Advertisement
Published: February 15th 2007
Edit Blog Post
More than expected.
First impression of the train station: small town, just three platforms! Two hours later, Aris & I felt like being in Shanghai: a whole new business district, build up within the last two years, so new that even the “Lonely Planet Guide” of 2005 doesn’t say any word about it. This part creates a huge new city with another city center besides the “old” town. Nannings population grew from 1 Mio. in 2004 to almost 3 Mio. in 2007! What an example for China’s fast development.
After we arrived in the morning and got a room in a hotel in front of the train-station, we asked for the laundry service, which lead to the next surprise: they don’t accept underwear! ARRRRGHHHH ……………
It took us half a day to find a laundry. In the end we succeeded - and paid a fortune. But there’s nothing better than clean underwear … Later the day, after eating lunch and walking down Chaoyang Road along the big shopping malls, going along the riverside before making our way back eastwards through the city, we found the Nanhu-Park ( means South Lake), a huge, artificial lake within the city. It represents the border
Artificial lake
seperating Nanning's older part from the modern part between the old and the new part of Nanning City. We entered the new city district by crossing the bridge over the South Lake and were suddenly in an unreal environment - huge, numerous buildings, broad streets, expensive cars and almost nobody on the street - Monopoly Town! Damn, this was weird. Everything was so huge, even the distances. Maybe like an ant within a town of Lego bricks. But an ant has six legs. I had enough of walking for today.
We agreed on meeting back at the hotel for dinner at 7. I used the time for recreation in my bed. When Aris came back, I already got up. We left the hotel to find a dining place and passed some pink stores, where Arias practiced his conversational Chinese. Now, he was Italian in order not to embarrass his own nationality.
This night clubbing was weird. At first to find the right place, at second to rescue my innocent butt. What happened?
Maybe it was the 4th club we entered this evening, after always being disappointed of what we found. In the middle was a dance floor, around stood dozens of round tables, where the audience sat.
Palm tree
in front of a Skyliner Audience, because a performance took place. Singers, dancing Gogos, singers again … continuously working up the more and more drunken Chinese audience. Fortunately, we got a place right in front of the dance floor, ordered some beers and enjoyed watching the performing actors.
The climax of the evening was a Thai-dance, performed by a transsexual Chinese. Later a second transsexual joined and the first left. This guy, or wanna-be-girl, needed a person out of the audience for the end of his/her show. Well, although there were just two foreigners in this club, there was still a chance of 50 %!<(MISSING)b>NOT to be chosen, but Aris pointed hastily at me behind my back, that my chances sank down to almost 0 %! (MISSING)I inescapably had to accept my fate …
Standing in the middle of 300 yelling drunken Chinese, next to a transsexual guy starting to play some weird games with you to entertain his/her audience, what could be worse between hell and sun? As diplomatic as I could be after six cans of beer, I started to answer his/her questions: “Do you think I’m pretty?” - “Well … after all … you are still a man …”, what means
Construction
hopefully they made no mistakes NO in my language. But for some reason he/she didn’t understand. “Where do you want to kiss me - my neck, my breasts or my ass?” WRRRGGHHH …. That was close, I could taste my stomach for the fraction of a second. I tried my best to keep a smiling face, took his/her hand and kissed it with quite an effort, the same effort it costs u to eat scorpion the first time. And I never ate scorpion so far. It’s not that I can’t accept his/her attitude towards his/her gender and sexuality, but I don’t want to be part of it!
The hand kiss was the ticket out of the spotlight and back to my seat. But for the rest of the night not back to anonymity.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.077s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0376s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb