Nothing in NanningJun 2, 2008
|
|
We boarded a nice A/C bus in Hanoi en route to Nanning, China. The landscape as we neared the Vietnam border with China was spectacular. We enjoyed views of huge, rolling green hills and towering limestone cliffs.
The Friendship Pass border crossing was modern and clean. Exiting Vietnam involved shoving ourselves through a surge of people to the official manning the exit point. As we have mentioned in other blogs, orderly queuing does not seem to exist in Asia. After clearing the exit point, there was a large golf cart waiting to transport us free of charge to the China entry point. For some reason the China and Vietnam border has a fairly large area of no-mans land borders so we were happy for the golf cart. We found the Chinese border entry a bit intimidating, as they had numerous customs officials set up to search everyone’s bags and Paul had packed a bottle of vodka given to us by Jess and Reese, and we had no idea of the applicable restrictions or limits. Although the guards searched the bags, they did not find the booze, although they even asked to view the photos on the memory cards of our camera and questioned about where we had been. Interestingly, the border entry guard had an area inviting us to rate his service as “Very Satisfactory”, “Satisfactory” and “Un-Satisfactory”. Since we still had to go through an x-ray machine and a secondary search area, neither one of us had the courage to actually press the button and give the entry guard a rating.
After passing through Chinese entry immigration, another golf cart was waiting to take us to a second nice A/C bus in order to continue our trip to Nanning. Upon boarding the bus we were given a bottle of water and a tin can filled congee to eat for lunch. Congee turned out to be a hideous mixture of rice, beans and various grains in a sweet syrupy liquid. It must be an acquired taste, since it seemed to big a big hit amongst the other passengers.
We arrived in Nanning at around 2:30 pm. We were surprised that no touts awaited our arrival at the bus station. For the first time in a long, long time, we exited the bus without anyone offering us goods for sale, accommodation or some tour or another. It was a welcome change. We made our way to the area around the train station to find a hotel for the night, as we planed to take the morning train to Guilin and then another bus to Yangshou. Since our guide book didn’t have much in the way of budget hotel recommendations, we fended for ourselves and quickly discovered that no one spoke English, French or really any language involving the Latin alphabet. Communicating was incredibly difficult. This was compounded by the fact that most people don't even use the numbers we use. We resorted to acting things out and attempting to draw things on paper. After much effort, time, confusion and laughter, we managed to find a hotel room for the night (equipped with an Asian style squat toilet) and book a train ticket to Guilin leaving the next morning at 8:30 am. As we left the train station, a French Couple approached us in order to speak to another “Westerner”. They directed us to an internet café and, in their opinion, an essential eating option, McDonalds, both a few blocks away.
Finding the internet café was also challenging as absolutely nothing is in English - or even resembles English – and we found that trying to act out or draw an internet café is actually quite difficult. After walking around in circles for about an hour, we managed to find the internet café which was only a few blocks away in the basement of a department store. Even the internet café seemed foreign as it was a huge warehouse like area with lines of Chinese people sitting in black office chairs in front of new modern computers. We learned, again through actions and drawings, that we had to purchase computer/internet time first along with a deposit for a “computer card”. We were then escorted to a separate room which housed a couch and two computers where the employees signaled for us to use the computer and the internet and quickly closed the door. We were shocked to learn that even using the computer and internet was difficult as, again, everything was in Chinese. While we were able to change the typing system so that we could type in English, the keyboard was in Chinese, and the system did not have capabilities to change the basic settings (i.e. File, Edit, Internet Option Menus etc. ) into English. By this time, we were both culture shocked.
After the internet café experience, our next “mission” was to find something to eat for dinner. We were determined not eat at McDonalds. In hindsight, this may have been the best option as at least McDonalds has pictures we could point at. The difficulty in eating is McDonalds is that McDonalds doesn’t offer much for vegetarians – Unless I want to eat French Fries and Ice Cream for dinner I’m pretty much out of luck. After walking around for another hour or so looking for a restaurant with an English menu, we decided that we weren’t going to find one, so we settled on a place which claimed to understand the symbols in our guidebook supposedly stating “I am vegetarian”. We ordered what we thought was tofu, mixed vegetables and, for Paul, a beef stir-fry noodle dish. When the food arrived, the vegetarian part was completely different than expected. The tofu was intermixed with mystery meat in a stew like dish and the mixed vegetables consisted of pan fried Chinese spinach. The beef dish, however, was a beef stir-fry noodle dish. The amount of food was massive. It really could have fed a family of six with ease (or two families of three given China’s one child policy). Regrettably, we left a huge amount of food uneaten.
We then returned to our room, tired, culture shocked, and needing a break from the never-ending game of Pictionary. We bought a couple of sprites, poured a couple of drinks from our smuggled bottle of Hanoi vodka, and watched a DVD on our laptop.
