Hong Kong was intimidating in the way that New York City, London or any other giant city is intimidating -- millions of people surround you, its a cacophonous symphony of strange sounds and the buildings blot out the sky. Mainland China is intimidating in a completely different way. It's much more like you've just landed on Neptune to discover millions of people living there. They stare at you apparently trying to decide if you should be ignored, approached or eaten. Nobody speaks the same language as you and even if they did you still wouldn't understand what they were talking about.

Did I mention it's hot?

After a little more exploration of Hong Kong, including going to the top of Victoria Peak to see the city skyline in its full technocolor glory, we decided to head on toward Guilin, China. To accomplish this we had to first take a bus to Gaungzhou (once upon a time known as Canton.)

Stepping out of the bus station was nothing short of a nightmare. We were incredibly hot, tired from the four hour ride and burdened by heavy backpacks. Everywhere you look there are people trying to taxi you somewhere, take you to a hotel or sell you meat on a stick. We stubbornly ignored everyone of them and made our way to the long distance bus station to try and secure tickets to Guilin, still a large albeit much smaller city roughly the size of Portland. We decided that we were not prepared to even stay the night in Gaungzhou.

After an interesting negotiation at the ticket counter, aided by the help of a friendly local who spoke English, we secured tickets for the ten hour bus ride to Guilin. Guilin, by the way, is pronounced "Gway-leen" and not "Gwhy-lynn." Failure to get this correct will make purchasing a ticket much more difficult. Unfortunately, the bus didn't leave for about five hours so we found a nice little hotel cafe and planted ourselves in the A/C to drink Cokes for the next three hours before heading to the bus station. As our ticket was in Chinese and all the signs were also in Chinese, we thought we should get there early to see which of the 56 gates we departed from.

To make a long story, and even longer bus ride, short, we are now in Guilin, famed for its limestone peaks that ring the city. We managed to check into the Huali Hotel at 6:00 am in the morning and my hard bargaining brought the price of 131 yuan down to 130 yuan, approximately $16. The 16-year-old receptionist may only speak a little English, but somewhere along the way she picked up, "Rock bottom price." Cute. The room is nice and we crashed for a while.

Today started a little rocky as we wandered bleakly through the city streets searching for Internet cafes listed in the Lonely Planet book that don't exist and checking out parks that cost four times what the guidebook lists. Our spirits were at a low this morning and we even contemplated leaving China earlier than planned to head further south toward Laos or Vietnam. I had heard that China was a difficult country to travel, but naively thought that applied only to other, less stout souls. Everything is hot and humid, very few speak English or even understand that you're asking if they speak English and most of the food is just plain weird. We were close to accepting defeat.

It's funny how fate knows what to do to take care of you. First we came across Tim, an Englishman who was riding a rented bike around, just as clueless as us and he seems a True Traveler. He had spent a year in India and just arrived in China via a boat from Egypt. We were very relieved to hear him state that no where else had been as challenging as China. We're meeting him for dinner tonight and hope to utilize his accumulated wisdom as well as share some conversation in English.

Next, as we stumbled along the river trying to find an office listed on our map that sold plane tickets. (We've decided to fly Kunming, China from Guilin later this week after a side trip to Yangshuo. The train is much cheaper, but the flight takes an hour and the train is 30 hours.) The riverwalk is is crowded with people selling their services as a guide or taxi driver, but we had to stop and pull out our guidebook despite the knowledge we'd instantly make ourselves a target. We were quickly approached by a Chinese man named Colin Wen.

Colin politely asked us our names and where we were from. You quickly learn to be suspicious of anyone who is nice to you, sad as that is. We did our best to ignore him and look at our map, trying to figure out where we were. Eventually we let him work his way into our conversation and he tried to convince us that we should take a beautiful boat ride to Yangshuo tomorrow instead of the bus. The bus is much cheaper, but the boat ride much nicer and he would get us on Chinese tour instead of a English one to save us half the money. We declined the boat ride, but he eventually caught on that we were trying to find the Dragon Air office and told us he knew a closer travel agency that was much cheaper. He also admitted that his business is selling boat tours, but he'd be happy to take us to the air ticket office.

Just as promised, he helped us secure cheap tickets to Kunming, served as a translator and then took us to a hidden tea shop where a woman treated us to a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. After many, many glasses of tea and some good conversation he took us to this Internet cafe, something we'd been searching for all day. I expected him to want something for his trouble, but he said he only wanted to practice his English (which was very good) and to make some new friends. We paid for his tea, but other than that he expected nothing from us. That was just the refreshing experience we needed to continue on; we're glad we met him.

-- Shawn