This time from Hong Kong... I made it... not without the odd bit of fun on the way mind you. This will be a long one...
When I last left you I was in Hue and getting ready for a bus ride... That was certainly fun, kind of. From the hotel it was a very short taxi ride to the bus agents office where I waited for a while with various locals, then we were all packed into more cabs to go to the bus... the bus staff were nasty rude little folk, especially the driver who was some little poison dwarf of a Vietnamese. The bus was about half and half, locals and foreigners, and we all climbed into our bunk chairs and settled in.
The drive was typical SE Asian, the driver on the airhorn about every twenty seconds (not an exaggeration) and driving like he was running from the devil, but you get used to that very quickly. If it kept him awake for the twelve hours I was ok with it, mind you they say most of the drivers are on meth and other stay-awake drugs which wouldn't surprise me at all. It was reasonably comfy, the seats are not quite lie-flat but you can lie down ok and try to sleep amid the swerving and bumping and tooting.
There was one slightly disconcerting episode sometime in the middle of the night, I was dozing but woke up when the driver braked hard and came almost to a stop. The rest of the bus was dead asleep but I stuck my head over the side of the bunk to see what was ahead. In the pitch dark I could see the blazing lights of two trucks coming the other way, but in our lane. As the bus waited they both slowly swerved around something on the road and back into their lane and carried on. Curious I turned and peered out my window as the bus moved off, trying to see what was on the road. I couldn't see ahead and it was dark by the time the obstruction was along side, but an old Vietnamese guy stood on the side of the road shining a torch around various shapeless objects scattered across the other lane. I made out or thought I made out a scooter or possibly two, and at first though 'Oh looks like a couple of scooters have had a coming-together in the dark'... not very nice but unlikely to have done too much damage, and in any case the bus and trucks didn't bother to stop. I figured the old man was one of the riders and wondered where the other one was. I watched as we passed and the old guy just stood there looking confused and shone his torch around at the bits and pieces, and I tried to make out what it all was. There was definitely one scooter, or at least bits of one, and some other items (the locals use their scooters like we use utes or vans, they will carry anything and everything). As we drove off I got a few snapshot-like images of the scene, patches of colour in the dark, lit by the torch one by one, and while we carried on our way I was trying to piece together what had happened. There was the yellow frame of a scooter, and some bags, and some other bits, and a bundle of clothes or something. It was only further down the road analysing these mental snapshots I actually clicked as to what the other object in the middle was. It was, of course, a body. I have seen a large dog hit by a truck at home, at first unrecognisable, rolled over and over and crushed by half a dozen sets of wheels, the form gone, limbs where they should not be. The old man on the side of the road was not the rider of one of the scooters, he was just a confused old man who had come out of his hut, with his torch, and was standing forlornly looking at the scene, watching as the vehicles passed, none stopping.
We got to Hanoi at dawn and were dumped unceremoniously in the middle of somewhere, the bus literally surrounded by a band of taxis and guys yelling about hotels and promising minibuses into town for anyone who would agree to stay at their hotel... the usual vultures. I hate them all with a passion as I hate taxi drivers, but I figured there was little choice, I wanted to get to another bus ASAP and nothing was open and there were no other cabs. And it's a taxi on the meter right, how bad can it be..? As it turned out, bad. The a-hole taxis were obviously all in cahoots with the bus folk (everyone has a network of scams over here) and within minutes the meter on the taxi had flown up to 270,000 Dong, and kept going. I thought roughly I knew where I should be and by the time we got there and the driver dumped me, fuming, on a (wrong) corner, I had to fork over about NZ$35, absolute daylight robbery. But there was little I could do, there was no other way to get there. So I quickly determined after a short walk that this **** had dropped me at the Long Bien train station rather than the buses, and so started wandering in directions I hoped would be the right ones, with all my gear strapped to me. After maybe an hour and several incorrect sets of directions from locals I finally found a moto driver who said he knew where he was going and hopped on his scooter... I had thusfar been avoiding motos with all my gear, worried about my ability to stay on and the rider to stay upright with 25kg of ballast on my back and another 10 or so kilos of front-pack in one hand. But we survived, somehow, in rush hour Hanoi traffic, til we got to a dodgy looking little shed nestled among dirty office buildings, which the occupants sitting out front smoking and drinking tea in their fake leather jackets assured me was a bus company. Sure enough after about half an hour of smoking and talking in broken English to these wannabe mafia types, a silver, reasonably new but utterly battered Mercedes van about the size of a Ford Transit pulled up, and we were off.
These silver vans are obviously a common way to get around in Hanoi as they were everywhere, and as you go north I discovered the way to catch one is to sit on the guard rail of the motorway, and as they approach they will slow down and yell where they are going and you can flag them down... so soon there were about five more people in the van than it was designed for, me with my feet on my pack and my knees around my ears, as we rocketed north to the border, four hours away, with possibly the most insane driver I have had in my entire month away (and that is REALLY saying something). The rules in Vietnam as with all the other places I have been are that the biggest vehicle has right of way, even if you happen to be overtaking and there is a vehicle coming, if it is smaller you just keep overtaking and it is the other guys problem to get out of the way. I saw at least two light trucks in the trip out of Hanoi alone that had just crashed, having been run off the road in this way.
We stopped about half way at the usual road-side shed/restaurant and I was contemplating food as it was nearly 24 hours since I had eaten. They had the usual wok full of small whole birds deep frying out the front but I was sure they would have something slightly more normal on the menu (my philosophy for eating weird food revolves around whether I can afford to be horribly ill for a couple of days or not... when on buses and trains, the answer is no...). So I decided to take a bathroom break first and headed out to the toilet stalls out back. And on the way back inside I glanced at one of the tables near the kitchen area, and saw, lying there in the sun, a dead puppy. And was suddenly fairly confident I could go a bit longer without food.
We made it to the border in the rocky, dry, hilly area of Dong Dang and I was luckily dropped right at the gates by the van, which was a small blessing. The border crossing is a narrow mountain pass with huge hills either side, the sky was bright and the whole place looked faded and washed out, like an overexposed photograph... admiring the scenery I threw on back and front pack and trudged past the first guard post up to the Vietnamese exit building, where inside a decent sized crowd pressed together in a clump were all trying to get their passports through the slot in the window. I reached over some black-haired heads and flicked mine onto the pile. The thoroughly unimpressed looking Vietnamese officials made their way through the huge stacks, occasionally shuffling them or tipping them over or changing piles half way through, I think just to mess with people. The only other Westerners were an overwhelmed looking young couple I think on a bus tour who kept on getting elbowed to the back of the pack. I was lucky with the shuffling of the passports and got out of there within about 20 minutes, leaving the rest to it.
I wandered up past the guard posts to the rather impressive shiny modern Chinese border office. Inside was very airport-like and I was waved through and up the escalator by some rather uninterested looking Chinese in uniforms. I got up to the arrival card filling in bench and was half way through scribbling my details when a chubby old Chinese border chappy wandered up and eyed me and asked for my passport. I could see what was coming and sure enough after a quick glance at my docs he led me to a row of seats on one side of the big corridor and had me empty all my belongings out on the seats and floor (I guess the search benches downstairs were too good for me)... He obviously didn't find what he was looking for, although he paid intimate attention to various bits and pieces while completely ignoring larger stuff that could have concealed anything, and also completely missing several of the smaller pockets on my packs... satisfied I was just a smelly tourist, he sent me on my way.
I wandered outside and up through the huge stone archway-gate that fills the narrowest point in the pass and was suddenly in China. Bizarre. I invaded China on foot this time, but if I do it again for real I may avoid the Dong Dang/Pingxiang area... it's a rough piece of real estate. Nothing but rocks and cliffs. I made my way past the old French colonial styled tourist office, remarkably called "The French-styled building" on the tourist information sign, and a Chinese military outpost, and was accosted by the usual taxi drivers waiting to pounce on whoever emerged from the gates. I had changed US$20 to RMB (Chinese money) 120 from a girl with a money belt at the border but didn't want to change more as those types are always a ripoff, so I decided to wait til I got somewhere with a booth or bank. The taxi dropped me at the train station in decidedly rural and 1950's communist style Pingxiang and with an hour and a half til the train out I sat outside in the warm-ish sun and was soon surrounded by a gaggle of local peasant folk talking at me loudly and asking me questions in Mandarin. After much shrugging and head-shaking from me I pulled out the little Mandarin phrasebook loaned to me by the S's (thanks M&C!) and the locals took great delight in finding Chinese words in the dictionary and pointing at the English translation as a means to ask me questions. We established who I was and where I was from, had been and was going, and I found out they were factory workers, and we all decided the Beijing Olympics had been amazing, etc etc. I noticed I got a fair amount of disapproving looks from some other passers-by, which I ignored.
Once on the train, also straight out of 1950's communism, we chugged north through some amazing scenery, huge rocky hills everywhere jutting out of green farmland, lining both horizons like rows of broken teeth. A young Chinese girl sat opposite me, the train was pretty packed, we established she was learning English and swapped some chit chat. About another four hours on, having dozed a bit on the train along with everyone else, I was a bit groggy arriving in Nanning. It was about 6pm and I asked my little Chinese friend if she knew where I could exchange money. She led me out of the large and frantic train terminal and into the dimming daylight of a large Chinese city (they are all large of course). We tried a nearby bank, closed, then several local hotels, with no luck... this was not looking good as I didn't have enough Chinese money for the next leg of the trip and really didn't want to have to overnight in Nanning. To say the looks we got walking around together were frosty would be a fairly large understatement (this, as a mate said later, was true "old China"), and I am fairly sure my little friend copped some fairly direct abuse from the hotel staff and other people she spoke to for hanging around with the likes of me. Eventually she flagged a cab and told me to get in and took me way across town to a large fancy western style hotel, where the staff refused to give me any money as I was not a guest. They suggested I stay the night but I said no, I was really keen to keep moving on.
My little friend (I think her name was Won Won, maybe UanUan or or Wan Wan or YuanYuan, I don't know, I am terrible with accents and couldn't make out much of what she was saying) kept getting angry calls from her mother, she was supposed to be home for dinner (she was making the four hour trip back from work to home), but she insisted on continuing to help me. She got us another cab, again which she paid for, and we stopped at an ATM next to the train station and she withdrew 300 Yuan, about NZ$80(?) and handed it to me, and apologized but said she was poor and that was all she could give me... I was a bit overwhelmed, knowing this must be a massive amount of money for the poor girl, and she was just handing it to me, a stranger, a foreigner of the "worst" kind, who she had met only hours before. I gave her what I hoped was the equivalent in US$, which she didn't want to take but I insisted, telling her to exchange it at the bank the next day. She was reluctant, I am sure partially because she would have to explain at the bank how she came to have a (for them) large amount of American cash, but she took it. She said I must be hungry, and terrified she was going to start giving me more charity I am sure she couldn't afford, I said I was fine. We walked back to the train station and queued up and she inquired for me about the train to Guangzhou... the older railway lady openly sneered at the two of us and looked her up and down and hissed a response. After some to-ing and fro-ing Won Won stepped out of the queue and gave me the English version. The lady had said the train had gone, the next one was at half past midnight (which I expected)... and there was standing room only. This I was not quite expecting... According to the train lady they have such a thing as standing-only tickets. On a twelve hour train journey. We stood for a while and pondered this and Won Won tried to convince me to stay somewhere the night but I didn't want to impose on her any more or stay in this rather unpleasant little city, so I figured a twelve hour standing ticket would make for a hell of a story (and a lot of suffering, but hey...), so we went back to the evil ticket lady and said I would take it. There was again some to-ing and fro-ing in Mandarin and then Won Won turned and said that the lady had somehow, magically found one more bed in a sleeper car which was the last one and I could have it. It was RMB298, the 300 Won Won gave me would cover it. With much elation I handed over the money and the ticket lady literally threw the ticket and my change at me through the slot in the window. And with that little Wan Wan walked me up the waiting area and I told her to get home to her angry mum, and she was off.
The five hour wait at the train needs little description, the terminal was reasonably modern, the huge waiting room was filthy and dim, we sat on rows of stainless steel seats, it was boring, I got stared at a lot, I ate a RMB4 pot noodle which was my first food in 24 hours and bought some little strawberry creme cake things for the trip, trying to spare what Chinese money I had for unforeseen emergencies. The train arrived late and everyone ran to get on. I found my carriage and climbed aboard, and blimey... it was a nice train. Chinese rail is a wider gauge than the other countries I passed through, so the car was big, and carpeted, and the rooms, with four bunks apiece (east-west across the carriage like the Vietnamese) were comfortable and a good size. Very nice. And as you may have guessed, the evil train lady was lying through her yellow teeth. I had the whole compartment to myself the entire trip. Unless it was Won Won lying and trying to get me to stay in Nanning until we could be married, I am not sure. Anyway, I slept like a baby.
Guangzhou appeared about 12 hours later, around noon, a big city indeed. The train station was again pandemonium, and I shuffled my way through the crowds, occasionally almost bowling little Chinese folk over with my packs when I turned around. I made it out and took a long, long time to find somewhere to change money (more hopeless Asian direction giving), and then there was a long process as they evaluated me suspiciously with my US$. Once this was done there was another long drama as I tried to find out where the train to Hong Kong left from (a whole other station somewhere else, which various people indicated was a short walk in several directions... it wasn't, and I finally got there a couple of subway rides later). And so, in the same clothes I had left Hanoi in, and smelly and sweaty, I decided to treat myself and got the business class fast express train, leaving at 1530, and sat in a plush chair offending well-off business people of every creed and colour with my smell and appearance all the way to HK island, a couple of hours south. And so, after goodness knows how many miles and two days, I arrived at my friend's apartment in one of the older parts of Hong Kong. Of course he wasn't home and I quickly established after lots more wandering with my packs that internet cafes are virtually unheard of here... so unable to retrieve his mobile number from my email account, and with nothing else to do, I got some food and sat and waited, and he finally turned up surprised to see me on his doorstep so soon. So now Hong Kong awaits and I begin my wandering, with a few things planned for the coming days. And that, my friends and loved ones, is the story so far.
