After reading in this other HN Thread (link on the bottom) I wonder how save it actually is to use VPN. To make the connection to your trusted VPN Server you also have to trust your ISP for the first information exchange, right? For a country used to handle this kind of situation (like the Chinese government, greetings from China btw) it should be no problem to MITM your VPN connection, or am I wrong?
The other discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079223
If the certificate has a mismatch, then the connection stops, and the VPN doesn't build up. Even if my ISP or government would play MITM, if I know the correct certificate of the other end (and, if all else fails, I can trust the VPN the first time around, and once inside, check the server's certificate locally, where there is no man in the middle, and compare it to what I received during the handshake earlier - if it's not the same, there's someone in between), there's no way they can fake that, to the best of my knowledge.