A few days in Nanning

Our original plan was to spend just 2 nights in Nanning and get the bus to Hanoi on Friday 19th. We purchased our bus tickets, fortunately the hotel we're in sells them (although we highly expect that at the end of our journey someone will try with all their might to persuade us to stay in their hotel). As we were packing on Thursday night we thought we would just double check our Vietnamese visas. Again, very fortunate that we did so; our visas don't start until the 21st October. Although we should give the customs officers the benefit of the doubt, had we presented ourselves at the Vietnamese border with invalid visas we may have been subject to some kind of fine. So, we stayed in Nanning another couple of days.

Nanning is not a tourist hub at all, it's a pretty nondescript place, even though it is the capital of Guangxhi province (hence it has a few million inhabitants who possibly wouldn't agree that it is a nondescript place). We saw about 6 western looking faces in total during our time here. We did also see (on separate occasions) about half a dozen western looking men, with 2 Chinese women in tow. The odd time we would be sat near them it seemed that one of the women was introducing the other who usually didn't speak much English.

As there isn't much to report from Nanning other than I was suffering from a cold and sore throat (and in turn Matt was just suffering…) here are some observations of Nanning and China in general:

Fast food joints are in abundance in the Chinese cities; McDonald's and KFC will have HUNDREDS of franchises across China if the cities we have visited are anything to go by. The prices are fairly cheap and a lot of Chinese eat there. Pizza Hut also has a number of restaurants with pricing very similar to UK prices rendering this a very expensive option for the Chinese, hence this is seen as quite a top end place to eat (many western men with their 2 Chinese friends seemed to dine here), so Pizza Hut, which we probably wouldn't really think twice about is seen as a rare treat for the majority.

The residents of Nanning must really like having their hair cut. On the street of our hotel alone there were 11 hair salons all next to each other and all very small affairs with very young girls sitting outside who must all be extremely warm blooded as no matter what time of the day it was they were all rather scantily clad. I think they specialise in barbering as not once was I asked if I would like a hair cut but Matt was on several occasions. What a shame he had just had his hair cut in Shanghai…

We ventured upon a Walmart whilst in Nanning. The interesting thing was the 'help yourself' fish section. There were tanks of fish and seafood, a selection of nets and plastic bags. It was quite amusing to see people battle with feisty prawns; even when bagged up the selected sea dwellers inside seemed to revolt and start manically jumping around causing the bag to virtually leap from the shopping basket, that is until they all realised they had no oxygen and died. One prawn managed to jump ship while its mates were in the net; it landed on the floor and did actually spasm its way towards the exit until it was finally spotted. One rather dainty looking woman was literally wrestling with a rather stubborn 101b fish; holding the wriggling net at arm's length she queued where a more robust looking woman took it, body slammed it onto her thigh, (at which point it unsurprisingly stopped wriggling) weighed it and wrapped it. The whole thing amused us briefly until I got upset and consoled myself in the chocolate aisle.

Babies in China don't wear nappies. Instead the bottom part of their clothing has a slit in it, leaving their derriere exposed and if nature calls their parent positions them wherever they may be: in the park, in the street, etc. We even saw one squatting and peeing on an outside escalator!

Finally something else we noticed, in the UK there is a bit of a stigma attached with popping to the shops in your slippers, but on occasion people do it. In China, certainly in some parts people wandered around day and night in their pyjamas. We photographed the back of a family walking down the street in theirs. Most bizarre.

China has had its little quirks and challenges and the people's fascination with westerners was most surprising. We leave having enjoyed our time here and most importantly having finally mastered the art of using chopsticks.