We went for a sweat-inducing walk from our flat to the phone shop 500 yards away. Unfortunately "Ailun" got stuck on the way. When I say stuck I mean he say a cute girl in a shop trying to sell him a shirt. When he found out he needed to pay nearly 50 US dollars for it he said "f**k that" and left the shop in a hurry. At least that's what I hoped he would do. In the end he spent about half an hour in the place before he realised he was being ripped off and finally left. With a new $50 shirt....
By that time I'd bought a SIM card for him, and posed in several photographs with the various women in the mobile phone shop. A free gift of an umbrella was forced upon me, and I had to choose out of pink, light blue and light yellow. I chose the latter (though any would have done).
Three blokes on a san lun che
I took Andge and Aaron for some nice dumplings as we hadn't been pestered by any phone call from A Wu, so we had a really relaxing morning. While we were eating our dumplings, Ailun noticed a woman with particularly lovely legs enter the place. Interesting how only single men notice that (hmmm).
We'd planned on going to Nanning for the day as A Wu's wife A Ni had said that he was too busy to take us on a drive to do boating and visit the Vietnamese border for a few days. Well we were ok with that, and well happy with our plan to take the train to Nanning.
So of course we got a call at midday, saying A Wu was taking us out to go boating. Now that is a loaded statement. Does that mean we're going to go on a boat for the afternoon? Or does that mean we're going away from our (my) families for a couple of days with no notice. No prizes for guessing it was the latter. We were told to be downstairs in five minutes as is the usual case. I said "bollocks" we need to have a shower and not together. So in a nutshell we met downstairs in an hour or so later completely unprepared for what was to come. Except for Aaron, who keeps a month's worth of preparedness in his bag wherever he goes. At least he keeps spare socks and a flannel he calls a travel-towel....
So it turned out we got into A Wu's new car (the 10 year old Nissan) and we drove through luscious countryside for a couple of hours. This is countryside that makes the holiday worthwhile for most; I mean a thousand shades of green pickled with a small number of paddy field workers and other leather-faced locals working their arses off.
We were going boating. What kind of boating we weren't really sure. We hadn't really been told much about what we were going to do, except that we were going to meet a friend and stay in some town and drink some beer. It did seem funny that after being told to "hurry up!" so much, when we were in the car hurrying up did not seem to be a priority. Before we got out of Pingguo we must have stopped four times to pick up bottles of tea, this and that, during which time I managed to buy a Blackberry charger for my phone for a quid as I guessed we might not be back for a while. During one of these stops, we all individually noticed a girl with a great physique in the doorway of a shop. For some reason we all got out of the car and went to buy a bottle of drink from her shop. Aaron straight away tried to take a photo of her (bad move) which she didn't want. So I got talking to her and found she was from Tan's hometown of Bangxu, then I spoke the only couple of sentences I know in Bangxunese and her and her mum loved that and we were immediately accepted. Accepted for what I will never know as we were called by A Wu to "hurry up!" and get back in the car to our destination.
I had been sitting in the front, but Aaron (actually I will start calling him Ailun), Ailun said he felt a bit sick, so I ended up in the back with Andrew (sod it, his Chinese name is Anzhe) for the rest of the journey. Unfortunately, my seatbelt wouldn't click into its holder, so we arranged that Anzhe's seatbelt would go through mine before he clicked it in. The strangest thing about this was not the way we managed to both buckle-up, but the fact we'd bothered to in the first place. We found out soon enough that A Wu's shock absorbers were shockingly non-existent. And with Chinese roads the way they are this took its toll.
But anyway we arrived a couple of hours later at a river in the midst of some mountains. Suddenly we realised that if we'd been told what to expect we would have packed accordingly. We were to go white-water rafting, which entailed getting rather wet. Well, I had longish shorts on, but nothing for swimming. Sod it, we got rid of our cameras, phones, etc. and then realised we had to pay about 12 quid each (which I paid for - no problem with that, but would have liked to know we'd have to pay as had not brought too much cash).
We were told our valuables would be safe in the back of our car, and lead to a place to put on a life jacket and helmet, and grab a wooden oar. We got into a couple of inflatable dinghies - Anzhe and I, and Ailun and A Wu. What followed, unbeknown to us, was a 5.8 km trek through some beautiful aqua terrain, including fabulous white water where you'd drop 5 metres in just a few seconds - extremely fun and totally soaking! We spent a good part of the time using our helmets to get water out of the boat. Being in China, we were never sure how safe the whole thing was, which added to the excitement around each corner.
Being business-minded, the company thought to put photographers at a couple of key places, so we had the chance to buy some photos at the end for a ridiculously high price. I negotiated that we would buy 15 or so, but on condition that they let us download all the files onto one of our memory cards. It was around that time that I noticed to my horror that the one thing I'd left in my pocket was my 16GB memory card in its reader. My clothes were completely soaked, and it was with little expectation that I put the damp card in my camera and fired it up. "Memory card read error" was all I got. Double bollocks. At least we copied the photos to Ailun's memory card.
Anzhe and I white water rafting
Seaman stains
A Wu and Ailun enjoying the water
We drove for an hour or so. I think it would have taken half the time but we kept meeting problems like unfinished roads. We had to wait a few mins for a digger to offload itself from a lorry, which was quite fun to watch. Then we had to build our own ramp to get the car one foot up to a new road that was being build in a tunnel. That's one of the things I like about being here.
Building a ramp so we could get back onto the road
In the evening we arrived at a place called Da xin (Big New), that had a town square that seemed the impossible size of that of Pingguo's. But there was a major difference. We barely saw a single smile - something that is a penny a dozen in Pingguo. We all noticed this individually, and it was actually quite profound.
We went for a bbq but Aaron was quite ill so I offered to go and buy some antibiotics. But A Wu asked how I could possibly buy such things in a place I hadn't been before. I said I'd asked someone and the chemist was over there, but he insisted on driving a long-winded way to get to the same place. Anyway, I got two packs for 50p each, and only regret not having bought loads to bring back to the UK.
Back at the bbq Aaron had perked up a little, and actually managed a couple of glasses of beer before we left. I experienced the wonderful feeling of bringing something back from the dead when I retried my 16GB memory card in the camera and suddenly it decided to be readable! It was one of those money-can't-buy experiences, though I'd have sold it for about forty quid. So happy to have my memory card back...as long as it lasts till we get back home and I can copy it to my external hard drive.
What finding out that your 16GB memory card works again may look like (ok that was taken earlier in the day but it conveys my sentiment, and the shakiness of the car)
A bit later I said I fancied a head wash, which A Wu said we could do. However, by the time we checked-in to our hotel it was too late. I had my first argument this year when I came down to the reception with Andrew after the others were in bed and asked for a couple of beers. I was told that the service was unavailable, which I accepted. Then I asked for a bottle of water, and was told that there was no water either. I flipped my lid and shouted at the woman that this was a fucking hotel and I wanted a bottle of fucking water. Within 30 seconds I had two bottles. I hate to say it but sometimes you have to put down your hand like that. And had thoughtfully brought a bit of whisky and we made use of the water to make it a bit more palatable and had a very enjoyable 30 mins getting pissed by the hotel maids until A Wu rang me and told me we had to get up at 7am and to hurry up back to the hotel room....
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