Al decided to take me on a walk and escorted me to what we later decided must have been a brothel, (dimmed lights, men wandering from room to room, over-attentive female staff) the lady of the house made some polite English conversation with us (“You are very beautiful”) and then overcharged us for coffee as we clearly weren't paying for anything else. We went back to our hotel room a little dejected and ate some more noodles.
Retreat:
Unfortunately the next morning it was raining and we decided that rather than getting wet and muddy and freezing to death even more it would be best to head back south – we had cleverly posted all our winter clothes home in Australia without thinking that it might be winter in China. So south we went, to the town of Nanning. It was our intention here to catch the a bus the next morning to Vietnam, however we discovered that we would need to buy a visa for the overland crossing so ended up staying another day to sort that out.
There wasn't too much to see in the town but we did stumble upon the daily park activities of the Chinese: salsa lessons in the park - both men and women partook in this, although the majority of men were sitting round small tables playing cards and draughts in another park. 
Massagey?
That night, as we were preparing for bed at the Railway Hotel, the phone rang. Al picked it up to hear a lady's voice on the other end: “hello, massagy?” “what?” “massage in room?” “Uh, no thanks, we're fine thank you.” We knew that the hotel offered massages but thought it a little weird that they were phoning us up at night for one. Then there came a knock at the door, Al went to answer it to see a lady standing there. “Hello” he said, “We don't want massage.” “Toto!” she said, “you want toto?” “What's toto, I don't understand?” “Toto!” she said again, making the international symbol for sex with her fingers. “Uh no thanks!” stammered Al. “Oh, but you so cute!” she said disappointed. Al quickly closed the door and ran back inside the room where I was laughing. Gotta admire her entrepreneurial skills.
Street Food:
On our second day in Nanning we were preparing for more noodles in our hotel room when we bumped into a friendly local girl who directed us to a 'famous' restaurant street. We followed her instructions and came across an amazing maze of streets, hidden away, serving an array of foods from their market stalls. We walked along taking in the sights and smells of this place – live fish swimming in tanks, bright coloured fruit stalls, displays of meats, vegetables and fish outside restaurants, live crabs and lobsters... and dead, skinned (and sometimes honey-glazed) dogs hanging from hooks, some of them even set in a position where they look like they are snarling at you! – enough to give anyone nightmares. Al, who knows a good place to eat when he sees one, pulled me towards a little stall where four chefs were busy frying fresh squid kebabs – we bought a selection of tentacles on sticks, coated in spicy honey and sesame sauce, and ate them while walking around checking out the rest of the market. We chose from one of the many places to eat and sat down. A waitress brought us a menu, which was written in Chinese, so we opened our lonely planet book at the food section and ordered off-menu. It worked out pretty well and we got some of the best food we'd had in China so far. We tried to leave a tip at the end of the meal but as we walked away they came running after us with the money – we tried to explain and they eventually understood, although I think they thought we were crazy.
Crisis:
Unfortunately we had a bit of a crisis that evening – a computer in an internet cafe corrupted my USB stick which had ALL my blog for Hong Kong and China as well as copied photos to upload... needless to say I was gutted and it took me a few days to recover and begin writing all over again.
My Chinese photo pose (they're all into the peace sign over here):
0 comments:
Post a Comment