On to Guangzhou!

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Hello everyone! After much harassment to post another blog (you know who you are), it is here!



We have left the luxury of Hong Kong and Macau and we are now roughing it in little riverside villages and 14-hour train rides. We eased out of Hong Kong and Macau by spending a few days in Guangzhou after a brief stopover in China’s border town of Zhuhai. Unfortunately we weren’t able to spend enough time Zhuhai. We were there just enough to sample some of its phenomenal seafood cuisine and walk along the water. On to Guangzhou, it is one of China’s three “top tier” cities, along with Shanghai and Beijing. We were pleasantly surprised by how clean and lively the city was. I even got to ring in my 24^th birthday there. We spent about three days total exploring the sights and the cuisine. We stayed in a funky guesthouse in the heart of the new city. It was an apartment rented by some Chinese people, which they turned into a cheap place to stay for tourists passing though.



Nick spoiled me on my birthday. We started off with a great Western brunch (which has become quite the treat as we have been away from home longer and longer) complete with Bloody Marys. We spent the afternoon getting lost on the crowded streets of Guangzhou. We stumbled into a district that must supply textile and textile accessories for the entirety of China. We found dozens and dozens of blocks with buildings eight floors high filled with fabrics, buttons, rhinestones, furs, etc. I attempted to take pictures but no picture could do it justice. It was a fashion designer’s dream. After getting dizzy walking through the streets, we found our way to a beautiful, authentic French restaurant for dinner. We indulged in fried cheese, fish, seafood pasta, garlic mashed potatoes, and of course, wine. Lucky me, I was born on Bastille Day so when we finished our glasses of wine, our server informed us we get a free refill J It was amazing to be sitting in a restaurant in China where the local French ex-pats clearly knew to come and be surrounded by people speaking French, Chinese and English interchangeably. It reinforced by desire to get a Chinese tutor next semester. After dinner, we got to meet up with an old friend of Nick’s from his years in California. We got to hear stories of what it is like to practice martial arts in its native country and work on Kung Fu movies in Hong Kong.



From Guangzhou our city lives came to an end and we gradually made our way to more and more rural areas. We took an overnight bus to Guilin, which was a new experience for the two of us. I began writing a blog entry regarding that and decided to just file it away as more of a venting “letter to myself”. I will sum it up by simply saying it was a nine-hour bus ride with three aisles of “bunk beds”. There were about 50 of us on the bus with only about 45 beds meaning I got to get close with a couple of Chinese men who were laying on either side of my ground-level bed. Needless to say, our 4:30am arrival to Guilin didn’t come soon enough!

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