a brief glimpse of Nanning

There really isn't much to say about the remainder of my journey through China on July 13th. I managed—just barely—to make my connection in Kunming at around four o'clock. Even so had the flight not been delayed, I'd have missed it. As I sprinted through the airy, crowded, never-ending concourse I found myself wishing that I could've taken photos of this amazing airport and the mist-shrouded, awe-inspiring mountains surrounding it. 

The transfer at Nanning was annoying. I had to go through security for the fourth freakin' time. The airport was ancient, the roof leaky, the rafters rusty, the X-ray machines antique, the employees confused and overawed by the sudden influx of people, and the rain warm, heavy, and wet. It came bucketing down on us during our bus transfers to and from the terminal as though to give us a little preview of Indochina. 

Let's just say that I got in to Hanoi in the late afternoon after the last hour-long hop across the Vietnamese border. I peered hawkishly out of the porthole and saw a fair verdant country dotted with stands of banana trees, hummocky hills with tousled hair, and rice paddies the color of chai. It didn't look too different from Korea from the air, just wetter. 

What really astounded me were the clouds: heaps of low-lying cumulonimbus, heavily pregnant with rain and choking up the airways at 10,000 feet. Spires, pillars, minarets, enormous castles with crenelated keeps and battlements, men-o'-war with all sails flying, puffy white battleships with jagged conning towers, swirls of ice cream with Reddi-wip on top, thundering stampedes of gout-stricken buffalo and cancerous bull rhinos in full gallop. I saw all these shapes and more in the packed skies as we descended into Hanoi.