On board the 5:02pm to Nanning

Yesterday after checking out of the hostel, we wandered around the back streets of Nanjing Road; for some reason not many tourists were around here even though it was literally steps away from the tourist street. It was interesting; lots of little shops, businesses and street sellers. One of particular note was a lady selling crabs; one of which had made a mad dash for freedom down the road. Of course this new found freedom was short-lived as she managed to retrieve it.

We headed to the train station, Shanghai South, to catch the 5:02pm train to Nanning, a 27 hour train journey. The queue for our train was big but ok, when the train was announced, again the usual surge towards the doors ensued. This is our experience of Chinese people; even if they have seats on a train they must rush to be first on, waiting for a lift, rather than waiting for people to get off they will get on and so on. Anyway, we joined the moderate mayhem and one lady seemed rather pleased with herself as she got a mugshot of Matt on her mobile phone. (Of around 600 passengers we were the only westerners). We aroused a reasonable amount of interest among some of our carriage mates when we got on, it was fairly short-lived though as they all started tucking into their noodles and various other food items they had with them. The train journey was a little tedious; a group of old men insisted on smoking in the carriage, even though we tried to tell them not to (they did run away every time the attendant came around).

Matt and me had top bunks which, on hard sleeper are pretty close to the ceiling (and fluorescent lighting and radio emitting loud Chinese classical music and all the bits of chewing gum people had decided to stick up there as they realised there was nowhere else to put it and they couldn't be bothered climbing down the 3 bunks to dispose of it properly). At 6:30am we were treated to a mixture of Beethoven and Chinese pop music. The rest of the journey was ok I guess, we arrived in Nanning at 9pm. We found our hotel, which is where we are now. Here for 2 nights until we head to Hanoi.