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Our stay in Nanning has been mostly about catching up with news, photos and chilling out at The Nanning City Hostel with the other travellers. It’s run by Weston, a Texan, and it’s a very large apartment over 3 floors in a snazzy complex. It’s just like a flat share Canary Wharf Style with the accommodation a mix of dorms and private bedrooms and a large kitchen/dining and living area that includes an Xbox, Playstation 2 and DVD’s……the backpackers dream. Once again, there’s a mix of guests, Brits from Thornbury near Bristol (about 8 miles from our home in Bradley Stoke!), Americans, Canadians, Germans, Chinese, Austrians and Dutch.

The city itself is about 3.5 million people, clean and with tree lined boulevards making this a quite pleasant place to live. Drivers seem to use their horns much less and even have a little more patience with pedestrians. All in all not a bad place to hang out with parks to visit, trains to sort out, buses to book and different food to try.

Graham, who we first met in Yuangshuo, is also here and we’ve been out to eat with him a couple of times. One evening we went to a Muslim Noodle House where you can watch them make the noodles. The guy makes it look easy as he slowly kneads the dough and then stretches and makes the noodles……years of practice! We all pointed at the pictures on the wall and Graham’s choice turned out to be the most interesting. A large platter arrived with lots of chicken with some vegetables in a rich and tasty sauce, flavoured with cinnamon and star anise. The chicken was more bone than meat, which is tricky to eat with chopsticks, and included both claws and the head! Graham and Neil went for the claws and decided that they were both very dull and devoid of any meat (no shit Sherlock!). Graham baulked at the head but Neil gave it a go…..more Sherlock! Hey, it “head” to be done…..tee hee.

We are here for a reason. To get our visa for Vietnam and this one of the value added services that Weston offers to arrange for free. We’ve had experience before of the “flexible pricing” of visas in Vietnamese Consulates. This way, at least, we’re not going to have to pay the “tourist tax” as decided by the whim of a crooked clerk. 480Yuan (about £48) buys us a 90 day single entry visa. It takes 3 days and gives us more time to do the things we want rather than hassle with the Vietnamese authorities. After evaluating all our travel options into Vietnam we’ve decided to take a direct bus to Halong. It costs us about £17 each and will probably take about 8 hours including a couple of hours crossing the border at the Friendship Pass. Buying the tickets, a few days in advance, was quite easy as the ticket counter had an English translation so all we had to do was point to the chosen route and write down the date and time in the correct Chinese format of year/month/day.

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We also set aside some time to visit the ancient town of Yangmei. It turned out to be a quaint village with some well preserved Qing Dynasty houses and not very touristy so it gave us the opportunity to explore the dusty alleyways without any hassle. Our day out was planned to be just the two of us. Then Graham decided to join us. Then a new arrival, Michael and his Chinese “friend”, agreed to join the party. Finally, at the very last minute, the five of us were joined by two young Chinese girls who were on holiday from further north. Like a lot of cities in Asia, Nanning has several bus stations, so we made a number of attempts over the previous couple of days to try and find the correct one. The Chinese girls were very impressed that we went directly to the correct one and even more impressed that we guessed the correct departure time of 11.00 a.m.

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The bus was packed and, having been on a number of local Chinese buses in the past, we smartly headed straight for the last remaining space….a seat on the engine in the very front of the bus. We had a great view from the front and it was better than sitting on the plastic stools in the aisles that Michael and his friend had to put up with. Graham found a seat and the two girls joined us facing backwards sitting on the engine. The journey was pretty uneventful, albeit bumpy, but did take us through some busy countryside where all sorts of crops were being grown. Maize, beans, sugar cane, bananas, tomatoes and other salad ingredients plus masses of things that we hadn’t seen before.

We lost Michael and friend shortly after arriving so lunch was just the five of us. We headed down to the restaurants by the river and the Chinese girls helped us choose from the menu. We had a delicious lunch of tiny fried fish, beef with pickled cabbage, stuffed noodles, sliced pork with starfruit, rice and green vegetables. The girls also insisted on paying which was a very honourable and generous thing to do but made us feel very embarrassed. Nothing would change their minds.

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On the journey home, we managed to get the five seats at the back of the bus.

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Things were going nicely until we reached the level crossing in what can only be described as a soulless, godforsaken, cowboy town.

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Here in this strange small town, the road narrows to single file to cross the tracks giving the potential for a major log jam. Sure enough, there were a number of large trucks stuck making it almost impossible for even motor bikes to weave through. Drivers had given up and gone to sleep, others had left their cabs (probably to get food) whilst others just sat and watched. Amazingly there was no road rage. Everyone just accepted the situation and got on with it. We had a little banter through the window with one of the drivers who was woken up by our laughing at him. He seemed to ask us what the situation was ahead so not really understanding exactly what he said we gave the “thumbs down” sign and that seemed to do the trick.

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The journey back to Nanning was completed without much more ado and we arrived about 30 minutes late.