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Published: October 28th 2012
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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 up pineapple/papaya/watermelon for 1, 2 or 3yuan (15 to 50 cents) and went on our merry way. It was great!
The night market was even better. They sold everything. There was so much seafood, vegetables, fruit, coconut juice, sugarcane juice and random things to eat we could have gone there every night and had a completely different meal. We tried alligator, or maybe
it was crocodile, not really sure but it was very tender and also oysters covered in garlic. When we sat down to have some grilled vegetables, the guy also tried to get us to eat a frog. He just put a bag of live frogs in our face and we were like “no frogs!”.
We had seen people walking around eating what looked like bamboo straight off the stalk like pandas and we had to give it a try! It turned out to be sugarcane and oh so juicy. Yum yum! A sweet snack and natural toothbrush, win-win.
One of the days we decided to go to a museum. We hadn't been to any yet and heard that it was free so why not? When we asked our front desk for directions we found out that there were two museums, one close and one far. We decided to see the close one first so we walked a few kilometres and found it no problem. This was the science and technology museum and it wasn't free.. they wanted 30yuan ($5). We aren't all that interested in tech-y stuff so we left. As we left we discussed going to the
other museum; it was going to be a bit of a mission to get there since we would have to take a bus for almost an hour then arrange a driver for the rest of the trip. That seemed like far too much work and it was bloody hot out so we just walked back to our hostel. We haven't seen a single museum yet, maybe it will become a theme. Getting back to our hostel, some other backpackers that had checked in were staying in our dorm. Lulu from Australia and James from Whales. They had just come from Vietnam and it was their first day in China. We hung out with them for the rest of the day and kinda showed them the area, then went for dinner and to the night market, all the while swapping stories and advice on Vietnam/China.
Nanning was a nice spot to stay for a few days but we were ready to leave when the time came. Read on to the next blog...
xoxo Ty+Becs
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Mike
non-member comment
nice
Nice one, thanks.