Guilin to Nanning... Sarah tells the story.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh made it in one piece JUST from Guilin to Nanning on a 6 hour train. The journey was made a lil more taxing than first intended for reasons i will explain....
1) finding our platform!! well.....to start with we had no idea where to go, we were herded (and yes i mean herded!!!) into the waiting area. Then the magical gates to the platform opened, and this was when chaos started!!! The end wasn't to Narnia but instead it was a mad Chinese rush to make it to the platform alive! as the Chinese seem to think the end of the world is coming and they must make it to the platform at all costs!!!!! (human or animal)
2) finding our seat!........right so we have made it to the platform, located our carriage (number 3) soon to find out the train was in fact a double decker. This added further confusion as we had to work out whether we were upstairs or downstairs. After much guess work and Shalina getting trapped in an aisle (unable to move forwards or backwards) we located our seat. Luckily i managed to convince a nice Chinese young man to help us store our luggage above and below.... so we are all set for take off
3) after putting up with each others confined company for about 4 hours we thought things couldn't get worse.........oh no how wrong we were!! Every half an hour we had some very excited sales people come into the carriage and try to sell there products. When i mean selling the products i mean...shouting, taking an age to say or demonstrate what their AMAZING gadget does. These products varied from "fashionable socks", "magic blanket","playing cards" and lastly, what made EVERYONE want to kill themselves on the train, a lil yoyo thing that went up a string, flashed and played happy birthday over and over and over and over and over and over and oh yes OVER!!!!!! again. Which a lovely child opposite decided to purchase. Therefore for the next 2 hours we were serenaded by the annual classic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4) buying our ticket to Ha noi and leaving the station!!................after finding the ticket office, Shalina decided to behave very British like and politely queued in the right line, only to be laughed at and pointed to move down the other ended of the office. I then returned to find Shalina quite shaken and confused to say the least. We managed to get our tickets after I had proven to the ticket man i had a legit passport and Vietnam visa, we exited happy customers. Even though we have no bloody idea what is written on our ticket, or where we have to go tomorrow......yay
we got the bus outside the station fine and got off at what we thought was the right stop, at this stage i thought Shalina was wrong and we had got off too late, but i was to tired to care and just let Shalina think she was right. Which was probably the best course of action as my mind had been melted by "happy birthday" so what use i was is worthless to know. Anyway we did get off at the wrong stop, but luckily found a really nice Chinese man to show us the way to the hostel. Bless him, he was walking in the other direction and hardly spoke any English but walked us to the hostel. When he left he said in broken English that it looked like we needed help and it wasn't safe for us both to be walking aimlessly around Nanning (which i think he was probably right).

So yeah we have made it to Nanning and currently appreciating the beer which is 50p may i add :). Recharging ready for Vietnam tomorrow, wooooooop didddddi woooop wooooop
so catch up then
peace out
Sarah aka Buckle xxx