China is going to take over the world

This place is really something else. We got up this morning, made our flight arrangements for Chongqing, and inquired about my flight to Bangkok, then caught a bus back to Guilin (we're flying out of here in the morning). Immediately after we get off the bus we encoutered a woman who wants to show us a "beautiful hotel, very cheap for you". So we follow her, decide no, meet another woman and say no, find that the place we were planning to stay at has been knocked down, ended up in a creepy building with no outside indication that it's a hotel then ended up back at the place where we started. It's not bad, really - smells like an ashtray but otherwise reasonably clean. When I got back into the elevator, I got snarky with some dude who was smoking in the elevator right under a no smoking sign, so he tossed his lit cigarette out of the elevator and onto the tile floor in the hallway. Grrr. But all in all people have still been SUPER nice and eager to practice their english. All we have to do is stop for 10 seconds and someone will come up to see if we need anything.

Right, so back to China taking over the world. We're on a street right now that is a REALLY posh shopping area. Not like high end Tiffany, etc stuff like what's considered posh in the states, but really nice classy shops like you'd see at the University Village. In fact, it's EXACTLY like the U Village, but about twice the size stretched down a pedestrian walkway. Super nice, but not at all what I'd expected of China. And the internet place that we're in right now has got HUNDREDS of computers in a bunch of different rooms, all quite well updated and running Windows XP - tons of money to run this place, but they only charge about 40 cents an hour for internet! I know that China is a huge country, and not all of it is going to be like this. Yangshou wasn't this posh, but was quite nice for a teeny little mountain village - aside from the sewage issue which is apparently prevalent in China. So yeah get to China while you can before it looks just like the rest of the world...