Hanoi (Part One), Vietnam
Saturday, March 4, 2006
We set off from Yangshuo early Thursday evening hoping to catch the night bus all the way to the border(Pingxiang), which should have got us there around 7.30am! That was the plan anyway! We got a bus to Guilin from Yangshuo (about 1 hour North) where legend has it you can get a night bus to the border! Upon arrival in Guilin the bus station was swamped with locals and all the signs were in Mandarin (suprisingly!), anyway we managed to fight our way to the front of the ticket queue after yet more strange looks from the locals, I dont think you get many good looking Brits around that part of the world! Having pointed our way in the book to the border and the woman flatly refusing to get us there (she certainly needed to go on a customer service course!), we then managed to ask her again via the pointing method for a bus to a town called Nanning, where we new we could get a connection to the border. Anyway to cut a boring story short, we ended up arriving at Nanning too late, and at the wrong bus stop at 11.30pm. With the prospect of sleeping in a very cold bus station, we consulted the 'Bible' (Lonely Planet) and caught a taxi to a reasonably cheap hotel. First thing the next morning, we caught a train to Pingxiang and luckily joined up with two Danish guys, one Canadian and a Yank and walked across the border and after a lot of haggling (particularly by the Danish guys who were tight fisted to say the least!) got a mini bus to Hanoi the Capital of Vietnam where the fun began!
