Crossing from Vietnam into Yunnan China
Trip Start
Jan 11, 2009
1
38
53
Trip End
Apr 12, 2009
Yuanyang, Yunnan,
China
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
to Yuangyang, China (Yunnan Province), as it's quite unbelievable.
We started off from the Sapa hotel around 7:30AM, with a hair-raising drive in thick fog
down a mountain for an hour. B2 was still unwell, so windy roads were difficult to
stomach. We were packed into a minivan like sardines. B2 had a guy leaning on him with
an armpit in B2's nose - I don't know how B2 kept himself from vomiting. A2 was sitting
within a pack of 5 young backpackers who were sharing drinking stories from Mongolia,
Russia, China with her; one of them had to open the window to have a puke fest due to
food poisoning in Vietnam. Welcome to the club! The van owners were shouting at him to
put his head back in the van since driving there is so tight, he could be decapitated if
he kept his head out. They threw plastic bags at him to use as barf bags, but he refused
to use a bag, so lots of screaming took place in various languages. Finally, everyone
concurred on the plan of letting their friend know when there was oncoming traffic, so he
could withdraw his head from the window. This went on for at least 5 rounds of vomiting
- poor kid. Thankfully B2 was not in ear shot or smell shot of what was going on in the
back of the van. The driver overtook many cars and buses on the way down, somehow always
on a blind turn, with a cliff on one side and sheer rock wall on the other, within thick
fog. Luckily we made it down to the border town of Lao Cai alive; B2 was shaken, but
stomach contents were still with him.
We were dropped off at a travel agency in order to wait for the proprietor of our hotel
(Nam) who was going to help us get Chinese money, then cross the border and get bus
tickets. The sign inside the agency read "Tourist Exploitation Center", at least they
have pride about it we thought. Nam arrived to help us, as he was the only one who spoke
English. We were supposed to take an 11AM direct bus to YuanYang from the Chinese
border, but someone messed up with the schedules so we missed the only direct bus, which
was at 9AM. Shouting started in Vietnamese and went on for quite some time. Phone calls
were made, more shouting and then a plan. There was a bus to some other city, which
passed by a road where we could be dropped off, from where we could catch a minibus to
Yuanyang. We had to decide quickly and it was nerve wracking thinking about being
dropped off in the middle of nowhere in China with possibly no minibuses to shuttle us to
our final destination. Screw it, let's go! We needed Chinese money - Nam grabbed some
cash from us and ran to an old woman playing cards in the street, who threw some Chinese
money back at him. He gave it to us and said the rate was good - I had to take his word
for it. We were told that our China guide book would be confiscated, so we gave it to
the Vietnamese person who was crossing the border with us to help us get tickets (let's
call him "The Carrier"). A2 jumped on his motorbike and B2 jumped on Nam's with the
luggage. They rode us to the border crossing. We waited for them to stamp us out of
Vietnam - check - we walked across a bridge between the two countries and now we were in
China - border crossing again - this time our bags were emptied and six people went
through all the items. It was amusing to watch as we had to play charades and describe
some of the items and their purpose. The biggest problem item was B2's foot powder in a
small plastic bag - looking like cocaine; some tasting of it went around and a lot of
chit chat. Once they were satisfied B2 wasn't a heroin dealer we were allowed to repack
our bags. We were cleared, and our passports were stamped, we were officially allowed to
go into China.
"The Carrier" was waiting for us this entire time, as he was not searched. As soon as we
left the border building, he handed us our China guidebook and we ran on foot to the bus
station in the Chinese border city of Hekou. At the bus station was a second Vietnamese
scout who had been at the station doing all the leg work to find our bus. She talked to
our bus driver and told him where to drop us, he seemed to nod and understand. We piled
into the bus while The Carrier went to buy our tickets. We paid $6USD to The Carrier and
scout for their help in getting us across and getting us on the right bus with tickets in
hand. Phew... that part was over and now the China journey would start. It was not long
before the bus driver and male passengers started chain smoking some kind of flower
wilting tobacco based concoction. We had a window open, but it was not really helping.
The road the bus took, was not really a road - it was an old dirt path, sometimes washed
out, sometimes with potholes the size of one story buildings, sometimes with mud and
puddles so big we thought the driver was going to ask us to push... This went on for 5-6
hours!!! The ride was so bumpy that one man fell out of his seat and nearly injured
himself. One woman somehow managed to grab a nap - we don't know how this was possible
since her head kept slamming against the window. There was a baby on board with mom and
grandma. This baby increased the dirtiness level of the bus 10 fold. All the food
(apples, noodles, eggs, lollypop, peanuts, oranges and water) it ate ended up on the
floor because grandma dropped it or because he puked it back out. He managed to puke all
over the floor on the seat behind us, right next to B2's bag. We had to pull the bag
from under our seat and ride with it and the other 4 bag in our tiny seat, as we bounced
around on the bus. B2 dropped his Chinese phrasebook into the baby vomit, so it's now
called the barf book. We hand-sanitize it every time we use it.
The bouncy journey continued for many, many grueling hours. But, somehow it was not as
bad as being in Vietnam. The people were friendlier and laughing on the bus; there was
a general feeling of everything being lighter and not grim as it was south of the border.
We passed by farm after farm of bananas, pineapples and rubber trees. The fruit was
being harvested - people used donkeys to haul the goods to trucks. We followed a river
the entire way, so it was quite scenic most of the way. It's a very poor area, so it's
understandable that the road is not maintained. What killed us was that there was a
brand spanking new billion dollar highway right above us the entire way, but it was not
yet opened!
We got to the drop off point and the bus driver pointed to our minibus. Baby, mom and
grandma also went on the same bus - yeah, more baby vomit! The minibus circled the town
for a half hour, wasting gas, in order to fill us the bus. We were so tired that we
would have paid for the extra seats if he could have skipped that stage, but we didn't
know how to communicate this. Finally, the bus was full and we headed up a tiny, steep
mountain road. More scary passing on cliffhanger roads, for an hour. We were totally
discombobulated by the time we got to Yuanyang, but at least we got there. We were
totally dehydrated, as we did not dare to drink all day because there were no bathroom
stops. The elevation also gave us terrible headaches, so we were pretty dead to the
world. It was an 11 hour journey, but at least we made it. We were dropped off near a
hotel, so we just took a room there. B2 haggled the price down by a couple of dollars
and we were in! We slept 13 hours. Even the disco music, constant car horns and
construction drilling did not get us out of bed.
