Arriving in China

I had to leave Thailand on February 16. First because my Visa ran out and the new law in Thailand is that if you enter by land you only have 15 days before you must leave and I can't keep leaving Thailand every 15 days. Second, I had no more money!

So, I heard that it is easy to find teaching jobs in China and most places don't require you to have a teaching certificate, like TESOL or something. My advice was to go to Yangshuo in Guangxi Provence, a super touristy area and find a teaching job there. So, 2 friends ans I bought plane tickets to Shenzen, China and we were off on Feb 16th!!

My friends and I arrive in Shenzen (the closest Chinese city to Hong Kong) at 11:30 at night and immediately go to the train station to get on the first train to Guilin, Guangxi Provence. But the next train was to leave at 6pm the next night... Ok, so its now 12:45am and so we decided the 3 of us are ok to sleep in the train station, and there are hundreds of people sleeping everywhere (and they're not homeless people), just people waiting for early morning trains. The next morning at 6am we were awoken by a train station security guy and told to get off the floor... ok so we did... by it was freezing!!! we just came from Thailand and had only warm weather clothes, and the temp was about 2 degrees centigrade!!! Burrr..... so we shivered our way upstairs to try to find coffee, which was the first time we found out Chinese people don't drink coffee and its incredibly expensive if you can find it!

After finding, and paying for the coffee, I wandered off with one friend to explore Shenzen for the day. And we found lots of cool stuff!
From the Shenzen train station looking at all the taxis lined up on the street and the skyline of Shenzen.
Duck is actually a Beijing specialty but there were plenty of stalls there selling duck cooked in different ways.
Anybody for fresh octopus?!


An alleyway of a random neighbourhood in the middle of Shenzen.

Sev, my friend from Thailand found a man selling granola... by the KILO!!

We found a really nice, small, restaurant in Shenzen where the man did hand made noodles!

After wondering all over Shenzen by foot for the whole day we couldn't remember out way back to the train station... ahhhh.... so frustrating because we finally got back 3 mins before our train was supposed to leave and they wouldn't let us board!!!! We had to wait another day... and sleep in the train station again!! And we lost the 3rd person who had come with us from Thailand :(

Finally all aboard to Guilin.

Ready for our 11 hr train ride to Guilin. There were 2 beds above me and 3 across from me making 6 beds in the small cabin. Good thing the train was relatively empty!


We arrived in Guilin at 5am and took the first bus to Yangshuo!!! Finally only 2 hrs to our destination after nearly 72 hrs since leaving our guesthouse in Bangkok!

Yanshuo!

It was really cold but still beautiful when we arrived in Yangshuo!

The street of our guesthouse :)

A man making the Yanghuo speciality, some kind of spicy sugar candy that he works on this rod thing. After hes finished stretching it for, I dunno, an hour it turns from brown to a white, shiny, hard candy that he cuts into pieces to sell.
The Chinese people like to eat on these small chairs, lol, everyone laughed at Sev the giant English guy that couldn't fit his legs under the table, lol.

They really do use these old pick-up trucks to haul around almost anything you can imagine!

The rock climbing in Yangshuo. Can you see the man in red on the wall? Thats my friend Craig from Thailand that we lost in Shenzen... Yay and we found him again in Yangshuo!