Back to China

We caught another bus back to Hanoi. While waiting we were watching the other buses and commenting on the use of the roof racks to transport the motorbikes over long distances. No lift is used to get them to the top, a couple of guys on the ground lift and a guy on the roof pulls.

The bus was late; however, it was a relatively uneventful ride. We did note that we were the only foreigners on this particular bus. Like the bus to Hué, this bus ran through the night with periodic W.C. stops.

We arrived at the bus station in Hanoi in the morning at the regular long distance bus station. We then took a cab to St. Josephs. We used St. Josephs as a location because it is a place that the cabbies can find and is only a couple of blocks from the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel.

The cabbie did run the meter; all the same, it surprised us that the cab fare was almost as much as the bus from Dong Ha. Cabs in Hanoi are surprisingly expensive. At one point Debra and I had wanted to rent a motorbike in Hanoi and discovered that we would be responsible for $1,000 USD if something were to happen to it. Neither of us wanted to risk that much; so, most personal transportation in Hanoi was on foot.

After getting to our room we went and read for a while. I then met another person, a Chinese national, who was also in our room. He wanted to know where he could get a "Lonely Planet" for Viet Nam. After trying to give him directions for the places that I had seen them selling cheaply (copies) I then offered to show him.

We then went out and he discovered his next problem. He had been told that his Chinese ATM card would work in any country by his Chinese bank. Well, on the back it says, "Valid only in China." We then went looking for a bank that would take it. After about an hour of walking, mostly in the French quarter, we found a Citi-Bank. It seems that the will take nearly any card.

While walking we had also been negotiating with street vendors for his guide book. The first person wanted 25 USD (about 400,000 VND) and I took him to someone who wanted 90,000 VND and he then continued negotiating with street vendors and eventually got it for about 70,000 VND. At that time I went to the Hostel and had dinner on the upstairs patio.

That evening Debra and I went on another walk and that was pretty much the end of another day in Hanoi.

The next morning we were put on another minibus to the Chinese border at Huu Nghi Quan (Friendship Gate). The bus was a small twelve passenger Mercedes, similar to the new Mercedes van that has recently begun to be sold in the US.

The bus took us to the border station and at that point we began the usual process of filling out various forms and then walking several hundred meters from the Vietnamese station to the Chinese Station. Again, the Chinese never checked our bags as we entered the country.

As we entered China the first thing we noticed was that, at this border station, there is nothing. There is no town or shops at all. There are just van and cab drivers all bidding to take those newly arriving to Ping Xiang. After some negotiation we arranged to have a three wheel motorcycle take us. The negotiation took the form of the first person asking for 500. When I asked, "500 what?" (remember, there are three common currencies uses at this point, RMB, USD, and VND) I was told RMB and we just kept walking. Then some cabbies came and asked for 20 RMB each and the three wheel motorcycle driver made an offer of ten RMB each. He was a good choice and even helped us with our bags and in locating the ticket window at the bus station, which he took us directly to.

We then took a bus to Nanning. It was a nice clean bus (that, oddly enough, required us to wear our seatbelts). That bus took us to the long distance bus station and then we had to cross the street to get a bus to the train station. I had a bit of trouble, at first, finding the right bus because while I can read, "Train station," on the bus schedule it was listed as, "Nanning Train Station," it may seem like a small thing, and it was, but it caused a moment of panic.

The bus was supposed to end its line at the train station. However, when the final stop was made there was no station in sight. So, I asked where the station was (hoe cher jan zai nale) the driver assumed I spoke Chinese and answered in some long, fast string. I then shrugged and pointed in all directions and he then understood and pointed me in the right direction (the direction that I had sort of gleaned from what he had said but I was not confident enough to go with).

It was here that we made a small error. Because Guiyang is a larger train hub I decided to take the train from Nanning to Guiyang. So, I got the tickets and we went and had dinner.

At this point, I will add that, dinner was its own experience. In simple, all of the food, at the small restaurant at the train station, looked disgusting. Debra and I both decided to have box noodles and some of the bread that we had brought with us from Hanoi instead. This interested the manager of the restaurant and he came over to our table, with a person to interpret, and asked what was wrong with the food. He was polite and interested in what the issues were that made the food unpalatable to us, as westerners. We discussed it for a while and got some free beer out of the conversation.

As we told him, the dishes all contained parts of the chicken that we do not eat and bones, that we do not eat, or pork. He then asked what we would rather have (adding that they do not know how to cook hamburgers [which they see as the quintessential American food]). We then told him that a simple vegetable dish, on rice, would have been very good. He then pointed out that there was a vegetable dish. We told him that it clearly had pork in it. He agreed that it had pork in it. We explained to him that the presence of pork makes it a pork dish, not a vegetable dish. He then understood our point and we chatted about a few other things for another moment or so.

The mistake we had made was in thinking that there would be more trains to Xin Yang at Gui Yang. At least we got a seat on the train from Nanning to Gui Yang. However, when we got to Gui Yang we found out that there was only one train to Xin Yang, and it originated in Nanning. Thus, we would have done as well to have stayed where we were.

It got worse; there were no bunks or seats on the train. This meant that we would have to make the fourteen hour trip in the standing room cars.

There were only two cars open to standing room and the only tickets being sold were standing room. As I am sure you can guess; it was crowded. The first thing we did was to ask the conductor for a ticket upgrade to a bunk. However, there were no bunks. One good thing about asking for an upgrade was that it made it clear that we were in standing room because it was the ticket that we could get, not because we were cheap. Based on this he insured that we had room to set our packs on the floor of the connecting area between the cars and sit on them as we made an attempt to sleep.

We arrived in Xin Yang and were pleasantly surprised to discover Gao Jing was at the train station waiting for us to arrive. While we were in route Gao Jing had also secured tickets to Qingdao, for Debra, and Xian, for me.