This Days Pictures.
this morning has been exciting.

I am in shenzheu now, in mainland china. I am waiting for my train to take me to guaangzhou and then i hope to get a train to gulin. i have been yelled at one or two times already so things are starting to get fun.

i left my hotel today around 8:00 AM, and took a subway to where i am now. however because the subway took my out fo hong knog and into mainland china i had to do the whole immigration thing. it wasn't that bad but /the lines were very long. then once people saw my US passport tey told me i was in the wrong line, take happened 3 times. theye were all trying to be helpful but they knew i was in the wrong line, but did not know what line to tell me to go into.

since all the locals take this subway to mainland china they all seem to know whats going on. as soon as the doors open they sprint out and into line. really old people, kidsm every just rouns out of the subway at full speed.

By the way, the subway was packed, i mean i rally don't know if one more person could have fit on it, and me with my big ass packback was taking the space of two people, so i can't imagine they liked that.

so far to eat i have had a bread roll with tuna in the middle, it was 5.50, about 80 cents. it was pretty good.

so far it looks like mainland china is going to be much more diffiuclt to get around in. there is much less english written everywhere. if it wasn't for a few nice people who helped me i would be pretty stuck. but now it's getting fun. it's so damn hot however. /it;s probably like 80 but the humuty is pretty high.

I'll write more tonight, i wonder what this train ride willl be like.

looks like the "adventure" time of this trip has started. the first train ride is over. the ride was pretty nice and uneventful. i asked the guy sitting next to me if he spoke english and he gave me a really dirty look.

I'm at the point where i don't see any white people anymore.

so, when the train arrived i waited in line in to but a ticket to galiun but i was told they they don't sell tickets to galium there at this station.

(earlier i was told that they do). needless to say i was confused. so i went in line again hoping that a diffrent ticket agent may be able to fill me in more. as i was waiting in my second line i asked the young man (do i sound old using that term?) if he spoke english. his mom came up and started talking to me. turns out she's and english teacher (he english was okay, but i would expect better from an english teacher, maybe that's why i never learned french) I told her that my mom is an english teacher (she used to be but i wanted to have something in common with her) and she went to the front of the line and got the info for me. i had to go to a station that is a few miles away. she wanted me to take a bus but i insisted on a taxi (they are really cheap) and she walked me to the taxi cab (on her insistence) and told the driver where to take me, and haggled the price for me. it was very sweet.

this taxi driver was the craziest drier I;ve ever seen. here is the best example: you know how a motor cycle drives in the middle of a lane. some motor cycle was doing that and he just pulled into that lane, making the motor cycle pull to the very edge of the road. he also got really close to hitting pedistrians. at a stop light some guy came up to the car (after doing the same thing to another car with a white guy in it) and started begging me for money and when i saw beggin i really mean begging. he had his hands together and was bowing up and down, when i gave him some money and then tried to take his picture he ran away. that really made the taxi driver laugh.

he took me to the other train station. and then it really dawned on me how different china is from hong kong. as soon as i get out of the cab people are just all over me, trying to get me to stay at hotels, trying open doors for me. there are so many poor people. i really wasn't expecting that. so i went in and got my ticket (many people offered to help, but in a susprcious way so i decliend repeatedly while pputting my hands on my pockets to make sure they are not trying to pick pocket me. so i got my ticket. i got the luxary class for 10 bucks extrra because the book says really scary things abiout the train like people spitting in the isles and stuff. the luxary has a bed in a private room (like 3 other peopel i think) the normal is a "hard seat" and for a 5-6 hour train ride that is worth 10 bucks.

so that was at 2:30 and it's now 3:00. I';m in a private park now (less then a dollar to get in) because i wanted to go somewhere where i can sit and put down my back pack and not be bothered. i really don't feel like walking around the city now because all that is happening to me is getting begged for money and such.

so i'm sitting in this really nice park on a bench (moving around whenever one of the worked tells me he's about to turn on the sprinklers) and writing. people are starring at my and standing behind me to watch me write. and i have about 3 hours to kill.

so I am now in my sleeper car and a lot has happened in those 3 hours. while i was sitting and writting someone came up to me and asked if I would mind "chatting" with him. we started talking, his english is pretty good and we talked for the whole three hours. we are both going to gulliun, and we are on the same train. so it's really cool now i have a friend here who will how me around and we're going to hang out in gulliun together. it sohuld be fun. he asks me alot about america, i ask him alot about china. he's a really nice guy. His english name is Henry. when he saw my bag he told me i need to learn to travel lighter, he's right.

So I'm in my sleeper car now, there are 4 beds in it. there is me, an older chinese couple who are sitting on their bed holding hands (the look really sweet) and some guy who smells bad (he's in the bed under me). Even thoough we have air condiction in here I am stll damn damn sweaty. i think in a while I'll be done sweating. oh yeah, and this train ride is 12 hours, so I'm really happy that I splurged on the extra 10 bucks. i would so love to chnage clothes but i have a feeling doing that in here would be one of those big cultural fuax paux.

so herny convienced me to spend the money and fly to hong kong. i decided not to take the train (31 hours each way) but the plane ticket will cost 200 US dollars each way, but it seems such a waste to go to china and not see the great wall and forbidden city.

DAMN u'm drubk i met up with hner yon the train and the guys sititne guys sitting enxt to him decided to play lets get the american drubnk, it was funnym i can not type now, good nigt.]

so it's the morning now, i guess i'll translate that. a couple minutes after the train ride started i decided to walk around the train to see what the "hard seats" and "hard sleeper" are like. so i walk over to henrys section and we start talking and then we just had the best time. there were like 3 people talking to me and henry was translation. there was an 11 year old boy who was pretty cook (he could say "eleven" and we just had a great time talking. then one of the men deided to play "lets get the american drunk" so now i have a small headache. i was a bit nervous because as some of you must know: marc drinking=marc vomiting. but i ended up not vomiting luckily. we drank rice wine which by the name sounds decieving unpotent. this stuff was %55 alchole. I was told that the better stuff was stroinger. when i first tried it it was pretty funny. i drank a bit thinking it would be like sake and ended up coughing and they all laughed at me. it was very funny

so it's 6:15 in the morning now so this train ride should last about an hour longer.

the hard seat section was basicly seats on a train, but it was oversold. can you imagine standing for a 12 hour train ride?

henry explained to me that in china many people make less then 100 USD a year. that is why the taxi's are so cheap. I'm here taking taxi's all around the city because a cab ride is like 4 dollars.

they were also very amazed by my pierce