Entering Viet Nam

Debra and I took a sleeper bus for the twelve hour ride from Kunming to Hekou. Hekou is the town in China that we were to cross the border at. The bus is the only means of transport into this town as the railroad tracks were destroyed in a mudslide several years ago and have never been repaired.

The sleeper bus is just that. It is a bus that has no seats. Instead it has rows of narrow bunks. They are double stack and there is a row along each side and a row down the center.

I did not sleep well on it. First, the, mentioned, encounter was unpleasant. Second, it just wasn't a place that I was ready to sleep well. However, the first part of the ride was uneventful. It was raining and the roads were slick but the roads were pretty empty. Then, about four a.m. the bus left the highway and continued down a dirt road for the rest of the journey. At about five we crossed to within fifty kilometers of the China – Viet Nam border and a soldier entered the bus and took all of our passports and logged our entry into a border area. The bus then continued, on the wet dirt roads, the rest of the way.

When we arrived in Hekou we saw that there really was nothing to mention in this town. From the bus station (which is a muddy field, with a couple of offices, encircled by a brick wall) we walked to the border station. It was about two or three blocks and there was very little traffic at the border station other than heavy carts filled with goods being pushed through the 300m zone between the stations on each side.

The goods were offloaded from a truck on one side and placed on very large carts, about 2m x 5m and then pushed and pulled by large groups of up to twenty workers, depending what was on the cart, to trucks on the other side and then reloaded. This allowed the transfer of goods between the two sides with no travel of motor vehicles between the two countries.

Debra and I entered on the Chinese side and completed our paperwork, there were only two forms and they were quite simple, examples were on the wall for those who were unable to read the Chinese and most of the questions were in both Chinese and English.

Our bags were x-rayed and we walked through the open space between the two stations. On the Viet Namese side the process was similar to what we had just done. I would estimate that the entire process took only about a half hour.

Kunming

The first step of my planned vacation to Viet Nam was to travel to Kunming in order to meet up with Debra. The trip to Kunming was pretty uneventful.

I had arranged with the hostel in advance and went straight there when I arrived. I then checked my email and saw that Debra was due to arrive on the second. I planed to meet her at the train station due to it being a bit hard to find the bus to the hostel. Checking my watch, I confirmed that it was the first and I went to the deck to read.

A few hours I looked up and there was a most unexpected person; Debra, who was scowling at me. It turned out that I had forgotten to advance my watch at the end of the month. We then worked out our plan and Debra explained to me that she was short on expected funds.

We then set out for the Viet Namese Consulate. The fact that Kunming had a consulate was the main reason that we had chosen this city for our meeting. The consulate went smoothly; however, we did have to go get pictures and to surrender our passports for three days.

The next day we rented bicycles and went to the bus station in order to get our tickets to Hekou, on the border with Viet Nam. We also rode around and, other than a slight, previously mentioned, mishap had a good time.

We went to a street that caters to foreigners and found some pants I was looking for. I had come with only shorts and wanted some pants with zip off legs. Yes, they look silly; but, that makes it so I do not have to pack as much.

We went by wal-mart for some shirts (keep in mind, by Chinese standards, wal-mart stuff is high quality). Debra noticed that the wal-mart had no parking lot. Customers either arrived by bicycle or taxi. We also went to a Thai restaurant and had a very reasonably priced dinner. After this we returned to the hostel and returned the bikes.

The next day, after my visit to the hospital, I spent following the doctor's orders and resting. That evening we walked to an Indian food restaurant; it was a bit expensive, by Chinese standards, but very good. Debra purchased a couple of DVDs to watch.

We returned and Debra, again, noticed that there seem to be a disproportionate number of apple computes being used by travelers and we ruminated on this observed phenomena for a while.

The next day it was time to pack our bags to continue the trip to

Viet Nam. We went to the consulate to pick up our passports, complete with the new entrance visas, and went to the bus station.