Nan'ning

There is really not much to say about the train ride from Shanghai to Nanning. The train station in Shanghai was great, and the train smelled really bad. There were nobody who spoke English on the train, and the people around me were, no joke, sleeping for about 30 hours. They did show "Rat Race" on the overhead screens though. When we arrived there was a couple girls in the carriage behind me, which turned out to be very helpful. One of them spoke English, and the other one was pretty, that was all I needed to know. The one who spoke English said she would help me find the hostel, and so she did. First we got in one three wheeled moped each. Mine followed hers, and she got us to a hotel, close to my hostel. Then she walked with me till I could find it. I insisted to pay for the rides, but she would not let me, and as the staff at the hostel opened the door, she left.

After getting some breakfast on the street I headed to the train station to buy the train tickets to Hanoi. I had the girl in the hostel write down what ticket I wanted, and easily cut the 30 minutes lines of people getting train tickets for the "Spring Festival". The spring festival is the most important holiday in China, so everyone travels to be with family. "Chinese new year "is part of the Spring Festival, although the terms are also used quite loosely about each other. It was easy to get a ticket out of the country, since most Chinese are staying in China.

Then I headed back to the hostel, a small, but nice one, with a lot of backpackers. I joined some people for breakfast and headed out to the Zoo with them. And guess what, there were English teachers among them! We went there by local bus, and we did get to see all the animals they had on display, although, judging from what I saw, a lot more workers, walking around in a huge construction sites within the zoo, acted more like animals than the monkeys, tigers, elephant (who constantly banged his head into the wall). This zoo did for sure need an upgrade of the facilities, but I reckon the animals would not have complained if they were moved away from their dirty cages, and away from the loud constriction.

There is really not much else to see in Nan'ning, so the rest of the time I basically spent eating. I went straight from a restaurant and to the train station, after bunking up on some hot pot dish with a lot of noodles.

When I got on the train I realized that there were not than many people on it. All train rides I had done earlier, especially through China, were completely packed with people. There were five Americans that I had seen in my hostel that were a bit further down in my carriage, but around me there were only Chinese. There was a large group of teachers, (not talking about the five Americans, of course they were English teachers), one man, and the rest of them women. I think they were about 12 of them. They were all very chattery and excited, since this was the first trip they did outside of China. Most Chinese stay within China around Chinese New Year, so that is why the train was so empty. Most Chinese are not able to leave the country any time, because of their economic situation. But as the middle class is growing, more and more can afford traveling. This means that millions of Chinese will visit tourist destinations all over the world in the years to come, and naturally a lot of them start with South-East Asia. Today, most of the Chinese who travel outside of Mainland-China go to Hong Kong or Taiwan. These areas, especially Taiwan are still considered a part of China here in China, but they do need a visa to go there (Strange, right?) Now that the Chinese are heading out to the rest of the world, Japan is for sure noticing this as the young generations of Chinese have no bad feelings about Japan, unlike their parents who are still holding a grudge against the Japanese after they attacked China in 1933. The US, and Europe are also feeling it, and they are all going to benefit from these huge herds of Chinese tourists with cameras strapped to their necks, buying souvenirs that they could easily have slipped in their pockets while standing by an assembly line in China a few years earlier.

The Chinese girls in the train wanted me to guess their ages, which I found very hard. For some reason I can really not tell the age of Asian people. They all look a lot younger than they are, and appear not to look any different between the age of 15 and 30. I really wonder what happens over night there! It turned out they were all between 22 and 26, I was way off with most of them. As the hours went by, they were giggling and talking a lot of Chinese, before they finally decided to ask if I could pose for individual pictures with them. I did, as so many times before in China, and about half way through I had them take some with my camera too. (You can see the pictures in the "Nanning" album.) After the pictures and some talking in English, they wanted me to eat some really spicy meat they had brought, so I did, and it was pretty bad. It was from the Sichuan province, known for hot food. I managed not to cry, but my nose did get runny.

As we were closing up to the Vietnamese border, I shaved and put on a clean shirt. Entering Vietnam without a visa should not be a problem with a Norwegian passport (Scandinavian citizens can stay 15 days in Vietnam without a visa, something most other travelers I have met have been very jealous about), but some people said that I needed evidence that I would leave the country within 15 days, like an airplane ticket or something. I did not have one, and wanted to look as little shady as possible. Besides, stepping up from the laziness and shave would do no harm anyway. Here comes the sun!