Nanning, China

Nanning is a gateway city to Vietnam. There is even a Vietnamese consulate to get a visa. This is the primary reason most backpackers go there and it was mine as well. In fact, it was one of three things I wanted to accomplish in Nanning. The other two were laundry (successfully completed) and trip planning (unsuccessfully started).

Getting the visa was easy enough and the laundry was probably the cheapest I have seen in China, which was a nice coincidence. The trip planning, however, is a different story. When I decided to not go to Europe and extend my trip much of the months of planning I did before I left the States became useless and I needed to figure out what my new plan was going to be. I have some estimation of it, but I figuring out some minute details, for example when I am going to India and Nepal, in advance will save me lots of money in airfare. So, I wanted (and still want) to figure that out.

The reason Nanning has a Vietnamese consulate is to attract travelers. (That is complete speculation. I have no idea if it is true but I would bet that it is 100% true.) In other words, few people go to Nanning for Nanning. The city is OK; it is known by its inhabitants as the "green city" because there are so many trees. While there are a lot of trees, there is also a lot of non-trees and gray. The park is subpar and the markets are nowhere near as intersting as other markets in China.

To be honest, the my favorite part of Nanning was this Muslim restuarant that was near the hostel I was staying at. So far when travelling I try to eat at a variety of places and eat different dishes as often as I can. This was not the case in Nanning. I think I had two meals during the four nights that I was in Nanning that was not from this Muslim place. It was great. Among the best food I had in China. I never got the same thing twice and every dish was at least good, often really good, and several times great. Two of the dishes I had are probably among the top five meals I have during the entire time I was in China. I made sure that the bus I was taking to Hanoi, Vietnam departed from Nanning at a time that was condusive to me getting one last meal from this place. It was so good that I have spent an entire paragraph writing about it.