Anyone speak Chinese?
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2009
1
33
61
Trip End
Jan 06, 2010
Where I stayed
It's written in Chinese. I have no idea what it's called!
Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang, China
Friday, October 2, 2009
Reached Nanning, China this morning after a long old train journey from Hanoi, Vietnam. Our carriage and beds were really nice and we were joined by a nice French guy named Guillaume. I think they thought all the white people would want to sit together! We all fell asleep early enough only to be woken at 2am to begin the lengthy process of crossing into China! My goodness!
Everybody was herded off the train with all our bags to stand around while Vietnamese customs scrutinised our passports and found fault with anything they could. Me and Lucy occupied ourselves by watching a cute little frog that was hopping around the station and hiding under our bags. After about 30 minutes we were allowed back on the train (with the bags) and we moved off again.
The next step was to fill out health check forms and one of the train staff came in to take our temperature! Then a guy from Chinese customs came into our carriage and proceeded to do a detailed search of all of our bags. He took great interest in our diaries but cast my bag of medicine (full of pills!) aside with barely a glance! They took our passports and then everyone got off the train again (with the bags again!) so they could be x-rayed. Oh and throughout all thi there was one random guy going around with a video camera recording all of this.
Eventually we got our passports back and fell asleep around 4.30 am. I don't think the train even moved off again for about another hour. So far, our most difficult border crossing but I think we always knew that would be the case with China, especially with this being such an important public holiday.
We got to Nanning about 10am and it's very hot here! Definitely going to be in the mid 30s for the next while I'd say. Bit of a change from rainy old Vietnam! We had nowhere booked to stay so we spent about an hour walking around looking for a cheap hostel or hotel. The differences in China started to show immediately! There is almost zero English spoken here. If you approach anybody they just jabber away in Chinese at you so it's very difficult to find anything you're looking for. They also stare at you India style. We've already had people laughing at us on the street and an old lady was slapping my arm! It's very funny. Really like being back in India again.
The people seem very friendly though and we've already managed to get ourselvses SIM cards though we haven't the first clue where to get credit or even how to dial international. Getting the SIMs took about 15 mins of explanation! Another nice little quirk in China is that when they want to show a number on their hands the hold up the same amount of fingers, like us, up as far as 5 but after that they use funny hand signals that look like the evil eye so you have to learn all of those!
Our hotel here has a nice room but the bathrooms are absolutely foul! There's been drips coming from the ceiling for so long there are actual cave formations in there!! We'll be leaving Nanning tomorrow for Guilin, apparently they filmed some of a Star Wars movie there. Should be impressive scenery! Can't wait to get away from these filthy squat toilets anyway!
Love you all!
Adele and Lucy
Comments
I love China
You should go to Yangshuo its just out of Guilin and is such an awesome place, lots of hostels (backpackers as well) but a really cool place. im pretty sure its where jesus was born its just so beautiful there.
Have fun
(uncle) Jamie
Hi from Kilkenny
Hi girls. You are quick off the mark with the blog, well done. Dying to see photos of the lanterns on the trees (one would look so nice on my tree outside my sunroom!). What a fascinating country to be in. Looking forward to hearing the account and no doubt Dad will look at other peoples' photos ha ha! Poor Daddy very hungover today,had to make a quick roadside stop outside Abbeyleix so he could check to see if the grass was going properly ..... hmmmm! Anyway we home now, put him to bed immediately so hopefully he will wake up feeling better. He had a great night out with Sean and Uncle Paul.
Love, Mammy xxxx