KILLIN' TIME IN NANNING

After spending awhile in the internet bar, we decided to find some food. Nanning and all of Guanxi Province is known, so Derek keeps telling me, for the exotic foods eaten here. There were a couple of suggested dishes in the Lonely Planet guide book so we decided to check them out. The dish we finally ordered contained noodles and some kind of meat along with an assortment of pickled vegetables which were really tasty. It was called laoyoumien (old friend noodles).

The Lonely Planet hardly had any suggested sites to visit in Nanning. Again, everyone thinks it's a rather terrible place to visit. But it did list a museum which sported the largest bronze drum collection. After walking around an intercultural shopping/eating area where we spied a couple nice and cheap coffee shops (to which we will return later), we went to the museum. It cost 8 kuai which Derek is still lamenting over, but I kind of enjoyed the museum. The bronze drum collection was rather boring; in fact, it was a terrible let down, though now we can say we've seen the largest bronze drum collection in the world. I kept reciting this to Derek, but it didn't remove the regret he felt for paying 8 kuai (that's a dollar, by the way). Anyway, besides the drums, we also walked across a "nail-less bridge" which was a first for me, and we explored some house which I'm pretty sure someone still lives in. There was also a room of contemporary paintings which was nice to see. Though most weren't very good, it was nice to see modern art in a nation of antiquities.