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Yangshuo to Nanning
I was glad of my early night when I got up at 6.45. I tiptoed around the room trying not to wake anyone and made my way out toward the bus station. Yangshuo was almost deserted, all the shops were closed and only the odd local restaurant was taking customers. I tried my luck in one such eatery near the bus station and had to point at the pictures on the wall to get anything. It was very basic, noodle soup, but filling enough and very cheap of course.
I entered the bus station yard and waved away all the crazy people who seemed to think that me and my pack wanted to go to Xinping (the famous beauty spot on the Li River). I approached the ticket window and before I got there the lady said 'Nanning?', I nodded, and she indicated the bus to my left with some people already waiting. Easy!
The bus was great, with big wide comfy seats and movies playing on the TV at the front (both dubbed and subtitled in Chinese, of course!). When we got there I had a bit of misfortune as, when removing my bag, I knocked over a plastic carton of conkers that smashed and shed its load all over the floor. I quickly helped the guys scoop them all back in, but could have done without the extra fuss.
I bumped into a couple of white girls who turned out to be English AND staying in the same hostel. I relaxed a lot once we decided to catch a taxi together. It made my life 10 times easier because I did not need to search for a bus and try and guess which stop to jump off at! I had also asked the girl at the Yangshuo hostel to copy down some instructions for a taxi in Chinese and this, together with the map the girls had on a phone, got us to the hostel suprisingly easily.
The hostel istelf was pretty nice. It was empty when we got there and only one more guy came that evening. I had a room to myself, as did the girls, and the other chap. The owner was an American who really liked to talk. I popped out early evening for grub and decided to go western and have a pizza for a change. I ordered the one with 'Beef fluff' expecting this to be another example of Chinglish, but actually the pizza really was beef fluff and was the most horrid pizza I have ever had. So bad that I could not even eat it. I managed half and that was a push. Who knew you could get pizza so wrong? That will teach me for trying to go western. Never again!
That evening the owner left us around half 9 and we had the place to ourselves. There was a big TV with Xbox and loads of movies, so we watched a couple and headed to bed. Me and the girls had booked the same bus at 10.00 the next day, and planned to catch a taxi from the street to get there.
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