Shangde Hotel Guangzhou

i knew it would happen, but only four days in and sarah has chinitis, all the smells, tastes and intruguing aspects of CHina have resulted in symptoms including vomiting in front of a chinese family in Qingping markets. we walked through a really really fascinating marketplace full of kittens, puppies, tortoitses, so many fish, salamanders, chip munks, every manner of claw, dried lizards, mushrooms, fungi and bunny ...

... ride to guilin today, the tourist mecca of zhong guo, thats china for all you non-chinga people. simon got his hair cut by the barber at our hostel, its looks great, he is a true asian now. they were pasting black stuff on the guy to my right and i asked for it too, so i now have black hair. simon has had lots of chances to practise his mandarin which has been exciting. yesterday we went for lunch at ...

Enjoyed our meetings and colleagues. Went to dinner at a typical Guangdong/Canton restaurant. Menu was very creative. Plenty of exotics - baby pigeon, sting ray, fish guts, beetles, snakes, chicken feet. Was a bit naseous, but likely because of jet lag.

... doesn't speak English nor does the lead of the sim-card mafia, but he jumps in the front seat after I negotiate 200 yuan for the ride into the city using the hotel's chinese character address. Guess he just made commission on me. 30 minutes to GZ city center

... As you can imagine I nearly had heart failure worrying! I had visions of him being turned back from China (this might have been a blessing in disguise!) and just when I thought he was gone forever a load of chinese people in white suits from head to toe (think astronaut) appeared from the room he was in......thankfully Ollie appeared a few minutes later looking unharmed but with a white mask clamped to his mouth...hilarious sight!

... lot of attention. Even now, it is still a little strange to be an object of attention just by walking down the street. It has also gotten a little better now that I am staying in only one place and people are slowly becoming accustomed to seeing me walking around. I find it very interesting that Chinese people have this reaction to me as a Westerner, as it is not the way that Westerners react to seeing Chinese people, since many Chinese ...

... of a busy city. Another was a temple which bizarrely was funded and built by, and for the exclusive use of, people called Chen. The roofs were very ornate, and i spent quite a while looking for a particular stone carving which according to my guidebook depicted an opera being performed to a drunken horse. Sadly i couldn't find it. The 'Garden of Chinese Idiom' was also quite interesting, containing a variety of sculptures illustrating or ...

... roll upside down, filling and then the middle of the roll on top!!!!!! Customers do not use the rubbish bins there - they just up and leave the mess on the tables - McDonalds employs someone to clear the rubbish and wipe over the table between each customer. The poor lady was very surprised when I walked up to the bin with my rubbish. Again, the drinks came, not in the cardboard carry tray the we are used to , but in specially designed plastic bags. It was a nice ...

... filling lunch, we hopped on a bus again and for some reason, there was a small bus and a van. I was in the van with a bunch of people: we called it the VIP bus. It didn't really make sense, because we could have all easily fit on the bus, but, whatever. We headed to the Chen Clan Mansion, which was huge and gorgeous. There were loads of ornate carvings of all different types scattered around the place, in addition to blue glass and red lanterns. Part of the mansion was a ...

... Zenhai Tower and Yuexiu Park. After being dropped back at the hotel I ventured out for a walk by myself and arrived at one of the first McDonald's in China. Ordered a Big Mac meal by pointing at the placemats, did the calculations in my head, and came up with the theory that a Big Mac meal was about the same price in Australian dollars anywhere in the world. Had a surreal moment when sitting outside McDonald's I realised that I was listening to John Farnham singing.