We left Hanoi on the 9.30am bus to Nanning in China. We understood from the travel agent who sold us the tickets that this would be the same bus all the way to Nanning. The scenery started a bit dull, but by the time we reached the border we decided we’d seen some of the prettiest scenery in Vietnam. Tiers of rice paddies through the hills, really lovely.
We arrived at the border 3 hours later, took our luggage off and took an electric car to Vietnamese passport control. Passed through there without mishap and then dragged our luggage up and down hills and slip ways to the Chinese passport control. Again no problems, THEN we look for our bus. A little Vietnamese man, who was on our bus, kept beckoning us to follow him. We hovered around for several minutes before we decided to follow other travellers down hill and dale. There was absolutely nothing in English, very few people had any English and we were the only non Asians we’d seen so far today. Eventually, Paul was wandering around a car/ bus park looking for our bus, I was guarding the luggage, when someone said ‘Nanning’to us and pointed at a building. We looked inside and found a waiting room. Two people here were able to help us with a little English, apparently we didn’t take the same bus, now we would be on a Chinese bus, pink, not green they said laughing at us! Now I had lost my reading glasses and neck rest, both left on the old bus, which I was going to collect when I got back on it! Also left the food that we’d bought for the trip! Live and learn! Now we had another 3 hours on a new bus to Nanning.
We arrived in Nanning at 6pm, tried to get a taxi to our hotel! That was a bit hectic. In the end I asked some girls who were doing a promotion outside a shop if any of them spoke English. One girl was very helpful and after about 20 mins we found a taxi. We didn’t have a clue where we were going. Nanning is a huge city, and still we were the only non Asians. After 15 mins in the taxi and a fare of £3, we arrived at our hotel. The Grand Soluxe Nanning. Our room was enormous and the bed must have been 8” wide.
We ate in the hotel, as we were too tired to venture out
