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I'm not 100% sure where I last tied things up, and too tired to go back and check...so as a quick overview, Hoi-Ann involved lots and lots of shopping, with a cooking class, and visit to the ancient ruins "My Son". We flew back to Hanoi, and squezzed in a quick meal, and a beer with Geoff Morris, an Aussie forester working in Vietnam and friends with Timo. It was so bizzare having someone who could actually just ask how much something cost instead of acting it out. He also introduced us to the art of drinking beer with ice (sorry Mum, I know not drinking drinks with ice was your number one advice, but I have been finding it a bit hard to stick to in this kind of heat!). After dinner we jumped on the overnight train to China. It resulted in the strangest border crossing ever. We were woken at about 11.30pm when we arrived at the Vietnamese border. We all got off, and went through all the normal border stuff (i.e lots of waiting). After a while we were ushered back out to the rail tracks to discover a new chinese train was waiting for us. It was so crazy hoping on this train. It was the flashest thing I had seen on our whole travels...carpet, doileys, fancy sheets and blankets, flasks with hot water, electric signs...the whole works. And I'd been thinking our Vietnamese train was nice! The train went down the road a bit, and some people on the train made us fill in some signs, and hand over our passports. We went to sleep, then they woke us up a little while later to give back our passports... the sleeping border crossing...my kind of thing really.
Jumping off the train in Nanning was a really wierd expereince as well...there is no way to describe China (or perhaps just Nanning, but I think China in general) is space aged. It's crazy, everything is super big, and super flash (except the taxis that is). Half the city seems to be underground, as we discovered whilst trying to cross the road using a sub-way...it was actually a massive shopping mall. The Chinese city women are super highly maniquired and really beautiful. We had an interesting experience at a beauty palor. In Hoi Ann we had been dragged into a beauty palour to have our nails done. It was a pretty unhygenic funny experience, however my 80% deet insect repllent had destroyed my nail polish (I hate to think what it does to me given it's fantastic effects as a paint stripper!). Our Nanning nail expereince was chalk and cheese, with the 7 white coat wearing beautians magically apperring (was originally only 2) working with face masks, and gloves, and equipment sanitiser. Perhaps this kind of carry on happens in NZ and Australia unbeknowen to me, but the whole experience opendup a whole new world of beauty and purchasing opportunities! Not only did we end up with 7 beauticians we also had an poor to average interpretor brought in, and a number of other spectators... We finished things off with a photo session on our beauticians cellphones.
Today we came up to Guilin. For those interested in such things the highway was not disimilar to the hume - dual highway, thick concrete the whole way - you can't help wondering if it was built for the same military strategic reasons as the hume. The highway made it a bit harder to see the scenary than our other trips have been, but the rural areas still had large amounts of people tending the fields with hand tools, and bullocks. There housing didn't seem a scratch on the city stuff either. Every piece of available land seemed to be utilised either growing crops, or in eucalyptus planations. Didn't see anything which resembled native bush.
Tonight we have been to the best show I have ever seen in my life. It was an actioned packed combination of ballet, acrobatics, circus tricks and visual effects. I imagine a fair few of the cast are going to feature in the upcoming olympics, because we saw some crazy crazy stuff! I'm definately going to expect more from my theatre now...I spent the whole time with a smile on my face, being suprised by what they did from the very start to the very end. Top stuff. We will spend our next few days heading closer to Hong Kong...time really is running out for us.
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wendy
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hi Adele
Great to hear you are enjoying your travels. My class is studying China at the moment so will tell them about your experiences there. Stay safe and well.