Back to Pingguo after annoying travel arrangements

The lazy boy didn't rouse till 11am but I understand growing kids need their growing sleep. I checked and found we needed to check out at midday so we didn't have too much time to waste before we would have three hours to waste. We checked out just before midday and walked towards the station. I'd made a deal with Leilei that we walk on the proviso that he could have a KFC if we came across one. Five minutes later we came across that horrible Colonel whatever face and indeed it was a genuine KFC. I let Leilei have a chicken burger with chips and a cola for 15 kuai but I didn't have anything despite not having had lunch yet. I checked the ctrip app I'd downloaded just to be sure how much time we had before the train and I saw that the my train tickets had been cancelled! Bollocks. I wanted to be double sure and checked me email and yes, at 2.30am I'd had an email saying the tickets were sold out - why the f did you sell them to me then you annoying bastards.

I needed to take advantage of the free KFC wifi but it was broken, as were, annoyingly, all the other free wifi hotspots in the place. We were in a sort of eating hall and we ended up walking around finding new hotspots and failing to connect on a single one. But I absolutely had to sort out how to get back, so we took the bridge to the other side of this shopping complex and found a Pizza Hut with a working wifi hotspot. It look like getting a bus was the best option. Worst case scenario would be getting an expensive taxi that we'd somehow have to arrange sharing with others. It looks like Tan was right about so many people travelling for the summer but I don't remember it being this bad before. In fact we didn't have the high speed train before and it wasn't like this - maybe just more people are travelling full stop.

I remembered there was a coach stop that Leilei and I had gone to a couple of years ago when we had to come to Nanning to fetch our delayed luggage. But it was far away, a long bus journey and I had no idea which one. So I searched for all buses to Pingguo and thankfully ctrip's page showed this info albeit totally in Chinese and in a non-mobile-optimised site. But I had a lead. From the list there were plenty of buses but the source was not the same - I counted at least three different Nanning alighting points, so next had to find a map service that worked in China. Luckily Bing maps was just about up to the job though it couldn't place my location there. I worked out there was a west station, which we'd been to a couple of years ago, an east station that was miles in the wrong direction, and a south station about 4km from where we were in the centre. Ok, nothing was bookable online so we'd take a taxi there.

As we went to the street we found a taxi waiting for us with a female driver. Ah it was almost a pleasant drive, and certainly the best I've had in Nanning. I felt a bit sexist when I gave her 20 kuai and told her to keep the change (1 kuai), but I genuinely appreciated the care she took on the road. No jokes about women drivers here.

Then we saw the queues for buying tickets and my heart sank. We could be here some time, and would we get the next bus in 45 minutes at 14:10, or would we have to wait a couple of hours or even more? I almost felt like running back to the lady driver and asking how much to Pingguo but thought better of it. If queueing is good enough for the Chinese, it's good enough for us. Five minutes later though we were halfway through the queue when Tan texted to say we were having a family meal at 5pm and what time would I be back? Bugger, now I felt even more that we wouldn't be able to get tickets - that would be just typical and of course my fault. I thought it best not to reply until I knew the horrible details but it was with palpable relief that the ticket woman answered me "14:10" when I asked for the time of the next bus to Pingguo.

We had over half an hour so went to the "Kungfu" fast food place upstairs where I had an expensive ribs and rice at 28 kuai and both Leilei got a hit of wifi after registering my and Tan's numbers and getting Tan to WeChat me Leilei's code. We found door number 5 for our coach (there were about 30 in total) and found other people that were going to Pingguo so we knew we were on the right one, but somehow I managed to board the wrong bus still, but thanks to Leilei and about 30 others, I was told the error of my ways and made my way to next bus along. Jeepers another day, had I been alone, I could have ended up in Kunming.

Leilei taking some Zs on the bus

Despite only having woken up three hours previously after 10 hours sleep, Leilei found his Chinese genes and spent most of the journey asleep. It took longer than usual due to road works and it didn't help to have crappy radio blaring out over our heads. But we arrived about 4pm and got a 15 kuai san lun che back home where we first bunged a load of clothes in the wash before going to the supermarket to pick up some provisions. Tan had told us to get some grapes to bring to Waip's but as we were leaving the supermarket the heavens literally opened and we rushed to our bike as the grape-sized raindrops tried to usher us outside. But we were English (well 75%) and made of sterner stuff. We went into 3rd gear and got home before we were totally saturated. It was bucketing down beautifully, the sort of weather that needs to be appreciated by a vodka and tonic, and as the former was one of the things I'd bought from the supermarket I performed the appropriate operation and, assuming Tan would know that we were beached at home for a few minutes, observed and enjoyed the ensuing storm in a way that literally (in the proper, classic sense of the word) no other Chinese person in Pingguo would.

GuanPark supermarket has now taken over Nanfang Baihua as my favourite supermarket in Pingguo - I've not got a card with them too

As soon as it died down I called Tan to explain why we were a little late and said we'd now get some grapes. But my usual market stall, with the women I've known only a month less than Tan, only had some greeny ones. Apparently it was the time of year. I wasn't sure but as I looked around other stalls had the same. So I ended up buying the much nice longyan fruit that Tan had said not to buy. As we were arriving at Waip's I could feel the vibration of a telling-off call coming from Tan to my pocketed phone, so didn't reach to answer. Yes of course for whatever reason we were "late" and everyone was waiting for us even though everyone meant Waipo, Jiuma, Er Jie, and Tan and Xixi. Apparently Da Jie had left yesterday.

Afterwards I took the kids home and the storm started again, but more magnificently now that it was dark, and Xixi managed to get a decent shot of some lightning on her phone. When the rain abated we went out on a ride as is our wont. It's nothing amazing, just something that we can't do in the UK. I let the kids get a bottle each of red and green tea respectively, and we all appreciated the cigarette spinny thing on the side, though I suppose it could have been used to advertise anything that fitted on it, like condoms.

After the kids were asleep and I couldn't I went for a little walk as the dian dong che was chonging dian. I happened across Beihai Seafood Boss Huang, who was the soberer of three mates sitting at a table, and had a good chat and a couple of gan beis - so much the better for him being on the beer instead of anything stronger.

Boss Huang did insist on taking me home in his new BMW

Leaving Zhuhai and arriving Nanning

The flight was due to leave at 7.50pm, but due to my past experiences with getting to airports with the locals I did not want to leave after 4pm. Momo's mum compromised and said 4.30 would be ok to get a taxi, and concurred that it would be nearly an hour. So we had some time and decided to take the bus to the beach, but I was not leaving our stuff in the house so packed up and brought my two-laptop backpack and single hand-luggage with mostly dirty clothes.

We first ate of course, at a fast food place but this didn't mean McDonald's - I had rice with duck and pork. Then as we were about to leave it bucketed down for 10 minutes. Being pessimistic I wondered what the most negative outcome could be - not being able to find a taxi, delayed plane, turbulence? But it stopped as soon as it started and we walked to the beach. Due to the humidity I could feel myself getting more moist (in the non-interesting sense) with every step. Eventually we realised we were walking to somewhere that we should really be on wheels to get to so we took a bus to an area of the beach that was designated for swimming. Thankfully we didn't swim, but the kids played football on the beach and I had to look after them trying my best not to sweat more in my long trousers, with socked shoes. Eventually it was 3.45 and I got the kids to get back and wash the sand off their feet but Momo's mum said we still had time so they went down to the water to build sand castles. Eventually at 4.10 I said it was enough and we got the kids desanded again and walked to a hotel where apparently we could get a taxi.

Except when we got there the reception rang for one but there was no answer. It was too early to panic, so I didn't, but noticed some people turn up in a taxi just as the reception had made contact with a taxi company. Not wishing to be rude, I apologised as I asked the taxi driver if he could go to the airport. He could and we bade a rather quick and thankful farewell to Momo, his brother, and his mother. I was concerned that it would take 90 minutes as we'd gone east to the beach and the airport was west, but in fact with all the weaving through the traffic it only took 50 minutes and it wasn't that long after 5pm that we arrived. But that was ok, we had lounge access, and the app said I'd be able to grab a couple of beers.

Check-in was straightforward and we got in the VIP queue for security and found the lounge just after. But it was rank. Dirty and full of empty Sprite cans - only a single fridge with crappy sugary drinks and the food was non-existant except for crappy salty biscuits. At least there was coffee (instant). I suppose I'm a bit spoilt but it actually seemed that outside the lounge in the main airport was more lounge-like than inside. When I asked the woman for a glass of wine she told me they didn't have any alcohol and I internally fumed. I would have bloody got a flight from Guangzhou instead if I'd known about this! I went for a walkabout in the airport and nowhere sold even a can of beer, except for the restaurant, which had cans for 20 kuai and I didn't want beer anyway. I seriously thought about getting a meal in the restaurant to get a glass of wine but they only did bottles for 198 kuai. Actually we had time and I really could have done with a couple, but I was with my son and I decided to be appropriate. I didn't need alcohol - I just wanted it to make what would be a turbulent flight less turbulent, but more important was being a proper parent and I knew with Leilei even if it was turbulent I wouldn't show it.

We left the lounge early as there was no advantage being there. I'd checked the status of the flight - it was coming from Xiamen and stopping off at Zhuhai for just an hour, and had arrived 6 minutes early. So we got in the queue before asked to, thinking we were being intelligent. But a tad later we were told the flight was delayed. What? We could see the blimmin thing sitting there waiting for us to get on. I searched online and found it was quite stormy in Nanning and judged that must be the reason for the delay. Then I realised we'd not get back to Pingguo tonight so I'd better sort a hotel. I could easily have rung a few friends and sorted out staying at someone's or even getting a lift, but I wanted to do this by ourselves.

I used ctrip.com to find hotels in Nanning but on my laptop it only returned one result. Hmm...I didn't want to worry, but I realised we really should sort something out so I tried tripadvisor.com but wasn't too confident in their results either. Then for some reason I tried ctrip again but this time on the phone instead of the laptop. Thank goodness for excellent portable chargers. By this time both our phones would have been dead normally (although my Samsung Note 4 has a changeable battery), but my Anker charger quickly brought both our phones back up to a decent charge. Anyway, ctrip.com showed far more hotels than I got on the main website, and we found what looked like a nice one not too far from the train station. It was only 170 kuai but by the time I chose it I found that the actual room we'd need had two beds and was 269 kuai plus 30 kuai booking fee. Still, not too bad. But just as I was about to click "Book", I noticed that the "Waiting" status for our flight changed to "Delay". I could not be sure that "Delay" wouldn't change to "Canceled" with one "l" as another had already, so I waited.

Thankfully it was only a delay of one hour, during which I downloaded the ctrip app. They are quite aware about apps in China; normally in the UK they would direct you to the Google Play "shop" but here they just get you to download the .apk file (for Android at least) and you have to set your phone to accept installations from anywhere. But I did and it worked. I got back to my near-reservation and only when we were boarding did I book it. The flight was every one of its 70 minutes long, and Leilei enjoyed watching the thunderstorms that we were trying to avoid, and I pretended to enjoy it too. I nearly regretted not getting the 198 kuai bottle of wine but manned-up. Bloody hell if everyone else on the flight wasn't having kittens about turbulence why should I? Also, I noticed the plane was totally full - gosh we might have been quite lucky to get the tickets we did.

Well we landed ok at 10pm and were out of the airport 15 minutes later. We bought bus tickets to the train station as that's where the buses go - there was no shuttle to our hotel. Hopefully soon there will be a train from the airport to the centre of Nanning as the bus took a good 45 minutes and Leilei and I were split up for the trip. I noticed that the woman sitting next to Leilei was talking to him quite a lot, and he was nodding and saying some words in response. It may not seem like much but this is very important for me. He was out of my earshot but communicating with a local and I'm sure helps his communication skills much more than just speaking Mandarin with mama.

Finally at the train station at gone 11pm, we found a san lun che, or rather the driver found us, and suggested we take a ride. I'd considered walking the 1.5km to the hotel but decided a san lun che was the better idea, so took him up on his suggestion and we endured a 10 minute ride that felt top-heavy as we careered round the broken pavements of Nanning to the hotel. Once checked in we spent a bit of time looking for the room. I thought 2612 would be on the second floor but the first "2" meant the building and the "6" meant the floor. Obviously. But Leilei liked the business room we had so I left him there and went out to grab some food.

It was well gone 11.30 and I really wanted to watch the second half of Arsenal-Liverpool that had started at 11pm, so I was looking for the nearest place that sold food. Luckily I didn't have to walk more than 5 minutes before I happened upon Zhong Shan Lu! The famous food street of Nanning where Venky was sick on er gou tou 10 years ago! Normally I would have walked the length and breadth of the place having fun but I had an 11 year old in the hotel who needed sustenance so I bought a portion of fried potatoes, a portion of tofu with flavour, and two portions of bbq pork (five with chilli, five without) for a total of 40 kuai. On the way back to the hotel I bought a six-pack of Li Quan pi jiu from a local shop at an exorbitant 30 kuai - the shopkeeper tried to get me to buy Budweiser before he heard me speak but I told him "Li Quan pijiu shi Guangxi zui hao he de!" and that put him in his place. I also bought a couple of unnecessary bottles of water - unnecessary because as soon as I got back to the hotel Leilei found two free bottles thereof.

But at least he ate some of the bbq and the potatoes. And I got him to wash and brush soon after midnight and he fell asleep to the most exciting game of the Ying Chao this year - Arsenal nearly came back from 1-4 down at home but Liverpool saw them out. This could be an interesting season! I enjoyed a couple of beers that I couldn't enjoy earlier, but felt quite good that I could take an evening flight without liquid crutches

For some reason I checked the Nanning to Pingguo train and from being sold out the other day suddenly there were some seats available on the 15:45 so I snapped them up immediately at a total cost of 120 kuai including booking before sleep crept up and did its job.