Greetings from Sunshine 3 Hotel, Hanoi. I touched down this evening at about 9.00pm and Hanoi turned out to be unexpectedly challenging.

First challenge was trying not to get ripped off by the airport taxis. The guy in charge quoted a fare for my destination, but once I’ve boarded and tried to reconfirm with the driver, I was quoted another fare, much higher. I got out. Tried to get another operator. This time, I was quoted a very low fare. The driver showed me to his car. And that’s what it was - a car. I refused to board and gave up getting a taxi at the airport terminal. I wandered around the airport carpark and found a non-airport taxi parked there. The driver waved to me. I confirmed the fare with him and my instincts told me that this guy was OK.

I arrived safely at my booked hotel without paying more. In fact I paid less than what the meter showed. All the giant billboards on the highways reminded me of Thailand. Some parts of Hanoi looks like Chiangmai. Some parts look like Bangkok and some parts look like Kathmandu.

Like in Thailand, English is not very well-spoken in Hanoi. And this problem seems to exist where it shouldn’t. Hotel staff, taxi drivers, waiters, shopkeepers need a lot of repetition before they understand what you’re trying to say. Strangely, many guys you pull out from the streets (those who don’t deal with tourists), seem to understand me and express themselves better.

Hanoi is unusually warm this winter. The traffic is totally chaotic, but not as dangerous as what some writers described it. Perhaps the motorbike riders have grown so used to the chaos that they instinctively know how to avoid hitting people.

The eating places were scattered on the sides of the narrow streets. Low chairs, low tables and heaps of rubbish under the tables and chairs. Passing motorbikes spray exhaust fumes on the diners. My guts may not have the time to adapt to these conditions.

I had supper at a more enclosed bia hoi joint in the Old Quarter near Hoan Kiem Lake. The place was packed with locals imbibing the “house pour” - home-brewed bia hoi. They also served food which included hotpot and many other local dishes. I had a fried beef noodle, sharing the table with a couple of Vietnamese gem dealers who could speak some Thai and pretty good English. They told me they are frequent visitors to Thailand. The moment they said they were gem dealers, I grew suspicious and told them a lot of lies about myself.

But they turned out to be genuinely friendly folks. One of the guy’s wife joined us a while later. They bought me a Saigon Beer and made no mention about buying gems. I felt a bit guilty for being over-cautious.

Just one night in Hanoi and I’ll head for the border tomorrow morning. Stay tuned.

I thought I could beat the sunrise, but I was greeted by a bright, cloudy and someone hazy morning in Hanoi. I checked out of my hotel and boarded a taxi to the bus terminal where the bus to Lang Son departed. The obviously underaged driver was unsure, but he agreed to take me for 50,000 dong. After that, he stoppped the taxi a few times to ask for directions. I was worried if I would get to the correct destination, but a row of buses soon appeared on the side of a road and when I shouted “Lang Son”, one of the drivers nodded and pointed to his already full vehicle.

I squeezed inside the 8-seater which was probably carrying 12 people. The interior of the bus was abuzz with Vietnamese chatter. Then, suddenly, I heard Mandarin. A bespectacled middle-aged gentleman sitting next to a young man were conversing in Mandarin. The former spoke in a very crisp northern accent. The latter sounded like a Malaysian with his somewhat distorted pronunciations. I thought he was Vietnamese.

The bus took hours to get out of the city’s grip. Once it reached the highway, the picked up a little. Motorbikes, bicycles and even pedestrains shared this highway, making progress a lot slower than expected. It was almost noon when we arrived in Lang Son. The air was a lot cooler than in Hanoi, probably about 18 deg C. From the 2 Chinese gentemen’s conversation, I realised that the bus was going all the way to Friendship Pass. I might as well stay on. I wrote “Huu Nghi Quan” on a piece of paper and passed it to the driver. He immediately understood and I stayed on the bus, only to discover that there was another Mandarin-speaking passenger on the bus. Very fluent in Vietnamese, he helped us translate.

The driver would pick up a few more passengers at Lang Son and drop them at nearby villages before sending the 4 of us to Friendship Pass. Friendship Pass on the Vietnamese side looked like some SAF firing range of the old days. Dry, dusty mud tracks, lots of “natural” vegetation and a few small, ugly buildings. After getting off at the bus terminal, we walked to the border.

The middle-aged gentleman was from Xian. The 20-year-old young man he was with hails from Guizhou. Our Vietnamese translator, in his mid-20s, lived just across the border at Pingxiang town. As we walked and talked, I found out that our man from Xian had a niece studying in NUS. He actually had trouble understanding his 2 comrades as their accents were so Malaysian-like. In fact, he remarked that the foreigner’s Putong Hua sounded better than the 2 southerners’. Quite true.

The Vietnamese immigration was a small building with only one functioning counter. 2 immigration officers sat behind the glass panel, looking calm and relaxed in their neat green uniforms, totally oblivious to the mayhem outside. Entry and exit - all the same counter. No proper queue, no proper line. Just chuck your passport through the opening in the glass panel and wait for the 2 blokes to notice it. In no particular order, the Vietnamese officers stamped the passports and read out the names. Once your name is read out, squeeze through the crowd to collect it, then get the hell out of the place.

A different world greeted us on the Chinese side. All-weather roads, sheltered paths, patches of manicured greenery and an imposing immigration checkpoint building. There were individual counters and proper queues here. We entered one by one, had our luggage scanned and were off to the iconic Friendship Pass gate.

Many mainland Chinese make their way here for a daytrip. We saw them posing and snapping away. The whole place looked like a park - in sharp contrast with the scene just across the border. 4 of us regrouped after immigration and shared a taxi to Pingxiang town. The man from Pingxiang gave us a brief introduction of his hometown, only to be interrupted by the taxi driver who tried to correct him. An interesting, heated debate followed, bets were placed, but nobody went away richer or poorer.

I found out that Cantonese is very popular in Guangxi. Not only Guangxi, our young man from Guizhou also spoke Cantonese. The accent sounded a bit different from Hongkong’s but the notorious “t##w” word sounded exactly the same. It took us less than 20 minutes to get to Pingxiang town. At the time of the war, this place was just a village. Now, there are banks, shopping centres and a bus station. Everywhere, there were signs encouraging people to speak proper Putong Hua. Everywhere, I heard Cantonese.

It was about 15 deg C at Pingxiang. I pulled on my fleece jacket. Then, I changed my money at the bank and proceeded to the small bus station where I bought a ticket to Nanning. No trouble at all. There were many buses going to Guangxi’s provincial capital. I boarded the bus at about 5pm and 2 and a half hours later, I found myself surrounded by shopping centres and KFC at the monstrous Langdong Bus Station at Nanning.

It was already dark. I decided to get as far away from the border as possible, then make my way back. There was quite a crowd at the bus station, but this was the tail end of homebound migrant workers. I managed to get the last ticket on the bus to Guilin, departing at about 9pm. I had not eaten anything since breakfast, so I made my way the the canteen and ordered a chicken set meal. It didn’t taste good, but I was starving. Then, as I emerged from the toilet, a familiar face greeted me. It was that young man from Guizhou! What a coincidence. We sat down at the waiting hall of the bus station and had a good talk. He has been working in Vietnam for only a few months. His company dealt with power grids and the man from Xian was their consultant.

“Chan dai gor, I really envy the way you can travel for pleasure.”

“You too can do it if you make it your priority. You see, many people are so caught up with wealth-accumulation that they neglect some of the most basic and simple pleasure in life.” I said.

My bus was about to leave. I gave him my email address and and waved goodbye.

It was a business class coach, a huge improvement from the rusty sleeper buses I took in Yunnan 15 years ago. The no smoking regulation was also strictly enforced and apart from a few old and loud folks, spitting has become a far less a problem that it was years ago. On the bus, a uniformed hostess handed out drinks and snacks. Actually, the snacks included a bun and a banana. About 4 hours later, at 1am, we pulled into Guilin bus station. I stepped out of the bus and the cold wind told me that I hadn’t brought enough warm clothing. It was about 0 deg C.

From the bus station, I took a taxi to Daxin Fandian. It was 1am, but the counter was still manned by a young lady and her mentor. Y120 for a very nice room with heater, hot shower, TV and internet. From the window of my room, I could see the Sun and Moon Pagoda on the Rong Lake.

The hot shower and the room heater took a while to heat up. I used the kettle in the room to boil some water to make tea and instant noodles. The cold gave me the perfect excuse to uncork my bottle of Johnnie Walker Double Black. By the time I was ready for bed, it was almost 3am.

It was a cold and wet morning in Guilin on the 13th of February, Chinese New
Year’s Eve. I could vaguely see the Sun and Moon Pagodas from the window of my
hotel. The distant peaks were hardly visible at all. After a breakfast at KFC,
it started to rain. All hope of taking good pictures got washed away. I decided
to give the Li Jiang cruise a miss.

Instead, I went to Duxiu Feng, a 20-storey high outcrop that is said to offer good views
of the surrounding peaks and rivers. Interestingly, this feature has been
thoroughly exploited for profit. First of all, the peak is enclosed within the grounds of an
ancient palace (called Jing Jiang Palace) where descendents of the first Ming
emperor Zhu Yuan Zhang once stayed. Part of the palace is now the Guangxi Normal
University. Another part is a tourist trap. Y70 entrance fee gets you a guide
who will take you “into history”. It’s all pretty academic but interesting at
first. One of the buildings has been carefully constructed, displaying static
and dynamic exhibits with drama and special effects. There was plenty of
explanation on Fengshui or Geomancy and the meticulous attention to Fengshui
principles in the construction of the palace.

Finally, we came to Duxiu Peak. My whole aim of going there was really just to
climb this peak, but there was actually an entrance into the peak. Inside, the
guide showed us how to identify our “tai sui” or guardian angels according to
our year of birth. There are some 60 of these angels carved on the walls of the
cave. Once you’ve identified your “tai sui”, there is an elaborate way of paying
respect to it. The only straighforward gesture would be dropping money into the
box beneath each “tai sui”. Judging from the sheer number of people kneeling
down and bowing to their “tai sui”s, I couldn’t help wondering why decades of
Communism hadn’t placed even a dent on traditional Chinese beliefs.

After coming out of the cave, we were herded into a room selling paintings of
“tai sui”s. Some were worth thousands. There were also all sorts of lucky
charms. The guide kept shouting “don’t be in such a hurry to get out”. He must
be kidding. I found the stairs leading up to the top of Duxiu Peak and proceeded
to climb. It was a very easy climb, especially soothing was the background
music. Yes, they’ve actually embedded speakers in the rock to keep us
entertained while we climbed. Such is the “thoughtfulness” that goes into so many
tourist spots in China. Well, the view up there was bad due to the rainy weather.

Just before nightfall, I went to Elephant Hill Park. It’s a small park just a
short walk from my hotel and there is a very interesting rock formation that
requires little imagination for the beholder to see an elephant. It was still
drizzling at nightfall. It was Chinese New Year’s Eve. Except for a few
provision stalls, all shops were closed. The only eateries still open were KFC,
McDonalds and Pizza Hut. This must be the first time I had a burger for dinner
on Chinese New Year’s Eve. But all was not quiet. The cold and wet streets were
bombarded with firecrackers and fireworks, all privately sponsored and
unregulated. Deafening, smoky, random and uncoordinated. That’s what Chinese New
Year is all about.

Temperatures dropped further as we went deeper into the night. It must have been
subzero. Yet, no snow but a very light, persistent drizzle fell. Seeing the
beautiful lights, I took some night scenes. The lightings over Rong Lake were
simple yet elegant. The Sun and Moon Pagodas shone like a couple of swords
emerging from the lake. All through the night, a continuous burst of fireworks
from private individuals showered the pagodas with colourful shooting stars.

I realised I had no time to wait for the sky to clear. I decided to head to
Yangshuo and Li Jiang the next day.

Joining a tour group has always been the last thing on my mind, but I had little
time and no choice. So on the first day of Chinese New Year, I paid Y150 for a
Yangshuo and Li Jiang cruise and boarded a tour bus with Chinese tourists from
all over the country. Our guide was a young, scrawny guy by the name of Mr
Xiong. He said that in Guilin, people refer to their friends as “gou rou” or dog
meat. Well, I didn’t bother to check whether he was pulling our legs, but I
certainly had no problem calling him dog meat when the first spot he brought us
to was a rock gallery selling a gem called cat’s eye. Oh yes, it’s said to do a
lot of good things to you and frankly, I’m impressed with the beauty of some of
these cat’s eye stones. It’s just that those I fancy cost Y2000 upwards.

Our second spot was Dragon Cave in Yangshuo. At the entrance, there was a short
photography session. We were asked to pose like an idiot on a cement slab and we
didn’t have to buy the picture if we didn’t like it. I decided not to take. We
then got into a boat with another guide who took us into the cave proper. Some
people may not like the way the Chinese light up their caves with coloured
lights, but I think Dragon Cave was very tastefully done. The coloured lights
accentuatd the reflections on the water as well as the textures of the
stalactites and stalagmites. My apologies to the purists, but this was the most
beautiful cave I’ve seen.

Strange rocks are one of the many products of Guilin/Yangshuo. At the end of our
rocky tour of the cave, near the windy exit, was a little rock store selling
luminous rocks and even a yellow “jade” made into all kinds of ornaments. Most intriguing were the “meat rocks”. They look real enough to make pork lovers drool.
Strange rocks or tampered “rocks”? Some were ridiculously cheap. Some were
ridiculously expensive.

Next stop, was a Buddhist temple that looked pretty authentic. The guide at the
temple also gave a very good introduction to Buddhist principles. I was touched.
Then, came the interesting part. We were asked to pick a divination lot to tell
our fortune. It costs Y10 to have our fortune told. My intention of picking the
lot was to take the opportunity to make a small donation to the temple.
Apparently, the monk in charge of reading my fortune had something up his
sleeve.

“Judging from your birth and your facial features, you ought to be worth 8
figures by now. But looking at your hands, they suggest a lifetime of hard work.
No easy money for you…”

Money? Well, yes. I can do with a bit more, but I don’t need 8 figures. As a
Buddhist monk, he ought to be teaching contentment. But never mind, it got even
better.

“One way to improve your fortune is to get a “qiling” from the temple…”

The alarm bells went off. I thanked him for his advice. He asked me to light a
lamp. I almost did that without asking how much it would cost me. Y100. Oops. I
bravely told them I was not lighting and joined Mr Dog Meat on the bus.

Next, we went to a park to see the giant rong tree. Then, it’s lunch time at
Moon Hill. This is an interesting rock formation looking like the arch of a
bridge. Lunch at this restaurant serving “farmer’s cuisine” was covered up to
Y10. This meant that Y10 would be deducted from our final bill based on what we
ordered. Guess what. Nothing on the menu cost less than Y10. Mr Dog Meat’s
strategy. Never for one moment believe that the guide is on your side.

After lunch, we went on a cruise on the Li Jiang. There wasn’t as much rain as
the day before, but the sky was cloudy and the distant peaks obscured.
Otherwise, I would have agreed with with anyone who says 桂林山水甲天下. The
water in the Li Jiang was emerald green and relatively clear. Nearby, the peaks
present themselves as sheer cliffs and walls put there to guard an invaluable
treasure or secret. In the distance, they resemble fingers of the Buddha from
which even the Monkey god could not escape.

It was cold on the small boat, but I had to open the window to try to capture
the stunning scenery with my camera which lacks imagination. Under such
conditions, the mind can fill in the details, but the camera can’t. It’s a pity
that the weather wouldn’t cooperate.

We returned to Xingping to board our tour bus. Next destination - military site.
Yes, these folks mean business. In the interest of national security, no
photography. We were shown the Chinese tank that had a certain indestructible
thickness of armour and a top speed of 80km/h. We were shown artillery shells
that could destroy anything. Chinese military hardware - best in the world. Feel
proud to be Chinese … then, we were led into a demo room. We were shown an
artillery shell and the kind of high tech alloy that went into its construction.
The same alloy was used to make … the kitchen knives that were on sale at the
facility! I was stunned by such creativity.

Next was a demo that we’ve all seen before at supermarkets and departmental
store. Carrots were shredded. leather was cut. Wood was stripped. And for a
limited period only, the whole set with free gifts cost only Y198. Wow! I’m
impressed. Not by the capabilities of the knives or the tank, but the sales
tactic. Amazing!

And if you think all over. Not yet. Before we could leave the facility, there
was one last room. And what did they sell there? The same stuff that was sold in
the cave. Strange rocks. Confectionery at inflated prices for the “benefit” of
those who hadn’t checked them out at the unpretentious stores in Guilin.

Well, Mr Dog Meat wasn’t that bad. Even though I didn’t buy anything, he still
sent me back to my hotel. Squid hot plate for dinner that night. Leaving for
Nanning the next day.

Guilin was cold but not so rainy on the second day of Chinese New Year. The entrance of Lixin Fandian was still littered with the remnants of firecrackers. Nobody believed in sweeping away their own fortunes. I checked out early that morning and took Bus 11 to the bus station on the advice of the security guard at the hotel. It was a short and relatively comfortable ride that only cost me Y1.

I arrived once more at the provincial capital of Guangxi at midday. Langdong Bus Station was relatively deserted compared to the mildly chaotic situation 2 days before Chinese New Year. Not familiar with the local buses, I took a taxi to the city which cost me Y37. Along the way, the taxi driver called all his friends and spoke in Cantoses: “Go to Longdong (Langdong), make more today.”

I checked into Ying Bing Fan Dian. Y80 was a steal for a very nice single room with hot water, heater, computer, TV and electric kettle. Unlike the old China, all these things actually worked. Surprisingly, my ATM card didn’t work at the usual place - China Construction Bank. Pleasantly and surprisingly, it worked at ABC - Agricultural Bank of China.
Cool.

The taxi ride from Langdong Bus Station was a
scary Y37. I decided to try out the buses and soon discovered that Bus 213
goes to Langdong for only Y2. After lunch at Do & Me - a cool and trendy fast
food place that served fusion food (beef steak with rice, fried sphaghetti etc),

I took a casual ride on Bus no. 32, all the way to the terminal, Qing Xiu
Shan. It’s a very well-manicured park on a hill, thronged with Chinese tourists. Many areas of the park were still under construction. They were building a very attractive pavillion-like sheltered path to the top of the hill. There was a fair going on at the top of the hill and many stalls were promoting luohan guo drinks.

There was also an obstacle course and you can see Chinese people of all ages trying them out even though some of the obstacles were obviously of “military standard”. In Singapore, parents would be screaming at their kids if they ever got near one of these things.

Near the foot of the hill, was a little food fair. Yes, more “fusion” here from almost every province. And yes, the usual take a picture
on a camel, noodle stalls, luo han guo drink stalls … Most interesting, were
the kebab stalls manned by Uyghur and Mongolian men. Dressed in their
traditional costumes, they danced to the music as they turned the skewers. I was
fooled into buying some of that kebab. After tasting it, I wondered if the main
cost of running the stalls came from the salt that they virtually dumped on the
meat. My throat was completely salted out on the second skewer.

Luckily, there was Do & Me. Sphaghetti for dinner and an elderly gentleman there complained that the sphaghetti was not Italian enough. Lord Buddha. Is this really China? I took a walk in the park that evening and found some old folks dancing there. One old lady was probably in her 80s. Scenes like this may make the young and inactive feel guilty.

There are glittering malls and impressive condo projects sprouting all over Nanning. And this is one of the poorer provinces in China. Nanning may be a great place to shop for necessities, but
there is little attraction for nature lovers. I planned to visit Detian
Waterfall the next day.