Scotts Blog

Well after a good nights sleep it was time to find out how easy it was going to be to get into China. According to the lonely planet you can not cross the border here unless your visa was issued in Hanoi or Beijing as the case may be. Mine was from sunny Sydney! Well after a brief breakfast I headed the 500m or so to the border. It could not have been easier, exited Vietnam in about two mins, walked 200m across a bridge then got into China in about 2 mins. It was quite funny on the Chinese side they were renovating their border building and you had to get your passport stamped in the middle of a construction site. There was jackhammering about 4m away, and then walking through a myriad of bamboo scaffolding and wires along the floor was something different.

Upon arrival I changed my money for Yuan, then went to the bus station. I was in Guangxi province (state) so heading to the capital seemed like a good idea. After about 30mins I was off to Nanning. The bus was easy and after managing to get a nap I was in sunny (extremely hot would be better) Nanning. A girl helped me onto the bus and I got to my hotel without any problems at all. One thing I was quickly realising is that English is next to useless in China, hardly anyone speaks it, and if they do it is like me trying to speak Chinese reading straight from a book, really hard to understand. The people were all nice though so that was good. One thing that really surprised me after going to India is how modern China is. In a lot of ways Nanning was more modern than Sydney, all the buildings look brand new, there are apartments everywhere, great shopping malls. Well that is how is appeared on the surface. I guess I was expecting a bit of a shambles.

After I settled it was time to walk around and see what was going on around town. I quickly started to realise (and had also read) that they have not really let anything stand in the way of progress. In Nanning they had no nice old buildings, the architecture was all extremely functional and cutting edge but lacked the human touch. The brand new malls were bustling but were all perfectly square, they did not have common areas like open food courts or something just corridors to fit in lots of box shaped shops. It was good to have a look around, but the problem with shops is they are only any use if you want to buy something.

The next day I booked a night bus ticket to Guangzhou which is the capital of Guangdong province, it was a sleeper and was meant to take 11 hours but I was surprised how expensive it was compared to what I had been paying in Vietnam. When I say a sleeper I really mean a sleeper, the bus was full of bunk beds, three across, two high and about maybe 8-10 deep.

Once in Guangzhou I made it to a hostel after some agitation on the buses, trying to find one to go where you want to go is very hard, but they are very cheap about 2 RMB which is about 30 cents. The hostel was good, it was clean and air conditioned which makes all the difference. I have a long much needed shower with hot water! That was joy! It was only about 9am so I decided to go and check out Guangzhou it is a great town with plenty to see and do.

I decided to spend the day walking around, I mapped out various things to go and check out, temples, parks, shops and food. The temples were good and there were hundreds of incense sticks burning all over the place. The highlight would have to be when I went to a great park called Yuexiu park, it was similar to the botanic gardens I guess with a lot of different paths and sculptures. A great thing about Guangzhou was their subway it was amazing, so fast and really easy to use, Sydney needs one desperately to get around the city and near by suburbs.

The next day it was off to Maccau so I jumped on a bus that took me to the border!

I can’t access my photos in China but you can see them at www.flickr.com/photos/fletch007