Did your dinner just bark?

We arrived in Nanning on January 4th around 9:00 am. We found a hotel near the railway station, checked in (internet access IN our rooms, free!) and headed out to do two things: find a post office (always proven to be a big chore for us) to mail some things home, and find a bank where we could get rid of our Chinese Yuan for some US cash. We walked around Nanning, quite a modern city, but only about 1.3 million. As luck would have it, the main Post Office and the main Bank of China branch were right across the street from each other, according to our map. Well, we found the correct street, and we found the bank, but we couldn't find the post office. We needed to go to the post office first to use Yuan to pay for postage, then exchange whatever we had left at the bank. We asked (ie pointed at our book) at the bank to be sure, and the security guy at the door pointed right across the street. Well, in order to cross this street, we had to walk all the way down to a corner with a traffic light, and all the way back up the other side of the street. This took at least 15 minutes. When we were finally across from the bank and didn't see the post office, Nigel went into one of the buildings and asked. The girl said to just keep walking in the direction we had come. So, we walked, and kept walking. When we knew for sure we'd gone WAY too far, we asked someone else. She of course pointed back in the direction we'd come. We walked back, still didn't see the post office so we went into the China Telecom building to ask someone there. Nigel pointed to "Main Post Office" in the book and the girl said "Yes, right here." Well, this didn't look like a post office to us. After about 8 staff members crowded around us and our guide book, we finally realised that perhaps the post office had moved. One of the girls did manage to right down the address of where she thought there would be a post office.

Off we go again. We found another post office, but this was a small one. From previous experiences, we knew we would need to find the main post office to send an international package. As we were standing out in front, a man stopped and asked us in English if we needed some help. He informed us that yes, this is the post office, and yes, they can send international mail. After waiting in line, the woman informed us (through charades again) that we'd need to go to the main post office. See, we really DID know what we were doing! Luckily, she could actually read the map of her own city when we showed it to her(unlike the girls at China Telecom), and she marked down where we'd find this elusive post office.

We walked a way and sure enough, it was exactly where she said it would be. And all this after only 4 hours! By this time, we were across the city from the bank and very near our hotel room, so we forgot about changing money. Instead, we set out to find some dinner. Being our last night in China, we wanted to eat a good meal. We ordered fried rice with vegetables and pork with chili (what we had with Xiao Yin in Zhangjiaie, which we had him write down for us in Chinese so we could order it again). When the food arrived, it looked pretty good. We both tried a bite of the pork dish, but it didn't really taste like pork to us. It didn't taste bad, just not like pork. I remembered what Xiao Yin said to me when I asked him what does dog taste like. He said "It kind of tastes like pork, but it is much better." So of course, we were immediately convinced that this was dog, especially since it is a specialty cuisine in Nanning. Needless to say, we only ate the rice.

We explored what seemed like endless streets of night markets, selling everything and anything. The streets we so full of people that it was nearly impossible to walk. We have enjoyed the fact that most Chinese cities seem to be really alive and busy at night, full of people shopping, eating and walking around. We headed back to the hotel after some time, desperately trying not to think about Kyla.