Never trust a man after he had got your money, Hanoi, Vietnam

I had to pay for my bus ticket yesterday and I was quoted US $25 for a trip to Nanning and US $45 for a trip to Guilin, I decided to skip Nanning and head right on over to Guilin but this proved to be a bit of a mistake, as not only was it double the cost but it meant a 3 hour wait inside a bus ticket office for the onward connection bus ( not that I knew this until much later ).

I didnt need any alarm to wake me this morning as I was up and ready long before my moto lift was due to take me to the bus station. However once I checked out the promised free moto cycle lift never appeared and instead they called a taxi for me to take me to the station. The short trip was hardy worth the effort as it didnt even click past the minimum 12 000 that the taxis charge yet then to add insult to injury the driver claimed to have no change so accepted a 20 000 smiled and then drove away, laughing inwardly no doubt that he managed to screw over another dumb tourist.

Being in a rush to catch my bus I had little choice but to swallo this latest insult and chalk it down to poor hotel service, as it was them who first promised the moto and then called the dodgy taxi driver, and so I wont be recommending them anytime soon.

Getting on the bus wasn't too bad, I did my usual of diving up the bulk of the clothes to go under the coach while keeping with me the laptop and valuables and then took a seat near the front so that I could follow the crowd should anything happen. The first leg from Hanoi to the border town of Pinxiang took about three hours and then we had to go through immigration on both the Vietnamese and Chinese side.

As we pulled up to the border there were a large number of streamers crossing over the road just above coach level, so that I got the impression I was about to find a parade or carnival.

Here things got a little hairy, as no one seemed to speak any English at the border ( except a lone foreign money converter, who I never trust as they prey on ignorant tourists, i.e. people like me ) and had to first stamp out of Vietnam and then follow the crowd through to the Chinese side. However none of my fellow bus passengers seemed to be around and yet here were a couple of giant golfish carts full of people all heading on up through a tiny tunnel through to somewhere as yet unknown.

It turned out that the Chinese side was more like an empty town hall or museum than a check point, as it was a huge clean and well kept mansion style building and it was only the lack of servants and silverware that kept me going forward instead of stopping and asking where I was really meant to be going, asuming I could have found someone that spoke English of course.

After I wound my way up a flight of stairs and completed a immigration form I joined the queue only to be pulled back and be "randomly" inspected by the guards, and for random I mean that I was the only non oriental person in the crowd and I was also the only person to be picked on and had to pull apart my entire rucksack right down to them looking inside the first aid kit before they let me go on.

Once out we got on another cart and drove up and round a corner to a different parking lot and here I realised my next big mistake, the original bus was still on the other side presumably going to do a return run back to Hanoi and I had left my hat, cans of drink and food snacks for the journey back on other side of the border. I had assumed, much like on all of the other land border crossing that I had, that they would first empty the coach and then inspect it before sending it on for us to reboard, but here they used different ones and it was this difference that had thrown me.

For a few hesitant moments I had no idea if I should board it or not, as I could not recognise anyone from the other coach, but as they had given us all sign cards on string I did see that everyone else had similar cards and so I went with the flow and was eventually told that I was on the right bus and given a ticket to Guilin.

On the other coach there were plenty more passengers, a time zone change and at least another three hours before the next stop, plenty of time for them to show my favourite chinese movie of the moment, Red Cliff. Sadly I was not too near a screen or speaker, but then I knew what was coming so it wasnt too bad and much better than if they had chose almost any other film to show for us.

As we drove into China the rice paddies returned, as did the clouds and we arrived at Nanning in a cloud of fog which turned to light rain as the day turned into night. One strange sight that I had spotted half way through Vietnam and on through China was the locals desire to only decorate the front of the houses. Time and again I noticed tall, long and thin houses that were looked pretty face on, with balconies, wooden beams and bannisters all highly painted, but both sides were nothing more than flat, plane grey concrete walls with not a single window or attempt at decoration.

I had a three hour wait at Nanning station, where I was cooped up in a little bus station office, unable to talk to anyone in English and without any local currency to help ease the time, but I eventually found a corner where they had a free plug socket so I kept myself busy by updating the last three days worth of blog entries.

Around 6:30 they led a group of us towards a nearby communual restaurant where we were given a token that was good for rice, meat plus one other, so I chose beansprouts and scoffed the lot in double quick time to get back to my free plug socket and made the most of the rest of the time I had.

By 7:20 there was still no movement inside the office so I got up, packed and then they realised I was still there and hurried me down the platforms to where mine was due to leave any minute. Another 4 1/2 hours later I finally arrived in Guilin, but not where I planned on being, without a map, without any street names written in english, without any money but with a plan.

Before we pulled in they switched on the lights which gave me a chance to look around and I spotted a couple of hotels and banks that we passed minutes away from when we pulled up, so my plan was to rush past all the taxi hustlers, pick pockets and dodgy hotel hustlers and make it back to the main road where I could find all I need to settle in for the night.

It sounded like a plan, and apart from being propositioned by a couple of hookers in addition to the mob that greeted me at the bus station I did indeed make it to a bank and then a hotel about a block further down the road. My only problem was that it was not the cheapest of hotels, they have no wifi and they have no staff who speak english either.

As a bit of a clue to anyone from a foreign country, when a guest arrives and cant speak your language, if he cant understand one of you clearly spekaing to him in your native tongue then dont try getting two or three of you to speak really fast and loud at him at the same time, i extremely doubt that it will help the situation.

As a side note it was raining when I arrived in Guilin, which continues the 100% record of every country I reach raining on me, though for the sake of repetition I didnt bother writing when it happened in Thailand, Cambodia or Vietnam. The other reason was that none of those times was it enough to spoil my mood as they were only passing light sprinkling showers, not the heavy torrential downpours that I suffered crossing through the South and Central Americas.

In fact the only things that I noticed that were in printed in English, apart from the non smoking signs, was the hotel prices, and which upon further investigation I spotted that they also had a late night and o'clock option, and so I guessed that I had wondered into one of the hotels frequently used for bringing in working girls off the street and share a room for a short time rather than bringing them back to your own hotel.

But for me, this was just a place with a warm bed, close to an ATM machine where I could crash for a few hours and recharge all my batteries all my electronic gadgets seem to need it at the same time.

Once I layed down I noticed one final thing, the beds mattresses here are probably the most hard and highly sprung so far.