19th - 26th October Days 19 - 26
The last episode of this thrilling saga ended with Jeff and Meg just making their train from Beijing with minutes to spare....
We found ourselves ushered to a compartment containing 4 teenage Chinese girls and every square inch taken up with their baggage was something of a surprise (particularly as there were only four berths). The carriage attendant also seemed a little bemused. No English was spoken by any of the occupants and we smiled a lot and introduced ourselves. The girls smiled back, giggled a lot and got out their mobile phones and started dialling all their friends presumably to tell them they were sharing a compartment with an OLD MAN. After a while the train manager arrived with two Mongolian women – one of whom spoke English. After a lot of hand-waving and loud talking we eventually exchanged compartments with the two women (who were, understandably, not very happy with the situation) and we settled down to the prospect of a nice uneventful 36-hour journey.
We were sharing our compartment with Quan, a young Vietnamese...
who turned out to be quite good at communicating with pen and paper and we learned quite a lot about him. (As well as some very basic Vietnamese). Our pictures of Cirencester and Tom's wedding were a great success. The Chinese girls were quite taken with the photos of Amelia with her blonde curls, and Rebecca's wedding outfit caused great excitement. They invited the whole of the rest of the train to come and see the 'weird travellers' with their funny photos.
As the journey unfolded the countryside gradually turned to rice crops and paddy fields and it became increasingly warm outside. We had come with little food and got worried when we saw that the girls' luggage consisted entirely of food, shampoo and hair gel. It was therefore a relief to find there was a restaurant car and food was also available from the trolleys at the stations (but no hair gel). Our first night passed uneventfully, (what is the dress code for bed when you share a room with a 24 year old Vietnamese man?)
We trundled on through the day. The train was less deluxe than the Trans-Siberian. Hot water was available from the attendant at the end of the compartment (electric not coal this time), but the washing facilities were shared (three basins in a room) and only cold water. We ate some of our meals in the restaurant car pointing at things that looked vaguely like food we knew. This has been a standard practice since we entered China and so far has proved a very reliable means of eating well. There has only been one incident of Jeff finding bones in what he thought was a fried egg. The stations in China are vast marble palaces that are a contradiction to the rather small houses we see by the rail side. The fields are mainly empty, usually only one or two people working there at any one time and very, very little machinery. The day moved into evening and we settled down for a disruptive night. We knew we crossed the border at about midnight and were expecting the same sort of delays we had had when we crossed from Mongolia into China.
At about midnight we pulled into Nanning and were all made to get off the train and wait in a lounge whilst something happened. No one was sure what. Eventually we all got back on and drifted into a fitfull sleep.
At about 3:00 a.m., at the Chinese border, everything was checked and stamped and the train them moved on to the Vietnamese border where we took all our luggage to the station waiting room and filled in the appropriate immigration and customs forms. After a short time we were 'invited' into a back office where we were informed that our visas were not valid – they were dated from the 26th of October, not the 20th – 'you must go back to China'.
There seemed no way around the situation. It was pointless to try to explain that the Vietnamese embassy in London must have made a mistake. We we were escorted back onto the train and returned to the Chinese border at Pingxiang where the guards were unsure what to so with us. They explained that we would have to wait until the 26th, or travel to Nanning (about 190km East) where there was a Vietnamese Consulate and we could arrange for new visas there. By now it was 5:00 a.m. and the guards, who were wonderfully courteous throughout (the Chinese obviously respect old people), took us to a small hotel and we booked in (for an hour). This hotel was clearly not in the Michelin Guide but at £3.50 a night what could you expect? It had the ambiance of a prison cell, but the sheets were clean, and as Meg pointed out she had slept in worse in Tajikistan. Note the bars on the windows ...
At 6:15 a.m we set off for the bus station having no idea where we were or where the town centre was! Our kindly hotel owner hailed us a tuk-tuk (motor bike taxi a bit like a rickshaw - see below) and we hurtled off into town. That was because the first part was downhill and the driver needed the momentum to get up the next part. ten minutes and fifty pence later (we were robbed) we were at the bus station and found there was a bus to Nanning in 10 minutes.
All attempts to ascertain how long the journey would take failed but suggested 5-6 hours .With tickets in hand were led to the bus stop and were amazed to find the bus was modern, air conditioned and very comfortable. Even more surprising, the route was an 'expressway' which meant that it could go flat out – 90km/h – most of the way, and the journey took less than 3 hours .
By now were were the only westerners in a non-tourist Chinese city, with no signs in English and not speaking any Chinese except "please", "thank you" and "chicken". But Meg did not spend a long time working on problem solving for nothing. We found a left luggage store, bought a map, and pointed to the only recognisable symbol (it was in Chinese) on the map - the train station. The taxi driver knew where to take us. When we spotted we were down town, (not at the station) we got the taxi to stop. We then went into the nearest 5-star hotel, figuring that if anywhere in the town would speak English it was there. We had got one of the train staff to write 'Vietnamese Embassy' in Chinese and e showed this to the desk staff .. who got a manager .. who phoned a friend and the address of the Embassy was duly written in Chinese on paper with a mark on our map. The next taxi driver knew exactly what to do (drive us round in circles clocking up a reasonable sum on the meter before arriving at the Embassy from the other direction). So by 11:30 we were in the Vietnamese Embassy, which turned out to be a consulate, trying to explain the situation. Eventually a very helpful English-speaking "boss" was found and he explained that the only way to remedy the situation was to purchase new visas. It would cost 76 pounds but they would waive the express fee. We should come back at 6 p.m.
So we spent the day in Nanning, wandering round, being impressed by the marvellous floral decorations which were in place because the ASEAN summit was being held in the town and watching cavalcades of very expensive black limos streaming along as the police closed the roads for them.
At lunchtime there were several 'dancing classes' held in in public squares in the centre of the city.
We ate in a local market, again pointing at plates on tables, and paid one pound equivalent for about three times what we could eat.
Later that afternoon we decided to treat ourselves and went to a Western ice cream parlour where Jeff had a wonderful looking concoction that contained - er - lumps of jelly and aduki beans. Well, you can't win them all. We sought out an internet cafe to try to tell the children we were OK. There were lots of policemen around because of the summit, and rather than try to explain to us where the cafe was one of them took us there in his car. Jeff wanted to have the siren on but - again - we didn't have the language.
You can imagine the euphoria when we got the visas. Taxi back to bus station and bus back to Ping Xiang, the town we had arrived at at 5 a.m. We had initially thought it might be a one-hotel town, but found it much grander than we imagined. We settled on a hotel called New Century, and were only a little taken aback when we found that as well as daily rates there were hourly rates. Some very nice young women kept phoning Jeff to see if he was alright. There were no phone calls for Meg,.
That night we ate in a small family restaurant and by the end of the evening we thought the family might have adopted us. They enjoyed having their photo taken ...
The next day we trundled our bags to the bus station and amazingly bought a ticket to Hanoi for £8 pounds each.
We had a couple of hours to kill so we took in the local market. There were all sorts of foods for sale - including live animals. We only show the ducks here as the cats and dogs might upset some of our more sensitive readers.
The bus journey to Hanoi was a doddle. The coach was large and air-conditioned, we were escorted through customs in an electric golf buggy. Three and a half hours later (and twenty four hours later than planned) we were in our hotel. It was wonderful. The staff spoke English and seemed to be able to sort any little problem. Jeff's bag had ripped and they arranged for it to be mended and returned within an hour and charged 75p.
Hanoi. 22nd - 24th October
The motorcycle is king in Hanoi. They are everywhere buzzing around like flies. Crossing the road is an even greater art form than in Beijing. The technique which worked for us was to walk slowly out into the road and keep walking. The traffic seemed to melt away around us. We began to realise that the motorbikes do not have brakes and traffic management is by driver anticipation not road rules.
The main railway line passes through the centre of the city with no level crossing barriers. Could you imagine this in London?
I won't go on about the touristy bits in Hanoi, except to say that the Vietnamese must all have a gene for commerce and selling. They seem to be able to sell anything to anyone. There are many peddlers in the street like this one viewed from our hotel window.
This is a street market in the old quarter.
Our hotel in the old quarter was described as "boutique" which I think means small. As you can see it had wireless internet ...
But when you saw the size of the living quarters of the Vietnamese what we had was pretty palatial. Whole families seem to live in one room, sleeping on tiny beds, cooking on fuel stoves and living alongside their chickens, even in the middle of the city. Just how the Americans came to be defeated by them is a mystery. We gained great respect for the Vietnamese people, and learned a lot about the suffering brought about by the war. We also experienced an exceptionally high level of service, but you have to haggle for anything you want to buy. This is counter intuitive to Jeff who clearly would hand over the kids inheritance before negotiating.
Vientiane, Laos. 24th - 26th October
For the next step of the journey we had already planned to give up our moral high ground and had booked a flight. The alternative was a 26-hour bus journey in a non-air conditioned bus with no toilet stops (well, only when the bus breaks down which is often sufficient). Despite this being a gap year, it did not seem sensible to travel back-packer style for this section. So we took to the air (175kg of CO2 for the 50 minute flight). Flying was really boring after all our ground based travelling. It was all too easy. Even applying for the Laotian visa on entry seemed to be a doddle.
Vientiane, the capital of Laos, seems a world away from Hanoi. It is calm and ordered where Hanoi is frenetic; the roads are wide; there are more cars, mainly large SUVs. Like the Vietnamese these people seem to smile all the time. They practice their English "hello" and we practice our one word of Laotian (which is thank you).
The town is on the banks of the Mekong and one of the memorable moments of our trip will be of sitting in a bar on the bank of the rive, with beer in hand, watching the fishermen throwing their nets as the sun slipped down into the water.
This is a tuk-tuk, pretty much universal in all the Asian countries we have passed through. The ride can be a bit hairy (no seat belts) but quite efficient.
There are many many temples, with much restoration of them following the bombing by the US.This is a typical Buddha in one of the temples
Laos has the dubious international reputation of being one of the most bombed countries in the world. It is also one of the poorest. It has poor economic development because it is landlocked, with limited education. Meg once again thought of Tajikistan. There are saffron-clad monks wandering the streets seeking alms. The Laotians seem to have incorporated a respect for a king, a reverence for Buddhism and remain communist. It seems to be a very laid- back form of communism.
This is Patuxai which is the National monument - allegedly built with the money given by the USA (to build an airport).
The museum is full of pictures of visiting communist dignitaries. But alongside this there is the evidence of growing westernisation. There is clearly a trend for the young to dress western style and the status given to "coffee bars". We somehow managed to get into the background shots of a documentary being made for Lao television on 'good restaurants in Vientiane': look out for it if you get a chance. Meg is the one with the big grin. We also went to a pop concert being sponsored by a mobile phone company. All I would say about the Laotian pop-stars is that they should not anticipate a large recording contract just yet. I think they do it much better in South Cerney.
Next stop - Bangkok
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