needed help pressing the buttons which I accepted (although I'm sure my fingers are perfectly capable). He then tried to steal the change from the machine - plonker!

Chinese people are a little strange: A priest came to my cabin and was adamant that we should change cabins because of an "emergency". He even showed me his priest ID so I had to accept and moved three doors down to an identical cabin feeling a bit confused. And later as I was reading, an old man walked past, bent down, put his face rather close to my book to have a little read and then moved on without a word.

For the nine months I was in Malaysia I was deprived of a knife at mealtimes and had to make do with a fork and spoon (Malay logic). Now times are even harder as I struggle to feed myself rice grain by grain with two measly sticks. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it so I don't starve.