March 16, 2008
Written by: Susan

Welcome to CHINA ! !

After 2 months in Vietnam, we were finally ready to head north into China. We had debated whether or not to cross overland or fly from Hanoi to Hong Kong and then cross over into China. After checking the cost of airlines tickets from Hanoi to Hong Kong and found out that they were $350 each for an hour and a half flight, we decided to go overland.

We bought bus tickets from the Elegance Hotel travel desk that would take us from Hanoi all the way to Nanning, China (the city we would stop in for the night before going onwards to who knows where). After a 3-hour journey through more rice fields and small villages we arrived at the border. The border was smaller and quieter than I expected considering it was one of the main borders between Vietnam and China. On the Vietnam side, there was just a small, disorganized immigrations desk. Everybody off of our Chinese bus pushed and shoved their way to the front and just started throwing their passports onto the immigration table. There were only two Vietnamese officials working and clearly there was no order. After a year of traveling, we weren’t afraid to push, shove and wiggle our way to the front either.

After we got our passports back, we went outside to a small, electric car (similar to a golf cart except with 8 seats) and we were zipped off to checkpoint number two where we had to again unload all of our baggage and official walk into China. From there we got back into our electric car and drove up to the biggest, most ostentatious marble building you can imagine being in the middle of nowhere. The message was clear from the building. You were entering into the big, prosperous, powerful country of China now. With such a big building, I expected loads of people buzzing around everywhere. Brian and I ran into the building so we could get in line and not be stuck waiting forever to get into China. There was no line and not much of anything actually. Just a big barren building with 2 officials ready to stamp you in.

After officially entering China, there was another 3 hour ride to the city of Nanning. Where there were villages all the way up until the border in Vietnam, in China all we saw was barren landscape. You could immediately feel the difference between the two countries. We arrived in Nanning a little after 5pm and it was starting to get dark. We didn’t have a hotel nor did we even know where the bus had dropped us off at. Since Nanning is far from being a tourist city, pretty much nobody spoke English, including the tourism “distribution” center. So we wandered around the streets trying to figure out what to do and decided the best thing to do was take a taxi to the train station. There would be some hotels there and we could check on train tickets to get us to Guilin the next day.

I was starting to get worried that we would have to spend a ton of money on a hotel room since we weren’t in the mood to shop around. We were lucky though and the cab driver had dropped us off in front of a really nice looking 3 star hotel that only costs us $20. We didn’t do much in Nanning except head over to the train station to get our train tickets. At this point in the trip, we forked over the extra money for the soft seats. We’re about traveling cheap, but there are just some things that you need to spend money on.

The next morning we took the train to Guilin. We spent the day wandering around Guilin and bought ourselves 2 Chinese ceramic mugs with the little lids on them. Tea is to China what wine is to France. Everywhere we’ve gone, hot water is available. We’ve become tea junkies buying up different varieties of tea at all the little tea houses. We now carry along our little collection of tea along with our ceramic mugs. We have officially immersed ourselves into the Chinese culture.  

We decided to head to Yangshuo the next day as we had heard everybody say that it was a much nicer city than Guilin. We are so used to spending hours upon hours on the bus/train that an hour and a half bus ride zipped past. I was thankful though for the short trip as the bus driver felt that he owned the oncoming traffic lane and chose to drive in that lane until an oncoming vehicle would come speeding up and at the last minute he would swerve back into the right lane. Death by Chinese bus is not on our itinerary.

As soon as we got to Yangshuo we loved it. It reminded us of mountain towns from the states. There were towering green peaks everywhere. Our hostel was really nice too and half the price. For $7 a night we got our own room with bathroom, hot water, and a free breakfast. Plus there was a cozy area downstairs to hang out as well as free wifi. This would all come in handy as the weather was changing and our second day in Yangshuo the rain came pouring down.

There was not much to do as we couldn’t see the mountains and the last thing we wanted to do was walk around in the pouring rain. We did go take a Mandarin class though for an hour to try to learn a few Chinese words while we were here. After that, we just went back to our hostel, surfed the net, and watched Jesse James. Brian liked it and I fell asleep. It was a much needed break from our travels.

One our last day in Yangshuo we took a local bus up to the town of Xingping. We booked a bamboo raft and took a cruise up the Li River. At first we were a bit sketched out about getting in a bamboo raft since the river was wide and we saw a lot of bigger boats floating down it. We really wanted to float up the river though and found that all of the bigger boats were for the Asian tour groups. So we hopped on a raft and hoped for the best. It was a beautiful cruise and we can only imagine how much more spectacular the scenery would have been if it hadn’t been foggy and cold. Nonetheless, we enjoyed it.

We’re currently back in Guilin and head on a 22 hour train ride to Shanghai tonight. This will be our longest train journey yet and we are anxious to see how the train is. Stay tuned.

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