Back to Guangzhou

Up at 8am for a very short time before 11.30am came around and I managed to get up at midday as I knew I'd not packed properly. I'd decided to leave about half the clothes I'd turned up with as Tan had plonked 12kg of clothes for her and Xixi in my suitcase yesterday and said that was fine as I still had 11kg. Blimey my suitcase was full and above 20kg when I came here and that was without presents.

So I went to get four portions of jiaozi from our local place but she only had one. But this time I was willing to wait seven minutes, so popped next door and had a nice chat with the bloke looking after Lu zong's water shop, whom I'd known for some time but not really had a proper conversation with before. Yes it was a simple conversation but he didn't know it would be one of my last for a while and I really appreciated it and drank it up. Even after saying goodbye to the jiaozi woman I took the long way back just to stop at the second hand dian dong che place to say thank you again to the bloke who fixed our bike four weeks ago.

I also spent time playing with a poor kitty in a bird cage but I guess had she not been there she'd have been run over by now...and how dare I define it as a she?

Back home it was gone 1pm and I knew I should sort out seats for the flight tomorrow, but I first had my portion of jiaozi and allowed myself a Li Quan pijiu as I wouldn't have the chance for a long while. Frustratingly, China Southern wouldn't accept my flight details. I'm sure this is all to do with asking for a quote for changing the date to go back 10 days ago when BA insisted that I get another booking reference. But this booking reference wouldn't work, and neither would the original ticket number. I tried with Leilei's and it went through fine and he was seat 60J. Then with Nezha his was fine and already 60H so at least they'd been put together. But for the sin of requesting a quote for a later flight I was not able to find my flight and for all I know I may not even get on the flight tomorrow. It's these sort of times that I have hope for my Amex travel insurance should something bad happen tomorrow.

At least the boys managed to rumble of out bed and grab a shower by 2pm. We did our last minute stuff and I realised I'd be leaving two pairs of shoes, three or four pairs of trousers, and at least six tops. But I'd be coming back with two Pingguo Haliao football tops to put that in perspective. I grabbed my shower last minute at 2.30pm as didn't want to be sweating before the train, and Tan said she and Xixi would come to the train station with us to book their tickets to Nanning tomorrow. At 2.59pm, 58 minutes before our train was due, she booked a didi che, but for some reason couldn't book two. As it was we managed to get all our luggage in the boot and front seat of the car and then Tan said they weren't going as Xixi wasn't ready or something. So in typical Pingguo style we left in a single car to minimal goodbyes.

And under 10 minutes later we were at Pingguo Huoche Zhan, and it cost a whole 5.4 kuai! My bags went through fine despite having a portable charger but Leilei's got found. Nezha had four lighters, which they found and said he was only allowed to take two - and that was fine apparently as two didn't work anyway...but still why take them? Luckily I'd told them not to take the bibi guns or the knives they'd bought, so five minutes later we were in the waiting room with only 10 minutes to go before queuing up for our train. I imagined what it would have been like had we had to take a 4pm flight from Nanning...we'd have probably had to leave Pingguo soon after 10am with no time for last minute packing or lunch. Not to mention the only flight to Guangzhou was at 7.20am which would have meant hotels and 4am waking up - no thank you!

Apparently this is a "happy" look, though sad to be leaving Pingguo

Now I know what is different about Pingguo this time. It's quiet, at least relatively. There's very little bibbing, far fewer fireworks, and just in general there's been less noise where we live. I quite appreciate that. And indeed the journey to the station was as calm as any journey I've taken in this city. Even in our 1st class carriage (as all the other tickets had sold out a day after going on sale) there were not so many people with loud mobile games playing, or shouting on their phones. It's all just a little bit perceptibly calmer.

The 4h29m journey was spent mostly asleep by the boys, who have rarely got up before 4pm, but that wouldn't happen for me so I ended up having the cold beer I'd brought with me with the silly idea of bringing it to the UK. At the tube station I bought three 9 kuai tickets as I'd done back in June, except this time using Weixin. You'd have thought they'd tell you how much it would be but I was just given the option of various prices so worked on memory. Of course an hour and a bit later the tokens we were given would not let us out and I had to find the service person who told us that we needed to pay 1 kuai more each. Inflation? Some other reason? I certainly wasn't going to find out there and then and ended up paying 1 kuai with Weixin but for some reason I needed to pay the other two with cash.

I called the hotel, who gave me the number of the driver, then called him to find out he'd be outside door 46. As luck would have it we were at number 44 so 50 yards later we went to wait and didn't see anything. Fair enough he did say he'd be a few minutes but after 10 minutes I called him again and he said he was already there. In my mind I'd imagined a Spacecruiser-sized mianbao che but after a few shouts I heard his voice emanating from a much larger vehicle and we got in with only just enough space for our luggage, and 10 minutes later we were in what actually looked to be a decent hotel. As soon as I had checked in and we'd dumped the luggage we went downstairs to get our free noodles. There were only two sets left in the warmer so I let the boys have them and they went out straight away to find drinks because the noodles would be "too dry" without that. Whatever. The lady gave me a new set of noodles and I couldn't be bothered to wait for them to get warm and they were actually rather nice for free.

The boys came back saying there were no shops but I took that as a bit of a challenge as I rather fancied a cold beer. So I left them and walked for around 45 minutes and indeed there was nothing. Plenty of living areas and work areas but this place 3.7km from the airport did not want to sell me anything. So back at the hotel I asked if they happened to have any cold beers and of course they did, and I chose four local brews at a costly 16 kuai each but I didn't care...they went down very well and I even got two more when the boys decided they wanted an ice lolly each. The hotel room was ok but lacked the sofa the trip.com app said it would have. But Leilei set about putting a few cushions on the floor inside some sort of kid's wigwam (the hotel room was family-oriented) as fair enough at his age he didn't want to share even a king-size bed with me and my snoring. Well it was to be my last night in China for a while, and after a brief chat with Awl fell asleep by 2am.