Lee and Clare, The road home

24 hours on the road, made it to Hanoi

2^nd December 2003

This is a quicky as we are REALLY stuffed after just been travelling for over 24 hours. We got on a sleeper bus in Kunming last night at 7.20. We almost missed it as we had dinner with a really nice English girl we met, then had to get 2 buses then find the long distance bus station, then find the bus. You have to be really careful in China with who you believe, as for instance if you tell someone that you want to go to Hekou (Chinese Border) and even show them the ticket they won't necesarily show you to the correct bus. But we got on the bus with 5 minutes to spare. Then more stress as I had to get off to run to the toilet before it left then couldn't find the bus again after. There were at least 50 buses lined up in the station and I was starting to panic even though I knew that Lee wouldn't let the bus go without me!

We hate sleeper buses! You can lie down but the bed is not very wide, ownly shoulder width. When Lee lay on his back both of his arms hung off the sides of the bed. I was lucky enough to get by a winder whereas Lee was in the centre of the bus. He had to hang on every time we went around the corner. Neither of us got any sleep on the 11 hour bus ride, which was compounded by the fact that I was BUSTING to go to the toilet for about 2 hours. In the end when someone got off the bus, I had to run off and go on the road at the back of the bus as there was nothing else to hide behind. Luckily it was dark but one motorbike did go past in the opposite direction.

We got to the border at 6.30 but it didn't open till 8.00 so we had the enforced company of 2 Chinese guys who wanted to practice their English on us and try to change money with them. When we showed them that we had only equivalent of $1US left in Yuan they told us that we could go to a ATM and withdraw Chinese Yuan and change it with them into Vietnamese Dong! As if we are stupid.

Not much of a hassle getting over the border. Funny that we were talking yesterday and we asked eachother what we think of when we think of Vietnamese and we both said that they wear those round straw hats with a point at the top and sure enough every Vietnamese person that was streaming over the border in the opposite direction to us was wearing one of those hats.

We had to walk over a bridge then go through immigration at the other side then found a bank to change some money, then walk 2 kms to the train station with our packs. We had to wait a couple of hours for the train to leave during which time we ate the food we'd stolen from the breakfast buffet the day before (also finished off at lunch and dinner time).

The train ride was soooo long, we though it would never end. We travelled "hard seat" for 10 hours which is just a wooden bench with a 1 degree recline. Remember we'd just got off a sleeper bus on which we hadn't slept. But it wasn't that bad, we got to look out the window at all the lush vegetation, which was very different to China, and people working barefoot in the fields. Also people doing such things as climbing in the windows of the train to avoid buying a ticket then seeing them scrambling to avoid the ticket checkers later on. Lots of people selling stuff on the train, like bread, some stuff wrapped in leaves or hot corn on the cobs. We have to do this exact journey again in a couple of days as we head back up to a town near the border which is supposed to be quite cool. We got a lot of reading done though! Lee's now onto the 3rd Lord of the Rings and getting through that pretty swiftly!

So we arrived here in Hanoi at 8.30 and got a taxi here and found a hotel for $8US a night. Includes bathroom and sattelite TV. We're moving to the hotel that Lisa's booked tomorrow. We've found it, it's only a few doors down from ours just by chance. We went in there to see what time we can check in and think we may have weedled our way into having a buffet breakfast there tomorrow before we go out to the airport to collect Lisa. That's if we can manage to get up before 10.

The clock went back an hour for us when we went over the border so we are now 6 hours behind NZ. We've had our first Vietnamese food but we chugged it down as we're so tired. So we're off to shower and sleep now. oh and Lee's had his first Tiger Beer of many while he's been sitting here and telling me to hurry up and finish!