Blogs from Nanning, Guangxi, China, Asia

I've stumbled into this blog so quickly I did not even realize that I've left things unexplained. (And it feels lonely in the beginning, so I was not sure how much I should explain). So, there you go - - I am living here in Nanning, Guangxi, China, for five years. I came as a writer with (renewable) tourist visa, and stayed a year in order to see what will happen. Then I studied Chinese, and then started teaching English. I've been teaching for 3 years now. The regular schedule goes like this - working from Thursday to Sunday, and then, free. If I stay in Nanning, I write. (And many times I do nothing, just read and think, and, akhm, eat). And at least once a month I go somewhere. The school is very nice ... read more

No pics yet but I'll see if I have time to add some later. We head for Vietnam on an overnight train. Arrive at 5 a.m. and our hotel has agreed to receive us by six. I've corresponded (in my bad French) with a hotel recommended by Wiki Travel. They have told me their address, promised me a room at the back (thank you Wiki), and told me the approximate cab fare from the station to the Hotel du Centre Ville. That's about it as far as planning. Hanoi sounds very cool. Vietnam, according to Wiki, is full of scammers and thieves--partly because it's relatively poor. No idea about its post-typhoon condition but we won't be going to any beaches where people are grieving the November devastation. Money is a bit of an issue: one Canadian ... read more

A change of plans. Yesterday we reverted to our original plan and decided to travel to Vietnam. This meant a visit to a photo studio and the Vietnamese Consulate here. We did this ourselves because an agency told us that it would cost 400 Chinese dollars and we thought that was too much. We ended up paying the consulate 450 Chinese dollars and, though Jinyi mentioned this to the clerk, there was no explanation offered—at least as far as I could tell. It was fun walking about in warm weather here in Nanning. Today we climb a famous hill or mountain, not sure which. Our visas will take three days for processing. There are no agents selling tickets for trains to Vietnam, so we will have to travel to the railway station once we know our ... read more

And so almost as soon as I'd arrived, my time in Guangxi has come to an end. Just five short days in this Southwestern province of China before I make an equally brief detour to its eastern neighbour of Guangdong, before finally calling time on this six-month long leg of my continuing Southeast Asia-Southern China adventure. Prior to arriving at my final destination in Guangxi, the provincial capital of Nanning, I'd in fact taken another quick overnighter in another mid-sized city Chongzuo, just over an hour away on the spanking new intercity highway. Apart from a quick stop at its famous leaning pagoda, Chongzuo wasn't particularly noteworthy, so I thought I'd combine the two blog entries. Nanning, on the other hand, offers more. Truly a large bustling city, serving as a transnational hub for journeys into ... read more

Our last stop in China was Nanning. The main purpose for our time here was to get our Vietnamese visas. Since our hostel arranged visas free of charge, that part was easy! We just showed up, gave them our passports and money and waited three days. Every Chinese city we have been to has had its own identity and the same goes for Nanning. It was like a mix between China and South-East Asia. There were still people playing mahjong everywhere and people dancing in the parks, but it had a much more southern feel. We would wake up, walk around the farmers market (conveniently only a couple of blocks from where we were staying) and eat fruit. The fruit vendors had prepared fruit ready to eat; we just walked up and bought a full/half/quartered cut ... read more