Back from Bangkok for a bit

I felt a bit bad getting the 1pm flight back from Bangkok, but other options would have meant a late arrival at Pingguo. As it was, the Air France/KLM lounge at Bangkok was really nice and I had a good meal and couple of looseners for the journey, which thankfully this time was nondescript. I had meant to rearrange my flights back at Nanning airport but totally forgot until I was on the bus ready to go back to Nanning train station. I could have got off but thought sod it I’ll risk calling them later. I tried to book train tickets on my phone but to my massive annoyance I found I had no credit. I’d tried turning on roaming in Bangkok but only got 2.5G and could barely get a message through, so I had bought a Thai SIM and used that instead - surely that can’t have used up all my credit? I tried in vain to attach to the airport wifi but accepted I would just have to try to get tickets at the train station, something that hasn’t worked the last three times I tried, but I had hope as when I checked from Bangkok there were still 99+ spaces left.

And there was hardly even a queue at the station where I was used to waiting 30+ minutes, so I was doubly happy when I had a ticket in my hand for just over an hour’s time. This meant I could look for a China Mobile shop and see what was going on. It took 10 mins and it was quite sweaty in the early evening 27 degrees, but finally I came upon a woman who looked at my SMSs and said “liang kuai”. Only 20p to top up? Cool I have 2 kuai, then she said I needed money for credit...oh blimey, the 2 kuai was just her service fee. I had no idea how much to add but as I was due to leave in two days I gave 50 kuai and she did the top up and walked away. So did I but it soon became apparent I still wasn’t online. I went back and found her and showed her the latest SMS and she said I needed to top up more. Jeez, I gave her another 50 kuai and another 2 kuai service fee and waited. Eventually another SMS came like the previous one. Except this one mentioned -12.94, and the previous one had mentioned -62.94. Suspiciously 50 more than the previous one. I showed her this and she said yes, I’d need to top up again. Blimey she could have told me that after the first top-up, and I told her she should have but she said she didn’t see it. I guess she may not have been lying and reluctantly gave her 32 kuai so I was back in the black and straight away WeChat messages came rolling in. Well it was pricey, but I was ready to go back.

In Pingguo I thought better of asking someone to pick me up and took a 10 kuai san lun che back home at 8pm where I’d hoped to grab a shower. But friends were pestering me to go and eat and using the excuse of their kid being there who wanted to see me. Anyway I was starving as I’d not had a meal in the flight, so went to friend’s house where they’d pretty much finished the food anyway and wanted me to drink sweet red wine. There was not really any other option, so I politely fitted in. A couple of the women were pretty drunk, but they decently knew when to leave, unlike a similar scene in the might have been in the UK.

We finished at a rather sensible time at midnight and despite the levels of drunkenness everyone took their part in cleaning up. So it was back home to put out the newly washed clothes and be a “normal” resident for a couple of days at least.

Stupidly after that I was still awake so went to see racist Huang but his place was closed, so went to Boss Zhou’s around the corner. Unfortunately he had already left but as I was about to go home a couple of people around one of his tables beckoned me for a drink. I looked as non-committal as I could, which meant I parked the bike and walked over and ended up sitting with them for much longer than I should have. But it was great being back and better when Zhang Hongping turned up at about 2.. I ended up staying till 4am and enjoyed it perhaps more than I should have.