Back in the USSR...erm, I mean China.

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Ok, bear with me a second, because this might get slightly confusing if you are not paying attention/have had a glass or two of wine/or have a short attent....

As I write this, on Thursday 5th May at 9pm, we are back in China. In a city called Nanning to be precise. Never heard of it? Me neither, but 6.5 million people call it home, making it fractionally smaller than London in terms of population. For 24 hours only, the population has increased by two slightly tired looking Westerners. Judging by the way people were looking at us in the city centre earlier, Westerners are something of a rarity here. Nanning lies near the Vietnamese border, a 10-hour bus ride from Hong Kong and a 10-hour bus ride from Hanoi, our next destination. The reason we are here is that Hong Kong - Hanoi is one of the most bewildering trips to attempt over land. The first option we considered was the train, thinking it would be a bit of an adventure - in our mind's eye we had pictured a romantic, Orient Express style trip through the rolling countryside of China, a short hop across the border to Vietnam, and champagne all round by sundown. In reality the train trip takes two and half days, involves three different trains - two of them sleeper trains - and a 10-hour layover in Nanning. Train one takes you to Guangzhou (third biggest city in China with 18M people), a mere three hours from Hong Kong. Then comes train two, the night train, all 13 hours of it, to Nanning, arriving at some ungodly hour in the morning. Train three leaves at 5pm, and takes a further 14 hours to reach Hanoi. Not my idea of fun. So then, being the kind of easy going newly christened backpackers that we are, we thought about flying. Bad idea, $500 dollars each for an hour's flight.
So, option three, night bus from Hong Kong to Nanning ($35 each), a night in a 3 star hotel in Nanning ($20) and a bus to Hanoi ($15 each). And, to quote our now ex-tour guide, Ricky, "This is where we are..."

All that to explain that due to limited internet here in China I am going to try condense the last week or so of our trip around China (21st - 30th April) into one longer blog. Then, and again apologies if this gets confusing, I will do another blog when we get to Vietnam all about our 5 extra days in Hong Kong and the journey (described above) to get to Hanoi.

Go get that second glass of wine now Mum!

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Photos

Not relevant to the text....
....I just like this photo!