My wanderings in the Chinese wonderland

The beeping Guangdong bus driver is driving me beeping crazy, and I demand to get off his beeping coach.

This veteran wheelman with a silly grin is thumping his horn every three seconds whether he needs to or not. It is like a nervous twitch, and because I am in the front seat, there is no escaping a death by 1,000 honks.

It is only the first hour of a 10-hour journey to Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and my request to get off surprises the female bus tour director.

"Nobody gets off the bus. There are no towns. There are no hotels," she reiterates in Chinese.

One minute and another 10 beeps later, I point to a clump of buildings about 5 km away. "Town? Hotels?" I ask.

"No, and no!" the young woman insists.

The beeping forces action. I get off and stand on the side of a dusty highway with my bags and a relish for adventure. I'd hitched around the US, the UK and Australia, and knew I could make it to Shenzhen on my own steam.

That's when my journey takes a very interesting turn. For the next 24 hours, I am Alice in Wonderland, falling deep down China's rabbit hole.

My trip began on the ocean. I'd caught trains, planes and automobiles everywhere around China but had never been spirited away across the seas until I had caught a boat from Hainan province.

Our tour director lines us up on the Haikou wharf. She makes a head count, and then marches us onto the big, old ferry. I rush to the top deck, taking in the fantastic view.

The Guangdong coastline is huge, and my imagination runs wild. I dream of the pirates who once sailed from the Philippines and plundered these very seas. But before I could say "Captain Jack Swallow", the ferry arrives, and we board the beeping bus.

So there I am, standing on the side of the highway. I don't know where I am, the sun is going down, and I need a hotel. I see a police station, so I enter repeating "ni hao". A uniformed policeman appears with a surprised "what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here" look on his face.

"I need a hotel. Can you tell me the closest town, and can I call a taxi?"

The cop smiles and drives me to a town. He walks me into the hotel foyer, and the receptionist girls look up, surprised.

I book a night, freshen up and go to the hotel's restaurant. The entire 10 waiting staff circle my table looking surprised. They ask who I am and where I'm from and stare as I answer in Chinese. A waitress says there had been no foreigners here for a few years. She also tells me there are no buses to Shenzhen.

The following morning, I decide to break my budget and hire a car with a driver. I'm determined to get to Shenzhen on my own.

I ask about hiring a car. "No, and no," say the receptionists, just like the tour guide. "Who would want to do that? What a waste of money!" they must be thinking. Hearing "no" makes me more determined.

Outside the hotel, there is a little stall, and I buy a coke and cigarettes, take a seat, light up and wait for my ride.

As expected, some locals soon join me, hear me speaking Chinese and ask me who I am and where I'm from, and why I am here. I ask if they know anyone who has a car and if their car-owning friend was keen to make 1,000 yuan.

I was expecting the "no, and no", but money talks in all languages, and the answer was, "yes, yes".

About 20 minutes later I'm sitting in the backseat of a speeding car, drinking beer, listening to very loud Canto dance music and saying, "yes, yes, yes".