16th Feb 2010

I’m surprised not many people have even heard of it, but Detain Waterfall has to be the most beautiful waterfall I’ve ever seen. Situated in Guangxi Province, right at the border with Vietnam, it is 200m wide and has a drop of over 70 metres. Though winter is a time when the water volume is at its lowest, the beautiful setting was enough to impress me.

bus broke down

I woke up early on the morning of the 16th of February and headed for Langdong Bus Station. I asked for Detian Waterfall, but was informed that the bus on that day only went to Daxin. It seemed like a short distance on the map, but there was no highway. The bus started at 7.30am, broke down at 10.30am, the “rescue” picked us up at 11.00am and we arrived at Daxin about 1.00pm. We were on our own. I quickly got acquainted with Mr Zhou from Beijing and a Finnish couple. We decided to pool our resources.

view from the broken bus

From there, a local taxi took us to a street in Daxin town where we boarded a bus headed for Detian. Normally, the bus there only went to Shuolong and we’d have to get a bus to Detian from there. On that day, there were enough of us, so the driver decided to go all the way to detian.

The entrance fee at Detian was a whopping Y70, but it’s probably worth it. There were many stalls and restaurants and even a hotel around the area. The hottest items were of course Vietnamese products including Vietnamese hats, perfumes and cigarettes. Inside the park, it was equally crowded. We had our lunch at a Zhuang Restaurant. I decided to try an exotic dish - ant egg omelette. The ant eggs were hardly visible and it tasted like ordinary egg omelette. According to the waiter, it was high protein, low cholesterol stuff. Another dish was the niang dou fu which is nothing like our Yong Tau Foo because there is absolutely nothing there to “niang”. Just plain tofu, a little smoky, but that’s the way I like it.

picture taken by Mr Zhou from Beijing

If not for the touts and the crowds, I can spend a whole day at Detian. The water volume was not impressive, but the mountains in the background, the emerald green pools of water, all added to the charm of the place. Mr Zhou and I went on a bamboo raft and had a ride around the pool which seperated Vietnam from China. As we neared the falls, a relatively warm water spray refreshed our weary souls. On the Vietnamese side, there were also rafts. Somehow, they were not moving. Perhaps nobody wanted to pay Y20 per person for them.

After the bamboo rafting, we checked out the stalls inside the park. There was even more vaiety here. There were toys made from ammunition shells and empty cartridges. Definitely not the sort of thing you would like to carry with you on a plane. It got more interesting as we crossed the border itself and came to the Vietnamese trading post. Unlike the Chinese stalls which were set up within the park, the Vietnamese stalls were set up on a plateau area surrounded by an amphitheatre of peaks. The scenery here probably rivals that of Guilin. The goods sold were not very different from those peddled on the Chinese side and they preferred Chinese currency too.

Vietnamese traders who are not bothered with borders

Motorbikes with Vietnamese registration numbers were parked at a corner of this trading post. From here, there was a mud track that led towards the mountains. We walked a bit on the track. The few people we met all spoke Mandarin, but they were Vietnamese and we were technically, albeit unofficially on Vietnamese soil.

Locals said we could wander about 1km inside Vietnam without getting into trouble with the authorities. In fact, we had an invitation from a Vietnamese girl whom we promptly rejected in spite of all the assurances from her. I figured it would be nice if I would enter and explore this area with an official entry stamp in Hanoi.

I was getting dark and quite reluctantly, Mr Zhou and I left the park only to find that there was no more public transport going back to Daxin. A minibus parked near the entrance demanded for Y180 to go to Daxin. We found a young lady also stranded there. She was from the northeast, studying fashion in Guangzhou. Mr Zhou and I tried very hard to persude her to share the minibus with us. I didn’t catch her name, but Mr Zhou addressed her as “gu niang”. I followed suit, sounding like an ancient swordsman.

Just as we were about to leave, we saw a family also stranded there. That’s 5 more people and we had a hard time persuading the driver to break the law and take all of us. We paid him more, of course. But the mother in the family protested. I wished someone could stuff a sock into her mouth or just leave her to spend the night at the waterfall. The last bus to Nanning was going to leave in an hour’s time and she was arguing with the driver over a few yuan.

We finally got her to shut up and proceeded to Daxin. The driver drove fast. We arrived at Daxin bus station just in time to catch the last bus to Nanning, about to leave at 7.30pm. We arrived at Nanning at about 9.30pm - surprisingly fast considering the fact we took the whole day to get to Daxin and in daylight to boot.

At the bus station, Mr Zhou and I had economy rice Nanning style. A metal plate and for Y10, you get 2 vegetables and one meat dumped in. Free flow of rice or porridge. Not very palatable, but that was all that was available. Mr Zhou then decided to check into the same hotel where I was staying. His room went for Y120 per night, but it was still a good deal.

Back in my room, I packed my things and got ready for Friendship Pass the next morning.