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Shenzen SEO 2026 Why l Escape China And Never Went To The Conference Watch It Before Deleted

Shenzen SEO 2026 Why l Escape China And Never Went To The Conference Watch It Before Deleted

Day Two: Chiang Mai Instead of Shenzhen

Two, one, we’re live. This is Yannis Divramis, divramis.com. I’m an SEO expert with my SEO agency, and this is supposed to be the first day — or day two — of our live streams at Shenzhen SEO 2026. And it’s not. We’re here, as you can see, in Chiang Mai, at Tha Pae Gate.

Chiang Mai, Thailand. Chiang Mai is the capital of SEO — search engine optimization — with a population of 1.2 million and 30,000 people doing SEO, affiliate marketing, and whatever has to do with web design, etc.

I was supposed to be in China, but suddenly the plan changed. I landed in China on the 10th of September, in Beijing; after that I went to Shenzhen, and I had to face the Great Firewall of China. That means I had no internet, even with the Chinese SIM. I got another SIM card — nothing worked. I used a VPN — nothing worked. I used another VPN — nothing worked. I used Wi-Fi — nothing worked. I went to the hotel, tried to figure out the Wi-Fi, and ChatGPT didn’t work, Gmail didn’t work, Google didn’t work, YouTube didn’t work, TikTok couldn’t work, my Revolut card didn’t work, Alipay didn’t work. And I had a very, very sad story that led me to escape China. I booked the first flight I could find on Trip.com, and after the third attempt I came here to Chiang Mai. I arrived yesterday, 9:30 at night.

China Is Not for Everyone

All this story has a very, very secret point. What is the secret point? That China is not for everyone.

I booked the ticket for Shenzhen SEO months ago, I also booked the flight months ago, and the hotel, and I was preparing for China for months — and I was caught unprepared.

Now we are at the moat outside the old city of Chiang Mai — the capital of SEO in Thailand, the second-biggest city in Thailand — and tomorrow we are going to have an AI meetup with some guys. So I’m going to stay here for some days, and you can join me on every social media with hashtag divramis, or on the website, divramis.com. We’re going to do both lives: in Greek first, and after that in English.

So I’m going to tell you my terrible story: how I went to China and how I escaped China.

The Air China Flight

First of all, I took the plane from Athens to Beijing — a nine-and-a-half-hour flight. What type of plane do you expect to take you from Athens to Beijing? An A380, a big one like Emirates has, or a Boeing double-decker? Surprisingly, they had an old Airbus A350 with broken TV screens. The TV didn’t work, the internet didn’t work, and the first thing written in the booklet — the safety booklet — was why we don’t have internet, why we don’t have it on the plane.

China is supposed to be one of the most advanced countries on earth. And Shenzhen is a city of 17 million people that is said to be the Chinese Silicon Valley — with the driverless taxis, the mindless people, drone delivery everywhere. Okay — how come they don’t have modern aircraft? The excuse was: we have more than 400 aircraft, we can’t provide Starlink equipment to all of them yet, we’re doing that.

As soon as I complained about the TV set, the hostess came to me and told me it’s not just this one — a lot of TV sets are broken right now. And she gave me some Wi-Fi on my mobile phone, so I could watch some documentaries from the previous century: 1999 productions, 2008 productions, with some birds and some crocodiles. Very boring. So, having no other choice, I was watching them for hours to pass the time until we arrived in Beijing. Old aircraft, noisy aircraft — very boring.

I asked for low-carb meals, and because nobody there was speaking any English, they brought me meals for diabetics. And they had my initials — “Yannis”, and in front “DB”: Divramis, I thought, it’s me. But it’s the acronym for “diabetic diet”. That’s it — it was the best they could provide me.

Arriving in China: Power Bank, SIM Card, VPN

So after 10 hours — almost 10 hours of travel — I reached Beijing, the capital of China, 32 million people. There they seized my power bank, because it’s prohibited. I bought this power bank from Plaisio in Athens, Greece — it’s also made in China — and they seized it, and you cannot say a word.

So I waited for the next flight, and after a layover of some hours I went to Shenzhen, at 12 o’clock; I had been in China since the morning, six o’clock, I think. As soon as I landed, the first thing I went to do was get a SIM card. I went there to get a SIM card and noticed that nothing was working. The girl there told me that I needed a VPN. She told me about a VPN, which was working very, very slowly — I couldn’t do anything. Revolut was not working, Gmail was not working, Google was not working, TikTok Live couldn’t work — nothing was working. Claude blocked me out, because it is banned in China, like every other Western AI firm.

Escaping China

Now, this is the moat of Chiang Mai, the capital of SEO — this one. Yeah, I’m very… someone said in Greek what a jerk I am. Yes, I am — I’m an ignorant guy; I went there and didn’t know that.

So I was trying my best to find a ticket to get out of China, and I took the first flight with Trip.com — after the third attempt, because it was so slow, and the card couldn’t book the ticket. (Someone says to speak Greek… No crypto, guys — SEO agency.) After the third attempt I could book the ticket to Chiang Mai, and the card was paid.

I called the guy there, the organizer of Shenzhen SEO 2026. He was very kind; he tried to help me. They formed a special WhatsApp group: “Help Yannis”, “Save Yannis” — can you believe that? And the girl who was in charge there asked me: “I can bring you a coffee to your hotel, by Grab or something.” I can do it myself. “I can drive you to the airport.” I can do it myself, too. “We can find you another hotel” — to pay five hundred euros to have internet. Look, I can do it myself, but it’s still not working.

I came here to work for 15 days, with my laptop with me — that was the concept — and the internet is not working here. I couldn’t call my mom. I lost contact for two days with my clients, my customers, my employees and all my other colleagues. It was unbearable. Everything that was three minutes’ work took me hours.

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A Night in Chongqing

After trying for five hours to figure out what to do, I took the flight and went to Chongqing, one of the biggest cities in China — the municipality of Chongqing is 32 million. When I arrived there at 12:30 at night, nobody was speaking English. It was a huge airport. I had to stay there one day for the layover and take the flight to Chiang Mai the next day, at 7:30 — 7:45.

Nobody was speaking English, so I was trying to tell them: look, I want a hotel, and a bottle of water for the hotel. So instead of bringing me some water to drink, the hotel guy — the one booking the hotel and doing the taxi transfer — brought me a glass of hot water, because they heard what I was saying as “hotel water” and understood “hot water, hot water”. Finally, after an hour without any conclusion, I got into the taxi and went to the hotel.

On the way to the hotel we passed three or four camera points, and every time we stopped at the cameras so they could photograph me, because I was the only foreigner in a city of 32 million people. I was the tallest guy — I was the tallest guy, and I am 5’11”. Can you believe that? 1.8 meters tall, and I was the tallest; the average height there was 160.

So, to make a long story short, I went to the hotel and fell asleep for 12 hours, because I hadn’t slept well for two days: I slept only 5 hours the first day and 3 hours the second day, on the horrible Air China plane.

Refunds, and Arriving in Chiang Mai

Luckily enough, the hotel refunded me in full. They also refunded me the Shenzhen SEO ticket. Now I have to get the refund from Air China, if I can — it should be at least half of the ticket that’s refunded to me.

After all this, I took the plane to Chiang Mai and arrived in Chiang Mai yesterday at 9:35. We went straight to 7-Eleven to buy an internet connection and set up my mobile internet. My Wi-Fi is working really fast here, and I’ve been working from yesterday until now, and I sleep really well. Thank God, I’m safe, and I’m back in Western civilization — back to freedom.

The Hotel, the Money and the Bank of China

A little more of the story, about the hotel: when I went there, I had to pay by Alipay. I tried Alipay — it failed, because Revolut was failing; Revolut was failing because Gmail was failing; Gmail was failing because it was banned. And my mobile number was also failing and blocked in China. I tried to use some other apps — they blocked me forever and deleted my account, because I was trying to reach them through a VPN from China. Can you believe that?

So I had to find a money exchange to get some yuan, and there weren’t any — in a city of 17 million people — near a very horrible hotel; lucky me, I’d found it near the conference venue. So I was trying to find an exchange; the nearest was five kilometers from the hotel I’d booked. I was trying to explain: “Where’s a money exchange? Money exchange?” — nobody knew English. I tried for half an hour with the translator; nothing happened.

So I took a taxi, and on the road to the money exchange I saw a sign that said Bank of China. So I told the taxi driver: “Stop here, stop here, stop here!” He wouldn’t stop; he didn’t understand anything I said. And after I told him “Fuck off, fuck off, asshole, stop here!”, he stopped, and I went inside the Bank of China. And what happened there: I asked the guy, I want to get some yuan, and the Bank of China told me: “Of course you can — we’re the Bank of China.” To change 700 euros into yuan took me one hour, because they had to make me a new account.

(This is Chiang Mai at night — there is Tha Pae Gate. Camera back on me, because I want to finish the story.)

And after one hour, with four people trying to move 700 euros into my account to buy yuan and pay the hotel, I got the money, found another taxi, went back to the hotel, paid for the hotel, tried the internet thing. I was trying for five hours — nothing happened. I was blocked, stranded in China, in Shenzhen, the most advanced city, the Silicon Valley of China, with no connection, having lost contact with my mother, my customers and you — because I tried TikTok Live, nothing happened; YouTube is not working; Google has been banned since 2008; and I couldn’t search for anything. Nothing was working.

So I took the first flight — I also paid some extra money for that — and after a long day I reached Chongqing, a city of 30 million people. The only Westerner there — the only person who spoke English; nobody else was speaking any English, among 32 million people — with the same big airport as Shenzhen, exactly the same; you cannot figure out any difference. That’s the problem with China.

Free Thailand

So, during the flight, by the time we passed the Chinese–Thai border, half of the Chinese were so glad they had left China — they changed their SIM cards and started partying, because they were going to a free country. They started expressing themselves, because you cannot do anything in China. Everything is prohibited, even laughing. You cannot do anything, because it’s a totalitarian government, Big Brother style, with cameras everywhere.

So, on my arrival here, it was the first time I was so moved: when the taxi driver left me at my hotel, I fell down on my knees and kissed the ground of free Thailand — of Western, free Thailand.

Two Conclusions

So, two things I have to conclude, because this took longer than I thought.

One: you cannot go to China and work there and do the same things as in Europe — especially when we are doing YouTube, SEO, Google and that stuff. We cannot do it.

Second: China is not a free country, and we cannot believe that we can live with China and let China expand to Greece and do whatever they do to their citizens. Because in Greece, at least, we have liberty. We are a poor country, but we have freedom; we still have freedom of speech, the right of free speech; we have democracy. Even if we have this kind of government that is a failed state, it’s better to live in Greece than in China, because in China you cannot live, you cannot breathe, because you are not free. You are in a cage that tells you every day what to do, when to sleep, what to say, what to think.

No police — no police at all — because the people themselves deliver you to the police if you do anything. You cannot even laugh in the street, because the cameras are watching you, and they say: “Ah, why are you laughing in the street? You look very excited — maybe you’re doing drugs. Come inside.” Every big building, every block of flats, has three commissars of the Communist Party. It’s not about the Communist Party as such; the problem is that these commissars are responsible for you — to look after you, take care of you, and spy on you. So they’re always there to see if you fuck someone, if you fart somewhere, if you eat something — why you eat that, what you say — and what’s wrong with you, that you came out of nowhere to China.

What’s Next: Chiang Mai SEO Conference 2026

So I’m very thankful to God that I escaped China. Not going back — no way. There are many other places to go, like Chiang Mai, and I will be here for the next 15 days. Tomorrow we have an AI automation meetup; there are many meetups going on these days. And two months from now will be the mother of all SEO conferences: Chiang Mai SEO Conference 2026.

So subscribe to my YouTube channel, and visit divramis.com. I’m Yannis Divramis. If you want SEO to rank in AI and in Google, you can call me or send me a message on WhatsApp and Viber — we’re working from here, abroad. And we are going to do some more lives until I go back to Greece at the end of September. Thank you for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe and send me a message if you want more content like this about SEO.

Chiang Mai SEO 2026 — in two months I will be right back. It’s the mother of every other SEO conference. It gave me all this inspiration to go to China. It didn’t end very well, but I think life goes on, and we can always try for the best. Thank you, everyone, for the help — and the organizers: they helped me a lot, but it wasn’t enough to make me stay in China and be productive there.

Good night from Chiang Mai — the time now is almost 12:30. Hashtag divramis. Keep in touch, or call me for SEO services.

 

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I am Yannis Divramis, I am an SEO Expert. I have been doing SEO since 2013.

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