Guangzhou - Nanning

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Day 43 - Monday 13th October. It's my birthday!!! Woke up with a bit of a hangover from the night before so was obviously pleased when Paul came down with a beer for everyone at breakfast! Before we went out for my birthday we had to go through the formalities of booking our train to Nanning etc for the 15th. We went out mid afternoon for drinking, a meal and to be stared at but it was raining heavily all day so couldn't venture too far. After dinner we bought a bottle of what turned out to be Chinese rice wine. It was disgusting and too strong to drink. However, we did have fun lighting it on the table. We went back to the hostel where Luciano, a Brazilian guy sang happy birthday to me in Portuguese on his guitar. I ended up sitting outside with 2 french people, an algerian, a dutch lady, a korean, a guy from Liverpool and some chinese people until 4am in the morning. Then i was violently sick so went to bed.

Day 44 - Tuesday 14th October. Did absolutely nothing all day. It was great. Except went to Pizza hut as anymore chinese food would have been a very bad idea.

Day 45 - Wednesday 15th October. Check out day. Just when you start to settle it's time to move on! Unfortunately, our train to Nanning was booked for 2pm so we'd arrive at 2am the next morning. The station was mobbed as everywhere seemed to be and the Chinese push everywhere they go. There is no queueing. I had a moment of panic when i put my rucksack through the metal detector and it didn't come out the other side. I thought at first some sneaky chinese guy had stolen it before i got round but instead i had just managed to jam the whole machine and got shouted at. Once on the train we tried chatting to 2 chinese guys and a girl. It didn't work so we resorted to making up our own answers to what we thought they may have said. Later on we met Nina who had understood every word we had been saying. This was a bit embarrassing but Nina insisted her english was poor, although she managed to hold a conversation with us for 4 hours!! At 10pm they switched the lights out so we had no choice but to go to bed. I was tired but didn't get much sleep as the Chinese guy above me kept using my toes as a ladder when getting up and down.

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