12th Feb 2010

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.