Our journey out of Hong Kong didn't go precisely as expected, as we only made it as far as Guangzhou (Canton). Here we needed to try to buy an onward ticket for Kunming but there were none for that day according to the main tiket office so we checked into a hostel on the very interesting Samian Island - an old French and British colonial area still retaining the old buildings and wide avenues lined with palm trees - absolutely beautiful. The delay in our plans was a great bonus actually as strolling around this historic area on such a warm sunny day was very relaxing, with a good pinch of Odd.
Odd because we started to notice that the island was teeming with American couples pushing strollers containing little brown babies. Everywhere. Every street corner, every avenue. Things reached a head when we went to Lucy's American Diner in search of lunch (some chance of Ellen-friendly food there), only to find every table taken with these Americans and their Chinese children. We figured they must be giving them away with the burgers but actually it turns out that Canton is the Chinese centre for adoption by foreigners, and that by law each family must stay for 1 month before taking their bundles of joy away with them. All very sureal indeed, but vaguely amusing and at least some unwanted children are being given a shot at family life even if it is an American one.
We did make it away the next day (5th) and have just arrived in Kunming from a 25 hour train journey through some of the most spectacular scenery we have seen on the trip so far - mostly rivers that have cut a very dramatic karst landscape on the approaches to the Tibetan plateau. Thames valley it isn't.