Crossing the Border to Vietnam

Our last day in China

We had an early start in Nanning to catch our train towards the Vietnam border. We had 'potstickers' for breakfast, one of our first meals in China, and also one of our favourites. The train was comfortably full, but it wasn't a long journey (4 hours only). As we travelled south, the terrain became more mountainous and the trees became more tropical. We arrived in Pingxiao by midday. From the train station, it is 20 kilometres to the border. We couldn't even see around us for all the touts in our faces, trying to offer us rides. Each driver had a piece of paper with a few phrases written in english, the most common was 'He/She is a thief, He/She will take your money.' We jumped into the back of one of their vehicles (half of a motorbike with a covered wagon type trailer attached to the back) and negotiated 1 yuan each (there were 4 passengers). We rode along, being careful not to be bounced out the back and onto the dirt road. We pulled into a petrol station, and the guy was adamant that we pay him more money. Since we had CLEARLY all agreed on the original price, we got out of his vehicle and walked away. We started walking in the direction of where we thought Vietnam was, and finally managed to jump on a public bus heading towards the border.

After a drive of about 15 minutes, the bus pulled up at some sort of checkpoint where a military-looking man got on the bus, pointed at the 4 white people and gestured for us to get off. We grabbed our bags, got off the bus, and watched as the bus pulled away, leaving us. We sort of just stood around, expecting one of these official looking gentlemen to tell us what to do. When no one did, I showed my passport to one of them. This got a huge round of laughter from all of the Chinese people around. Then they were gesturing that we had to pay some money. It didn't quite feel right, so we just slowly walked through, constantly looking back and expecting to see a few of them pull out big guns and surround us. But it was fine, we just kept walking.

We arrived at some sort of trading town, walked through the town, and finally arrived at a gate. There were groups of people gathered past a gate, and groups of people streaming through the gate in either direction. It looked like a border to us! We walked up to a ticket-like window and showed them our passports. The man just shook his head 'No' and spoke in Chinese. Another man arrived, who spoke a few words of English, and I managed to interpret that we were at the wrong border, and we needed to get to Youyi Guan, wherever that is. After looking it up in my book, I saw that 'Youyi Guan' is the Friendship Pass, the border for all foreigners to cross between China and Vietnam. Yep, we were in fact at the wrong border. No wonder everyone in the town was staring at us so intently!!! We walked back up the hill a bit and jumped in a cab to drive the ten kilometres to the real border.

At the border, we said 'Now THIS looks like a border!' We went into a building, payed a 'maintenance' fee at the door, filled out departure cards for China, had our passports checked and stamped, and entered limbo--the land south of the Chinese border but north the of Vietnamese border. We walked around 600 metres, where we entered another building full of people. They were all gathered around a counter, closed off from the workers behind it by glass. We had to pay 2 yuan each for the Vietnam "medical check," which really just meant they would give you an arrival form you need to fill out. Once completed, we had to shove our way to the front of the mob of people and slide our passports and forms through the window to the 3 Vietnamese workers behind the glass. At first it appeared extremely chaotic. The men kept rotating positions while looking at forms and passports, entering some into the computer, then handwriting some things down and stamping the passports. I didn't want to let our passports out of sight (even though it seemed pretty safe), so I stood among the mob and waited. Eventually I figured out what the guys were doing. As inefficient and jumbled as it was, they did in fact have a little system going on to process the piles of passports. After about 40 minutes, our passports were stamped, we collected them and exited the building and into Vietnam.

Outside, there were a few cars parked and about 15 men hassling us for rides to Lang Son (the nearest town in Vietnam to the border) or Hanoi. It was overwhelming. We had no choice but to go with one of these "taxis" as there is nothing else around. We agreed on a ridiculously high price and had the driver take us to Lang Son bus station. I think we had the slowest driver in Vietnam. When we arrived in Lang Son, it seemed like we were going in circles, and the driver was not really putting his foot on the gas. We kept saying "Ben Xe" (bus station in Vietnamese) and he kept saying "Okay, okay." He stopped the car in the middle of a deserted intersection, where a minivan pulled up and a guy got out. He came to the car we were in, opened the door, and he and our driver told us to get into that minivan as it would take us to Hanoi. We knew what they were up to, and knew we'd just get ripped off (again), so we were emphatic in saying "NO! Ben Xe. NOW!" Eventually he relented after mumbling something that sounded like "Aye aye aye." He drove around in more circles (Lang Son isn't that big) and pulled into the parking lot of the International Tourist Services Building. He claimed this was the bus station, but it clearly wasn't--besides the fact that we were following our route on our map, there were no buses around! After more arguing and repeating 'Ben xe, Ben xe,' we drove on, only to pull over at the side of the road where another minivan met us and tried to get us to go with them. A white guy got out of the van (we recognised him as being one of the guys waiting to cross the border with us) and said that they were all going to Hanoi, and we should too. I asked how much, and they all paid 70,000 dong each. I knew that it shouldn't cost much more than 30,000 dong each, so we refused to be ripped off again. Eventually, we got to the bus station. We quickly got out of the car (we would have done so sooner, but our bags were locked in the boot), got our bags out and paid the driver. We needed change, and he could only provide change in Vietnamese dong, even though we paid him in Chinese yuan. That was fine, except we worked out the exchange rate, and the driver wouldn't give us the proper change. After a bit more arguing, we relented so we could just get out of the situation and get away from that man.

We went to the ticket counter of the bus station, where we read that there are two buses from Lang Son to Hanoi, one for 32,000 dong and one for 37,000 dong (roughly AU$1 is equal to 12,200 dong). We tried to purchase tickets, but got absolutely nowhere with the guy behind the counter. We were hassled repetitively by people trying to give us rides in their minivans. We really didn't have much choice since the bus station wouldn't sell us tickets. So we agreed to pay 40,000 dong each, not too much more than the public bus. And they assured us that the public bus takes over 4 hours, and their bus gets to Hanoi in 2 hours. We only had about 74,000 dong between us (since the taxi driver refused to give us the proper change), but luckily this was fine with the minibus driver. We piled into the van, happy to finally be making our way to Hanoi.

Little did we know, the minivan would not begin it's trip to Hanoi until the van was full. We cruised the streets of Lang Son up and down like a bunch of gangsters, looking for more passengers. After a while we both started to look for potential passengers ourselves. This went on for over an hour and when the van was full (actually TOO full) and we sped off down the highway.

It was amazing to see how immediately things changed from China to Vietnam. Although the landscape is similar, the people are different. On the Vietnam side, we saw plenty of farmers wearing the traditional conical bamboo hats, water buffalo being herded, and lots of activity going on in the farms. There was none of this just over the border in China. We expected a much more gradual change in culture.

After over 2 hours of driving (stopping here and there to pick up even more passengers), we were dropped of somewhere in Hanoi, although we didn't know where. We figured out where we were amid an endless stream of pushy motorbike and taxi drivers trying to give us a ride. We had to get to a bank as we had no more Vietnamese money left. After figuring out how much the trip should cost, we tried to negotiate with a driver, but he wouldn't accept our offer (even though it was more than it needed to be). We approached another driver, but as we were speaking, the first driver ran up, said something in Vietnamese, and all of the other drivers would not accept our offer. Apparently the first driver told everyone not to take us for our price.

Eventually we found a guy who would do it (it was after 7:30 by this time), and we made it to the bank. Oddly, it is a full functioning ANZ Bank (our bank in Australia). We got 2 million dong out of the ATM (it sounds like so much, but isn't) and found a hotel, the Trung Nam Hai Hotel. It's a brand new place in the heart of the Old Quarter of Hanoi, and is pure luxury. A big huge bed with clean sheets (we may be the first occupants of the room) in a huge room and our own immaculate bathroom.

We dropped our bags and went out to find some dinner as we were starving by this time (nearly 9:00 pm, 10:00 pm China time). As we walked around, we saw SO MANY 'whities.' It was so strange to see so many white people after seeing maybe 30 total in 4 weeks in China. They were walking down the street, packing cafes and restaurants, and generally anywhere we looked. We almost felt uneasy and out of place. And any time we heard the word 'hello' we automatically assumed it was directed at us, so we spent a lot of time looking around trying to find who was speaking to us (in China, any time we heard "Hallo!" we knew it was a Chinese person saying the only English word they knew to us).

Hanoi is a small city of about 1.6 million, but extremely busy. Motorbikes (like mo-peds) clog the streets at all hours, and a few cars manage to swerve their way through as well. Like China, life seems to be out on the streets, with shops, restaurants, and stalls lining every corner of sidewalk space. But Hanoi is much dirtier than any place we went in China, much to our surprise. Trash is everywhere. In China, trash gets thrown onto the street as well, but it's immediately swept up by a street-sweeper. Hanoi has a lot of character though, and a really nice vibe.

We settled on a restaurant overlooking a busy intersection and the lake in the centre of the Old Quarter. It is nearly impossible to escape restaurants that serve western food here. In fact, we've found it hard to find decent-looking places to get Vietnamese food. But on this occasion, we were hanging out for a good western meal. We had pizza, pasta and beer--not the best food by any means, but it was delicious to us after such a long day!