Posted from Nanning, Guangxi, China.

Nici’s first impressions of China was it was much like the old East Germany,good old communism.Lots of Square concrete buildings with no paint. Lots of farmland. Lots of obvious poverty. The poverty started to fade away in Nanning though. Having travelled through several Asian countries and found many people who spoke English, we were struck by just how few people in China spoke English. Like most, speak none. That includes shop assistants, information, tickets sellers, cab drivers,. None. People openly stared at us, even taking photos. Ayesha who is going through a self conscious phase was not happy about it and gave many the evil eye, Orlando got his usual amount of “Oh very beautiful” with people pinching his cheeks and stroking his hair. He just smiles and is gracious about it, though deep down I know he is both pleased with the adoration, and peaved at the physical contact.

Note. Apparently its bad manners to pick up a piece of chicken bone in a restaurant with your fingers and eat it…. If you must…. Use tissues….. buts its OK, to hawk up a big gob of spit and hack it into the corner of the restaurant. Go figure that one.

True to form going into a new country without yet knowing the prices, we got ripped of pretty much straight away. I paid about 500% above the going rate for fruit. Nici paid a high price for a bag that started to fray after 1 hr. But since we were hanging out some of the day with Snake and Vincent, we paid Chinese prices twice for food, so that probably made up for it. As i write this we are travelling towards Hong Kong on the sleeper bus.