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NanningAug 8, 2005
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Well... Since our last entry we did a lot of shopping and a lot of sitting on a train.
We went to the Shanghai 'fakes' market and bought an insane amount of 'stuff'. All of which had top-of-the-line brand names on cheap Chinese-quality goods.
The next day was the shipping day. Trying to get all our stuff to the post office was funny. We filled a huge sac... similar to a big potato sac with a zipper... and bungeed it to a set of luggage wheels. We looked like bums, it was quite funny. We eventually got there and bought the biggest box they sold, however it looked WAY too small. But some creative packing, and the big industrial zip-tie machine got everything in. (I still can't believe it.)
The next day we got on a train that would take us to the South of China where we will cross the Vietnamese boarder. We are discovering that it is not a very easy border to cross. The buses will only take you 600m from the boarder, then they abandon you. You have to walk to the boarder (where we hear they try and charge you stupid "visitors taxes" and such that don't even exist). Then you have to hire a motorcycle or mini-bus to take you to the nearest town in Vietnam where you can catch a bus to a larger center. We're a little unsure of how smooth this process will be, but we're going tomorrow, so we'll let you know soon.
Our 36 hour train was funny. We became the entertainment for all the locals. There was a lady who started working through her English dictionary in an attempt to communicate. Eventually her and Christine were discussing all the details of our trip. She was quite excited that we'd been to Lhasa and wanted to see pictures. We didn't have any on us, but we did have the video-camera footage. We cracked out the video camera and before you could blink our beds were FULL of people wanting to watch our trip videos. Christine was giving Canadian Pennies to the Chinese kids who were ecstatic!
One of the most interesting directions that the conversations went was regarding why WE were on the train. Christine tried to explain that it was because we didn't have a lot of money and had to travel very cheaply. They seemed to understand the concept, but still couldn't fathom why we were on a Chinese train instead of flying. We have had this before from other Chinese. I guess it's worth mentioning that in the many train rides we've taken all across China, we haven't ever seen another white person on the train.
So... Wish us luck crossing the boarder.
Sorry there are no pictures. Christine and I laughed when we realized that we hadn't taken a single picture since we left Japan last week.
Ryan and Christine
