Our Airbnb house gets many people and some of them are just downright weird, just like the one that we have had here for the last few days. This older Chinese lady from the north of China came here to look for her son that was apparently in Suzhou. And after meeting her I’m not surprised that her son does not want to be found. She doesn’t speak English, which was really great because it meant I did not have to engage with her in too much conversation, although from time to time she did persevere via the translator. She told me she was a brain doctor, her words. I personally think she had lost hers. She liked to tell myself and Sissi what to do, what was good and what was bad. Don’t put the bananas in the fridge, drink hot water first thing in the morn, don’t use a bike it’s bad for your knees, don’t eat to much bread and so on and so on. I ignored her of course as much as I could. Oh she said that she was a teacher and then later a normal doctor, she just couldn’t make up her mind what she was. I felt sorry for Sissi because she had to listen to her talking all the time, she could talk under water and the look on Sissi’s face said it all. I tried to take her away from the conversation and move to another room but she followed us and continued to talk, talk, talk. At one point I was talking to Sissi in the bathroom as she cleaned her teeth and the next thing the old dear joins us  and just stands there.

From the moment she showed her face in the morn the jaws began to work and they did not stop until it was lights out. I sat with my ear phones in one day as I sat on the computer and she still tried to chat, I smiled and said sorry I don’t understand. After breakfast she would go out to the balcony and do all these exercises and at the same time hit different parts of her body and then she would come back into the house and pace up and down the length of the living room in a similar way a caged animal does, shoes banging on the floor as she went.

She stayed an extra day and then Sissi told her that she had to leave because there was another guest coming, she said “no I don’t want to leave, tell the other guest there is no room” I said to Sissi that I would throw her things out of the house if she didn’t go. Eventually after a lot of talking and going around in circles she decided to leave the following morning without any fuss.

I’m not sure what is going on inside her head but there is definitely turmoil and chaos which sits just under the surface, as I said she was here to find her son but I think the son does not want to be found, I know that she is not an easy person to be around for any length of time and maybe that’s why the son does not want to be found.

Oh I almost forgot, she had a shower once, yes three days one shower, she must have some English blood. She used our shower instead of the guest shower and she left the place in a hell of a mess. For one that is supposed to be so clever she is one stupid bitch for making the bathroom like a swimming pool and then trailing the water through the house back to her room.

The next day it was raining and she came home and shook the umbrella over the floor and then proceeded to open it up and leaving it on the timber floor rather than take it out to the balcony or even better, stick it in the shower, so fucking stupid and inconsiderate. Not once did she clean up any of the mess she created, brain doctor, teacher my fucking arse.

Monday arrived way too quickly and I had so many things to do in the morning, I’m back to reality. The weather was miserable and so I decided not to go to the park after breakfast, but then again I really didn’t have the energy. There is still a lot of snot coming from my nose and I’m not sure where it’s all coming from. I have missed my early morning exercise in the park and so has my body.

Winter is coming and this week will be wet and everything feels damp and it’s so difficult to get up in the morning. This morning however I was up early because I had been asked to give an English lesson to the VP of a manufacturing company and there was a car coming to pick me up at the back of nine. I wanted to get up and have a lazy breakfast to prepare.

Just after nine the phone rings and the guy on the other end of the phone is telling me that he will be late and he’ll see me in twenty minutes, the funny thing it’s not English but I get his drift. The journey to the company takes about forty minutes or so and it’s made all the more difficult because of the heavy rain but thankfully the driver is quite sensible, which is not what I can say for the one that took me back.

The lesson went well and it turns out that the heed bummer is Scottish, the VP’s boss speaks my language and so I’ll have to teach the VP a few choice words that he can share with his boss.

Well this must be the worst trip I’ve had to Hong Kong so far, it did not go to plan at all. I had every intention of walking a few trails over the islands but instead the dreaded bird flu took hold and laid me up in bed. One box of cold and flu tablets and several boxes of tissues and one new nose later I seem to be on the mend.

I wandered about Hong Kong island for a few hours yesterday exploring the many narrow back streets and worked up quite a sweat at times. More so I think because of the drugs left in my system.

So now I’m at the new train station in Kowloon and waiting for my train to Shanghai. It will take around eight and a half hours to get there which is really amazing. It’s about 1500km or so and then I’ll have to get another train home. It’s going to be a long day but it might be better using the train than flying between the two cities.

I usually fly and it means that I have to take a bus to the airport and then walk to the train station and then the second train, this might sound easier but with the check in times and waiting for the baggage at the other end might make the train a little quicker.

I think I would have been cheaper buying the first class rail ticket than staying another day in Hong Kong. it’s so fucking expensive.

I think I picked up bird flu in Yangshuo because today I sill feel like shit. I checked into my hotel last night and went out to buy drugs to try and shift it. Before that however I went for a curry to see whether that might also help with clearing the nose and head but to no avail.

I got back to my hotel around 6.30pm took my drugs and shut the blinds and that was me until this morning. I did feel marginally better this morning and so I had breakfast followed by more drugs and went back to the land of nod until 1pm.

Where does all this snot come from, I’ve been producing enough to fill an Olympic size swimming pool and yet it continues. I had a shower and did feel a bit more human after that and so I decided I would try and change my train ticket so that I could return home tomorrow instead of Sunday.

I walked to the station to get some exercise and also to look for food because I was starving. Food in Hong Kong is not as good I think as mainland China and it’s also about twice the price. At the train station there was bad news, no tickets left for tomorrow so I’m stuck here for one more day. If I feel better tomorrow I will try and go for a walk somewhere, afterall that was the reason for having the extra days here.

I found lunch in a small place but it was shit and so now I’m sitting in McDonald’s having black coffee which is surprisingly good and wondering where to go to find some good food to fuel the body. If I want to do for a stroll tomorrow I’m going to have to find something better than what I had for lunch.

Catherine, Stuart and I stayed the airport hotel in Guangzhou, they fly home today and I’m doing an early visa run since I’m near Hong Kong. I’m getting the train there and I’ll return to Shanghai by train in a few days.

The metro from the airport to Guangzhou was packed for at least half of the one hour journey, not even a sardine would have been able to wiggle its way on board and of course my very large suitcase was causing major problems for some but as I was feeling like shit because I picked up a bug in Yangshuo, I couldn’t care less.

My suitcase comes in very handy when navigating crowds, this is where it comes into its own blocking people that try to sneak or try to push their way in front of me

After what seemed like an eternity I got to Guangzhou South Railway Station and had a bit of time to kill. I needed food and my options were limited and I really can’t believe I actually went to McDonald’s to have not one but two chicken burgers and an expresso.

Today we are leaving Yangshuo and heading to Guangzhou on the high speed train and it will take us around two hours or so. It’s a distance of about 430kms, the taxi from the hotel was about 30kms and took nearly an hour.

The train station is set into the mountains and you no sooner get underway and we enter a tunnel which felt like an eternity. I timed another tunnel that we went through and it took nearly a minute and a half at a speed of 250kph so you work the length of the tunnel if you can and I’ll tell you if you got it correct.

As we moved south the landscape also changes and becomes more flat and arable and you can see the many rice farms along the way.

Guangzhou is a very big city and it’s very busy. We had to stand for an hour or more as we made our way to the airport to get to our hotel.

At the airport we got picked up after a phone call using my broken Chinese. The room was ok but right under the flight path, mind you after I took a cold and flu tablet I think I drifted off to the land of nod.

Our last day in Yangshuo and the sun was still shining which was great because we decided to hire some bikes and go to Moon Hill. The last time I was here I went on a bike tour and they took me through rice fields and small villages before we arrived at Moon Hill but today my navigation skills were not so good and plus the fact there has been significant development and changes in the last five years.

We did end up in one small village but we had to back track and we ended up on the main highway for a short time before arriving at Moon Hill.

This place to has changed dramatically and I was struggling to recognise anything.

We stopped for a break in the shadow of the mountain beside the new bus park where they had some giant transformers.

It was about noon by the time we stopped and the sun was getting hot and I think we were all looking forward to our reward which was going to be Indian food, but for now we had to settle for some fruit.

It’s about 7 kms back to the hotel but it did feel longer than that, maybe because of the heat or maybe we were just all getting a little weary from our extended tour of Yangshuo.

The weather today was perfect and the sky was blue and the scenery beautiful and so all in all it was pretty good. Oh and the Indian food was great although it was a wee bit pricey.

A lazy morning and then it was off for coffee across the road from the hotel. The cafe is small but the coffee is good, possibly the best we have had so far. The coffee comes from Yunnan Province which is off to the west of us, it’s smooth and is not bitter like many others I’ve tried.

A view from the rooftop

It says decided that we have a lazy day walking around Yangshuo and so we did. One thing we noticed quite soon was the many large butterflies that seem to be here and they are very beautiful. Two in particular you will see in the video below.

We walked through the local park where they have the usual congregation of the old and those doing exercise and we even had some singers.

Walking along the quiet streets we found so many small quaint and inviting cafés but if we had stopped at each one we would have been awake for days.

In the afternoon there are many boats arriving from Guilin, just as we did yesterday and so this morning before the hoards arrived in Yangshuo we realised that it’s a lovely wee place but as the we neared the time for the arrival of the boats we saw the setting up of the many stalls and folk getting ready for the next influx.

This road brings you back round to the Li River once more where we found and old guy with his two cormorants and so Catherine decided to have her “photies took”

We headed for lunch and ate our fill and then returned to the hotel for tea. The weather has been so warm today that after having my cup of tea I felt in need of a siesta and so I did.