Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
We woke up to more rain today - there's been a lot of rain since we arrived in China, hope it's not going to be like this every day before we leave! We enjoyed another delicious hostel breakfast before packing our bags and storing them at reception, as our flight to Xi'an is not until 9pm.
We watched another film from their huge collection, something a bit more intellectual this time - J Edgar starring Leonardo Di Caprio. We spent the rest of the day killing time in the hostel - reading and using the computers. Even if we wanted to go out, the rain didn't stop all day! Luckily it dry by the time we left to catch the airport shuttle.
The receptionist wrote a note in Chinese for us to show someone in case we got lost and explained how to get to the shuttle stop. First we had to get on the bus towards the city centre. This time we stuck out even more as we had our backpacks on - great! We managed to get off at the right stop though, although I nearly knocked a tiny Chinese woman over with my backpack when I turned around to get off the bus (it was very crowded)! We were just in time for the shuttle which was waiting at the stop and we managed to buy our tickets even though the woman didn't seem to understand 'airport'! On the 40 minute journey to the airport we got a better idea of how big Nanning is - there were huge, identical blocks of flats everywhere to house the 6.5million people that live here. It's hard to comprehend how big China is and we're only seeing a tiny bit of it.
At the airport we found where we needed to check-in, and were told that our flight was delayed because of the bad weather, but the length of the delay was not known. Great - we were already due into Xi'an quite late and now it will be even later - oh well! We drank 2 extortionate bottles of sprite at the coffee shop (£3.50 each!!), then went through security and sat at our gate to wait. The flight ended up being an hour late, not too bad considering the weather and the fact that many others were cancelled! We weren't sure if we'd get any food on the flight as it was only 2 hours, so we bought some biscuits from the souvenier shop. However, we ended up getting a free drink and a snack tray containing a bread bun, nuts, carrot cake and some interesting looking lentils and fishy pate - I gave that a miss but Dave ate his! We were quite impressed with the flight - comfortable seats and announcements in English, seemingly just for us as we were the only foreigners on board!
We arrived in Xi'an at around 1am, and were met by a taxi driver to take us to the hostel, which we'd booked in advance. We eventually arrived at our hostel about 9 hours after we left the hostel in Nanning...still a lot quicker than if we'd got the 30 hour train! Our first impressions of the hostel were very good - traditional Chinese style building with courtyards inside. We were too exhausted to explore too much though so headed straight to bed!
- comments