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Other entries in Hanoi

Chinese buses are crap

We arrived in Nanning at 3am and once again the shouting match between my Chinese comrades started up again....I was ready to throttle one of the men (the one with the annoying voice), but thought better of it.  I was told in Guilin that I should stay on this bus to go to Pingxiang at the border, but after waiting another three hours, I was ushered off the bus and onto a local bus and given a ticket by some bloke who couldnt speak English.  I had absolutely no idea where I was going and I couldnt get anyone on the bus to help me as only about three people in Nanning can speak English.

About 50 minutes later we arrived at another bus statin, this time to the south of the city and I boarded another bus to Pingxiang after comparing the Chinese symbols on my ticket to those on the front of the buses.  However, this bus was not a sleeper bus a promised and it was full of mosquitos.....I killed eleven of the little bastards in the first ten minutes on the bus, and this was my sole method of entertainment for the entire journey as my Ipod was dead and I had finished all of the books I had bought.  The grand total number of kills for the jouney was 22, and to my knowledge only one of them escaped my grasp....and the bastard got me!  There was no chance of sleeping on this bus as once again they played techno music very loud and then followed it up with two crap kung-fu films (also very loud).  Maybe all Chinese people are a tad hard of hearing?

The bus passed through a number of small towns and villages surrounded by rice paddies and fields of corn, and the roads were awful which was not a surprise as we were actually in the middle of nowhere.  The journey lasted about four hours and I was met at the bus station by an army of motorised tuk-tuk drivers.  I chose one bloke as e was the least pushy and he waved at me when I came into the station, but regretted it soon after when he ran out of petrol about 10km from the border!  He managed to nick a tiny amount of petrol from another bloke and turned around in search of a petrol station that hadnt run out (which turned out to be in the next town along....a full 8km).  So we drove there, got some petrol, and on the way back to the border he met up with a few friends who offered to change my Chinese money to Vietnamese, and tried to rip me off big time in the process, but luckily I had checked the exchange rates before I left and got a good deal.  In total, this tuk-tuk ride that should have been only 18km took an hur and a half, again I want best pleased.

Customs was fairly easy compared to trying to get into China and only took about 45 minutes.  I caught a txi with the mardiest man in the world (probably cos I bartered with him over the price and he couldnt rip me off) o the nearest big twon Lang Son, where I would catch a minibus to Hanoi.  As soon as I entered Vietnam I could see huge differences as it seemed to be more like a jungle, the towns were made up of really tall, thin, slightly french looking buildings.  Also, a huge percentage of the men still wear army helmets for riding their motorbikes which is pretty cool.

I was dropped off at a petrol station just outside of Lang Son, where I was met by a mini-bus with an English speaking driver........things were looking up.  After drivng around Lang Son for an hour looking for more passengers and being crammed into the back corner with the wheel arch we finally set off for Hanoi which took only two and a half hours thankfully.  There turned out to be a number of English speakers on the bus, so at least I had someone to talk to and to help explain exactly where I wanted to be dropped off in Hanoi's Old Quarter where Tom and Al were staying.

After not eating or sleeping for 26 hours I finally arrived at the Little Hanoi Hotel in Hanoi to the sight of Ack piddling about on the Intergeek in th front of our hotel.  We are paying 19USD between us per night for a room with air-con, 2 fans, TV, en-suite bathroom, sofa area, free internet, hot water and breakfast in bed!!!  I could definately get used to this.

First impressions of Hanoi are that it is a very lively city which is chocca with motorbikes and scooters.  So much so that to cross the road, you literally just have to walk infront of them and let the bikes weave out of your way!!!  The people also park all their scooters horizontally across the pavement, meanng you have to walk along the sid of the road with the sewage pouring along right next to you....nice.

I was pretty hungry, so we headed out for pizza which compensated for the 26-hour famine I had just taken part in, and got updated on the funny stories the boys had from the last week, including Al with more prozzies and jumping into the Sheraton hotel pool fully clothed!!

After dinner we headed out for a few steady beers, watched some football, played pool and table football with some English guys from Oxford.  They turned out to be a good laugh, and they invited us back to ther place for a few joints.  We each caught a motorbike taxi to their place, but I was quite alarmed to find that my driver went in a competely different direction to the others, but only to find out it was a shortcut moments later.

We spen about an hour at their gaff until I started falling asleep, so we headed back at 3am, only to be ripped off by the motorbike drivers (for about 30p) and after 43 hours without sleep I finally got some much needed kip.

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