The Guangzhou Hostel was located on the historical and picturesque Shamian Island, surrounded by the Pearl River. Waking up here was a treat. The hostel was located moments from some of the most beautiful parks we've seen yet.

The morning flew by and soon it was time for lunch, so we went in search of an authentic Cantonese restaurant. No problems locating one. The problem was the vast array of bizarre and frightening menu choices. After reading page after page of various animal body-part delicacies, we headed for the grocery store down the street and bought buns, cheese, instant noodle soup, juice, oranges and some cake for dessert. A delicious feast was the result and we enjoyed it immensely.

After lunch, we wandered around the island, watching old men play Chinese checkers, listening to a music recital of several instruments we'd never seen or heard before, and enjoying the beautiful park and lovely Pearl River.

Upon our return to the hostel, we hailed a cab and made our way to the Guangzhou Main Station where we caught an overnight train to Nanning. Since we had only booked passage that morning, we were unable to get a soft sleeper compartment. Instead, we travelled in hard sleeper class. Hard sleepers are bunks in dormitory cars, arranged in open bays of 6 bunks each (upper, middle and lower on both sides of the bay). These turned out to be pretty luxurious by our standards. Every bunk was covered in a fresh sheet, and came with a nice pillow and a warm, clean white quilt. Our only problem was that the four of us couldn't be in the same bay. Instead, we had four top bunks spread between two adjacent bays. It's impossible to sit up in these bunks as they have zero headroom, but we laid on our beds and the kids played with their Nintendo DS games while Barry and Margaret read, so the evening passed quickly.

Around 9:30 pm, we met a fun South African couple who seemed to have an almost identical travel plan and timeline as us, so it was fun to compare travel plans and gather some intel. They were relying on the Lonely Planet book, too, so we knew everything they did; but it was good to talk, nonetheless. They'd just come from the Guilin / Yangshou area and said it was excellent, so Barry was pretty sad about missing it. Next time!

At 10:00 pm the lights were shut off and everyone went to bed. Luckily, we didn't have snorers or babies or partiers, so sleep came easy to everyone.