Delightfully Uninspiring

Day 45: Nanning (CN). Billed by the Lonely Planet as '..hard to love due to its relentless urban sprawl...', there wasn't a great deal to commend us to the city of Nanning. There was no Great Wall to walk, no clay soldiers to uncover and no spectacular scenery to lose ourselves in. In fact, Nanning was as average and as uninspiring a city that you could possibly care to stumble upon. But we loved it.

We were here, not by virtue of what the city could offer, but by necessity as we planned our onward travel route through southern China right down to the Vietnamese border. But it was precisely these kind of non-eventful days that we had set about encountering before we embarked on our overland adventure. For Karen and I, these kind of days marked the difference between the 'travelling' we wanted to do and the 'break-neck tourism' that had traditionally formed the theme of our holidays. With nothing to do and no-where to go, today was all about chilling: Long lunches, window shopping and whiling the hours over a cup of the local tea - watching the world go by. Perfect!

And by taking time, even humdrum places like Nanning can prove to be fascinating. Well off of the tourist trail, this city and it's people were as 'Chinese' as it gets. Such was the complete lack of any western influence on the restaurant menus that Karen and I found it quite difficult to find anything we wanted to order - although, I'm sure in some part, that had to do with the literal translations used to help English ignoramus like us. For instance, I challenge anyone (western or eastern) to get enthused by the prospect of 'Miscellaneous Pig's Bits' or for anyone's digestive juices to start flowing when offered the delightful 'Mashed Frog in a Pot'!