The journey to Nanning began in Sanya, where I got on a train to Haikou. I went to the train station after getting advice from numerous people and found queues of varying lengths, in front of signs with different Chinese characters on them in different colours. I had got up early to get a train to Haikou, so got some dumplings in Sanya and set off for the train station. I was working on the assumption that any train would do, but a fast one would be better and the shorter queues were probably for the fast trains. The advice that I had been given was that there were a lot of students returning home and the slower, cheaper trains were going to be more popular. I got to the counter and got sold a ticket for a high-speed train.

Once I was in Haikou, I exited the train station to find it was different from the one that I had used before. This wasn’t totally unexpected, but meant that I had to find my way to the ferry terminal using bus routes I’d never used before. I walked across the road and found something hat looked like a bus station. After pointing to the name in Chinese of the port I wanted to go to, a friendly bus-driver man pointed me in the direction of the nearest main road. I walked down that until I came to the first bus stop, where someone indicated that I actually needed the next main road, running perpendicular to the one I was on. After getting to that one, I showed someone at one of the stops the piece of paper the original man had written on and they tried to find the stop I needed on the bus information poster. Without confirming that I had the right place, the right bus turned up and the man driving it confirmed that it was going in the right direction. It was obvious when we were at the port, but another curious bystander helped explain where I needed to get off, before the stop arrived.

In the ferry terminal, I booked a bus ticket for Nanning. This was an overnight sleeper bus and involved a ferry ride, so I popped back in to Haikou to get some supplies before setting off. This I also did by bus.

Once on the bus, I got comfortable and we were all then told to get off. I walked to the ferry with Peter, a Christian missionary from Taiwan, who offered to help with anything I needed. I spent the next few hours talking to Peter, who was visiting Hainan on Church work.

Once we had arrived in China, we were all told to get off the ferry and on to the busses. This I did and we continued on the bus to Nanning. Instead of arriving in Nanning at about 06:30, as described, we got there at about 02:30. This meant that Peter and I were left to wander around the bus station at 02:30 and ended up getting a taxi to KFC, where we waited for places to open.

Whilst in Nanning, Peter had called one of his friends, who came to pick him up at about 06:30. They offered to give me breakfast, so I joined them on a trip to one of his friend’s coffee shops. This was a luxury coffee shop on the 23rd floor of an apartment block and he made me a very nice pot of fruit tea and a pancake. It was great and at 07:00 in the morning seemed very surreal.

Later the same day I got taken back by Peter’s friend (also from Taiwan) to where my hostel was located. I jumped out and checked-in, having a shower and sleeping almost straight away.

Whilst in Nanning I didn’t really do much, other than explore the city and find good places to eat. I planned how I was going to get to Hanoi and set off for the train station late on the last day.