Nanning to Hanoi

Day 63 - 27/07/2010 - 10:28 - Hanoi, Vietnam

We've arrived. The door to south east asia is open and we've set foot inside it for the first time. Really haven't seen too much today though!

We arrived into Nanning stupidly early in the morning, at 6:30am (nothing compared to today though) and we got our bags together and headed to the ticket office to try and get tickets from Nanning to Hanoi. We had all the necessary words needed in Chinese so we were confident that this wouldn't be the barrier, but availability would.

The first problem we had was finding an ATM that accepted Western cards. Luckily there was one not too far from the station, although completely in the opposite direction to the place I looked when Laura was in the queue. By the time I had come back, she'd left the queue and we found the ATM together before getting back in. We got to the front and were told that we had to go to the end window. Lowe and behold, there were tickets left, we managed to buy them (the ticket clerk spoke surprisingly good English but we met him half way). They did need to see our visa for Vietnam but it didn't cost a lot - £24 each soft sleeper.

We were happy but knackered, dropped our large bags off at the left luggage and went in search for something to do in Nanning. We had been told that there was not much to do by many travellers websites and we were indeed finding that to be the case. The humidity and us feeling groggy didn't help. We were walking back to the train station when we saw a hotel offering a 3 hour rate for 58RMB (around £6). We took them up on the offer - shower and nap, up and out of the hotel for 12. Both of us feeling much better as neither of us slept well on the train.

We walked around a bit more, having lunch in Nanning. Then the skies opened and it rained. We got drenched and thought to ourselves we were better off in the waiting room - dry and air conditioned. We spent 3 hours there in total before our train at 6:45pm. We took great fun in waving to all the kids who stare at us for being different - it's very cute. They like Laura (there is a surprise). One boy who can't have been much older than 10 came up to me and shook my hand then ran off - it was funny and various encounters like this during the day kept us entertained and smiling in what otherwise would have been a very drab and boring day.

We boarded the train at about 6:15. We were sharing with a British man called Andrew who had lived in Zimbabwe for most of his life before coming to Britain. He is a lecturer in Science and Engineering at Shenzen University (he lectures in English) and previous lectured at Loughbrough! He's been in China for 5 years and still hasn't learnt Chinese. British trait! Andrew was also travelling to Hanoi for part of his 4 week summer break. He was also going to Laos and Western China. We both got on really well with him, had a lot of stories to share and he was particuarly amazed at our trip.

The border controls were not too bad last night. Pretty short stops at each point (around 1 and a half hours each) although the free for all in collecting passports from the Vietnamese desk was not appreciated at 12 midnight! I slipped in and out of consiousness over the rest of the journey and we got into Vietnam at the ungodly time of 4:45am. Yes, 4:45am! Ugh!

Andrew managed to negotiate a taxi (the ones immediately outside the station were stupidly expensive!) for 7 dollars to our hotel and then another 3 for his, he refused to let us pay for the taxi which was incredibly nice of him and wished us a pleasant trip, as we did to him! The meter was showing much less to be honest, and in Vietnamese Dong but I don't think he had any (nor did we) or we'd have insisted paying in that. I've already got a bad feeling about taxi scams over the next couple of months. My tactic is agression, DONG DONG DONG DONG DONG *point violently to meter* - should work - I'll report back!

So we were at our hotel by 5:15am. They said they were full and we'd have to wait until 8:30am when they had some guests leaving to go on a tour to Halong Bay (something we're doing as well in a couple of days). They showed us to their same company hotel (around the corner) and let us stay in the public lounge on the first floor. We got a little sleep, but there were a group of young Austrailians up waiting to go to Halong Bay so didn't sleep as well as I could have! Nevermind, time to explore Hanoi!!