Our trip into China

We had two ways of traveling to China - take the overnight train (which only left on Tuesdays and Fridays) or take a day bus. We chose the bus out of eagerness to get to China. After researching it we thought it would be pretty straightforward, but when we arrived in China (after a long, bumpy ride and being scrutinized at the border) we were dropped off at a bus station and were lost. Luckily a college girl saw our confused faces and came up to us and asked us where we were going in perfect english. It ended up that she was also heading towards Guilin and we shared a taxi to a different bus station where we caught a bus to Guilin. We would probably would still be stuck in Nanning if it wasn't for Sunny! She helped us get a taxi to our hostel and we were thanking our lucky stars because the language barrier here is huge and we can't speak or read chinese! She was heading to Yangshuo after visiting a friend in Guilin and then heading back to school in Xi'an. Those were all on our itinerary, so we planned on meeting up further down the road and exchanged contact information.

We checked into our hostel and immediately went looking for food (it was after 9pm and we hadn't eaten much at all). Evan had read about a restaurant called Rosemary's Cafe that had an english menu and being exhausted and knowing no chinese we decided to search for it. We thought we knew exactly where it was, but after searching for 30 minutes we were still hungry. Finally we pulled out the blackberry and found more specific directions. We were looking west of the clock tower, but it was really east. Finally there was food in our bellies! On the way to the restaurant we ran into a tout who wanted to be our guide the following day. I told him a fib and said we were staying at the Sheraton so he couldn't stalk us at our hostel. We told him to give us his number and we'd call him if we needed his help. Little did I know that he was stalking us at the restaurant. As soon as we walked out the door, there he was. Now we had to actually walk to the Sheraton to avoid my fib from being disclosed. We walked in, waited for him to leave and walked back out ducking behind cars to avoid him seeing us. We ate breakfast the next morning and managed to avoid the tout, so we caught a taxi to the bus station and hopped on a bus to Yangshuo.