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Published: April 23rd 2009
Yangshuo
This photo is out of order because Travelblog seems to insist that the photo which shows up as the title for the blog entry be the first in the series of photos.For those who got an earlier message about the lack of photos - I've now managed to upload them (and deleted the ones which Travelblog in its wisdom thought it would be nice to upload twice, without giving us an easy way to delete photos), so you should see some photos. Because it's such a hassle doing it about four times, I haven't put much in most of the captions.
So I arrived in Hanoi at about 04:30 a.m. I’d decided to stay at the Hanoi Backpackers, which was a bit of a mistake. When you’re off the beaten track, those sort of backpackers are filled with interesting people, but when you’re on the backpacker trail as Hanoi is, they’re filled with kids who all look the same except sometimes their backpacks are different colours. As I’d mentioned in the previous blog I was a bit skeptical about the reputation of Hanoi as a place which goes out of its way to rip off tourists, however it wasn’t long before I saw what people are talking about.
I got out of the train, ignoring the throng of taxi drivers, and tried to go to the ticket counter
to see if I could book the train for the trip into China, but of course the counter was shut. I found a taxi driver there and asked “Hanoi Backpackers?” and got a blank look. I asked again and another guy appeared “Yes, Hanoi Backpackers, 48 Ngo Huynh Street” he said. This is the best way for him to say that he really knows where it is, since of course in SE Asia “yes” can mean anything from “no” to “yes I recognise that you’re asking a question which I don’t understand” to “yes”. So I indicated that I wanted to go there with the second guy, and he showed me to his taxi, and to my surprise both guys got in. “He’s my brother” the English-speaking one said.
Eventually they dropped me off in the almost European-style old city area, where the roads are narrow and laid out in no particular order and change names constantly, in front of a rather dinghy looking place called simply “backpackers”. I complained that that’s not the place I’d asked for. “Yes”, he said “Backpackers”.
“Right, but not Hanoi Backpackers”
“Yes, see, Backpackers. This is Hanoi”
I got out, took my
backpack out of the boot, walked the few metres to the corner to check the street name - it was clearly something else. I imagine that here, like so many other places, they’d get a commission if I stayed there rather than where I had intended. There was a bit more conversation as they tried to convince me that this place which looked nothing like the webpage and had a different name and address, was in fact the place I for which I'd asked. Normally I’d probably pay the taxi fare, grumbling, and at least check out the accommodation. But this time it was so blatant, so obvious that they were not making a genuine mistake, that I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction, so with no idea where I was, I walked away from them, towards what seemed to be an area with shops and suchlike. A minute later they were back, trying to get me to pay for the taxi fare.
“I thought you meant Backpackers. If you ask any taxi driver in Hanoi, this is the one they’ll take you to” he said, after a while.
This would seem unlikely, since Hanoi Backpackers is massive,
Hanoi
Hoan Kiem Lake the McDonalds of backpacker joints, and the place they took me to was a little dump out of the way of everywhere.
“Yes”, I said with the appropriate hand gestures so that it was fairly understandable to someone who might not speak English “that would make sense,
except that when I asked if you knew Hanoi Backpackers, you said ‘yes, 48 Ngo Huynh Street’ “. At this point he seemed to not understand English, and repeated that everyone thinks that the place they took me was in fact Hanoi Backpackers.
At this point one of the ubiquitous motorbike taxis turned up. “Do you know where is ‘Hanoi Backpackers’?” I asked. “Yes” he said, and pointed in the opposite direction, kind of contradicting the taxi driver, who said something to him nastily in Vietnamese.
After a bit more of this they finally left. I’m not sure if they’ll be any less likely to try to rip people off, but at least I made my little stand against the idea that tourists are cash cows upon whom one can practise any scam one wishes, and depriving themselves of opportunities because it’s exactly that sort of thing that makes Hanoi less
Hanoi
St Joseph's cathedral popular with tourists than Saigon. Anyway, I managed to get onto the motorbike with my backpack and daypack, and despite the driver trying to convince me that other places were better, he honestly took me to the right place. Unlike usual, I hadn’t been in a position to negotiate the fare beforehand, so at the end I asked him how much I owed, and he said “how much do you want to give me?” I realised I didn’t have any small Vietnamese money, and trying to get a 100,000 Dong ($AUS 8) note changed is generally fairly impossible. I had some lose US notes, so I gave him $US 3. This is almost double what the taxi fare had been, for a longer trip, but I was grateful for his honesty, and it always seems easier to pay in US Dollars ... $3 just seems less than 53000 Dong.
The backpackers was open but wouldn’t let me into the room until 08:00, so I sat in the lobby using the Internet. “Khe San” was playing in the background, I’m sure there’s something poignant or ironic or something about that, but I was too tired to work it out. I
Hanoi
I don't know what this little Chinese temple in the Old Quarter is all about. spent the day walking around the streets, trying to mail some excess baggage back home (my backpack is getting too heavy) but deciding it was too difficult filling in three forms, and too expensive, and doing tonnes of laundry.
Of course, going to Hanoi without going the extra distance to see Ha Long Bay would be a bit like going to Giza without seeing the pyramids, going to Vegas without seeing the Grand Canyon, or going to Tocumwal without seeing the Big Strawberry (for non-Aussies reading this blog, that’s a private joke for Victorians OK? If you actually book a plane ticket all the way to Aus just to see the Big Strawberry, then I don’t want you blaming me). There’s plenty of two-day and three-day tours, but I only had one day, so I found a one-day tour. The one-day tour consists mainly of four or five hours driving there (it is, after all, 170 km) and another four or five hours driving back. There is however enough time on the boat to see some of the scenery and take some photos. We had the world’s worst tour guide, so about the first half-hour on the boat was
Ha Long Bay
There are lots of boats at the dock waiting to take people out onto the bay. spent with him rearranging our seating arrangements while he tried to work out who’d booked on which tour.
A bit later he told us that some people had booked on a different tour which included some kayaking, but he couldn’t find them. About four of us at this point (two or three other Aussies) piped up to ask whether we could go instead.
“No, you had to book that back at Hanoi”
“We didn’t know we had the option” complained someone else
Then a bit later one of the more archetypically irreverent Aussies asked again if he and his mate could go in the place of the people who hadn’t showed up.
“No”, he was told, “because then everyone else on the boat would have to wait for you and they would get annoyed.” He then walked away still counting heads before he could appreciate the response of “But .. but ... but .. weren’t two people booked on a tour to go kayaking, and wouldn’t we then have to wait for them...?”
After lunch, which was quite good but for some reason was served while the boat was stationary, although not really long enough to get tired
of the scenery, the guide found the people who’d booked on the tour which included kayaking. They didn’t speak English and hadn’t been aware that the tour had included kayaking. Nevertheless they were bundled off into kayaks for the token twenty-minute kayak while the rest of us waited for them.
It was still good to see the bay and definitely a one-day trip is better than nothing. Towards the end the guide took us through a large cave system, which was, in my opinion, quite large for a cave but didn’t have an amazing array of stalactites or stalagmites. The guide at this point limited himself entirely to pointing out formations which he thought looked vaguely like other things, whereas I’drather have had a few words about how the caves were formed or how old they were or who discovered them or if they’d been used by humans for anything else before tourism, or anything else like that really, rather than “and if you look over there, look like beautiful lady” (pointing to something that looked vaguely like a centaur). But perhaps that’s just me.
The bus was incredibly cramped, and no matter how I sat, my knees
pushed into the seat in front of me in a very painful way, leaving me with sore knees for days. The trip out was scenic enough, mainly through small towns, not much countryside, but of course the normal rice paddies from time to time ; three war cemeteries; a man with a long stick herding a gaggle of ducks; suicidal drivers. The trip home took even longer than expected, partly because we left late, partly because the “12 minute” stop at the tourist sales price with exorbitant prices in US Dollars actually took about 25 minutes, and partly because a middle-aged Chinese man was violently ill and after he vomited on the floor the first time the bus had to keep stopping, including a long stop at a pharmacist. Apparently he ate some fruit from the vendors that came in their little boats to pester us while we were having lunch.
The next day I went to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum where Ho’s embalmed body is on display in a building apparently modeled on Lenin's tomb, despite Ho's desire to be cremated and have his ashes scattered at three spots across Vietnam. Photography is strictly forbidden in the
mausoleum itself and there is a fairly strict security process which flawed and would allow you to take in a camera, but you still couldn’t get a photo because of all the guards and the way they race you through. His body is on display every morning, except for one or two months a year where he’s taken to Moscow for extra special work. It takes a lot of work to keep a dead body and old clothes looking presentable. It’s free to look but it’s not really worth it, better to go around to the park out the front and marvel at how many people are going in to look, and photograph the outside of the building.
There’s guards everywhere, and at the entrance two young men in military uniform in the hot sun trying hard to stand perfectly motionless but looking very uncomfortable. Inside there’s guards ushering people through, and four standing next to the body (in a glass case on a marble slab), doing a much better job of standing motionless. The red lights are very dim so you don’t get to see much, specially since of course he’s lying horizontal, and there’s such a great
queue of people you have to file through quickly. I don’t understand what it is that makes so many Vietnamese every day want to stand in line for ages for a brief glimpse under dim lights of what we’re assured really is the dead body of the controversial figure who died forty years ago.
Almost next to the Mausoleum is the Ho Chi Minh Museum. This well presented museum in a modern style building has more than just displays solely about Ho, but also a bit about Vietnamese history, although it does very much glorify Ho. You’d need to really be into Ho, and/or speak French and Vietnamese, to get the most out of it (all the captions are in Vietnamese, French and English, but many of the displays are documents, such as his writings or his letters to various other leaders, in French or Vietnamese) however everyone can enjoy the (approximately) four-metre statue of Ho with his right hand raised as if in blessing, and the sun rising through the clouds behind him.
All the guidebooks say that the museum of ethnology, despite sounding not that interesting, is the one must-see in Hanoi, so I raced out
there to see it before my train left. I rode out on a motorbike taxi that accosted me at the Ho Chi Minh Museum. He wanted 50000 Dong, and I really preferred to go by a real taxi, which is airconditioned, more comfortable, and safer, and so he offered to take me for 30000 Dong, which is really cheap. Unfortunately, the best way to bargain is to really not want something in the first place!
After agreeing on that price he led me a few minutes’ walk to where his bike was parked. It turned out to be a rather rickety contraption which left me sitting on the aluminium framing with no cushioning. He took me to the museum safely enough, and said “I wait for you here”. I told him that we’d agreed on one way, and he could wait but it would be a long wait so it was better that he took the money now. He grudgingly took the 30000 Dong I gave him (luckily I had exact change), and held the two notes together, and said “more”. I asked why he thought he needed more, and he held up the money with the 10000 note
on top, as if that was all I’d given him, although I’d just given him the money a second earlier, and the 20000 note was still visible underneath. Does that stupid trick actually ever work?
The museum is quite good, although it’s another one of those you’d want to see in the morning, not in the afternoon when it’s hot to walk around. The grounds are a really nice garden, and there seemed to be a fair few people there just relaxing, and at least one bridal party getting their photos done. The entry is cheap, but they want three times the entry price for a camera, which I object to, so I didn’t get any photos (although I don’t think there’s anything stopping you not paying for a camera, but taking it in anyway, since they wouldn’t store it for me, and when i asked what I should do with it they said “just keep it in your bag”), but of course I wouldn’t do that. It contains various traditional houses from many of the different cultures in Vietnam, and much information about the different ethnic groups and languages. It’d help to have some background knowledge about Vietnam
already, though.
There’s also a big new temporary display about the Catholic Church in Vietnam, which obviously hasn’t been updated because it still says that after death Catholics can go to heaven or hell or purgatory, whereas of course purgatory doesn’t exist any more after God changed his mind (although to be fair it was never an official dogma of the church, just a hypothetical kludge to alleviate some of the more horrible conclusions that arise without it). The one thing I remember learning from that display is that it had been Portugese Jesuists who had converted the Vietnamese to Catholicism and invented the written script (obviously, so that they could write the Bible for them), why anyone would want to convert from Buddhism or animism to Christianity was a question they didn't address. I had assumed it had been the French, but apparently not. I also learned that most of the conical hats come from one village which is famous for its hat-making, which I find hard to believe. The traditional houses were well presented, they were genuine houses that had been transported from the sites and reassembled with the help of men from the actual tribes.
The train station for the train to Nanning, China, is about 10 km out of town. The taxi driver didn’t know where it was, despite saying he did, and kept looking at the name I’d written down for him, in Vietnamese, making me nervous that I’d miss the train. We eventually got there with a few minutes to spare.
The trip is scheduled to take about 13 hours, of which about 7 hours were sitting stationary at the border. This made it hard to sleep, as at about midnight Vietnamese time (01:00 Chinese time) we were woken had to take all our luggage to the Vietnamese customs, and wait for ages while they processed all the passports and read out all the names, and then about thre or four hours later we were woken up again for the Chinese customs, with the train hardly having moved. It was all very weird, there seemed to be about seven passengers on the train, and about 17 staff, all Chinese. There were ten carriages, so I don’t know exactly what was in all the others, I didn’t walk through them to check. Still, the scenery is quite nice. This whole part of
Ha Long Bay
When we stopped at this platform for lunch the locals came up in their boats to try to sell us stuff. China is covered in some really nice karst scenery. We also passed some fair-sized rivers, some coal (? I think) power plants, a few small dams, and of course people in conical hats picking rice in the ever-present rice paddies which I’ve become so accustomed to seeing everywhere for the last two-and-a-half months.
I think more passengers got in at the Chinese side, as I saw them get out of the carriages when I arrived at Nanning, but I never saw them at either customs point. After customs we sat around for a few hours again. I shared the carriage with a middle-aged Hong Kong man who’s retired and travels the world taking photographs. He spoke Mandarin and perfect English (and of course Cantonese) and so was helpful in telling me what the train staff were saying, and such like, and teaching me a few Chinese characters. I still don’t quite understand how Chinese works though, every time people try to explain it, their eyes glaze over and they start muttering. Some people say that it is sort of alphabetic, others say there’s no rules at all and one just has to memorise every word. Anyway, the saving grace
Ha Long Bay
At the platform where we stopped for lunch there was a fish farm, you could buy fish and have them cooked for you there and then in the ship's kitchen. They also had these squid. is that the law is that all street names have to be written in Pinyin as well as the Chinese characters, which as well as being an 1950s communist plot to popularise Mandarin, is also a brilliant tool to help learn Chinese and for foreigners to know how to pronounce place names and to know which street they’re on.
The train is new, and the customs staff aren't too used to the outside world, in what's a fairly backwater border point. None of them spoke English ... they inspected the padding on the day-pack of the Hong Kong man who shared my cabin, and apparently said something to him in Mandarin suggesting that they'd never seen a proper daypack before. When it came to my big backpack they motioned for me to put it up on the table, and I don't think they knew where the entrance was, but they motioned for me to take some stuff out of the side pocket. I pulled out as much as I could, which was hard because it was packed tight on the main compartment. One thing I had in there was a bunch of books, most of which I'd been
Ha Long Bay
a close-up of the squid meaning to mail home because they're getting heavy.
They couldn't read them of course so they looked carefully through the maps. I had a small pocket atlas, and they looked through every page, and muttered over the page showing China. They put it down face down on that page, and looked through all the other maps ... I had a large map of Indonesia and Malaysia (with none of China in it) and they looked at it for what seemed like several minutes, one minute upside down and a few minutes the right way up. I have no idea what they were looking at, or if they realised it was Indonesia. Near the end someone said something that I guess was "Malaysia" which I guess sounds vaguely similar in Mandarin as it does in English. Eventually they called someone over and he looked at my atlas and said in very broken English:
"This book is not allowed"
"Oh"
he motioned distainfully in the general direction of Republic Of China ("Taiwan") ... "China is
one China" he said with the same strange mixture of absolute certainty and uncertainty of a Christian trying to explain the Holy Trinity.
If he could
have spoken English or it hadn't been 03:30 a.m. I'd have said something like "oh cool, so I can go to Hong Kong, on my single-entry visa", but as it was I asked "so can we just tear out that page and give me the book back?" but he didn't understand.
"Not allowed"
"OK, so what do we do about that?", still trying to get my book back.
"Well you can wait over there for your passport", he said, only in more broken English
I thought this meant he was going to censor the book and bring it back to me, but as it was he was just telling me to go on my way. Despite this bad material, they didn't actually search my bags further, not bothering about my computer onto which I'd downloaded the wikipedia articles about ROC.
For anyone planning to cross this border, a thought that occured to me later is to hide your Lonely Planet, as the map in the front (the only bit they'll care about) does show ROC and PRC in different colours, and it wouldn't be good to get that taken off you. Probably other border crossings, or other guards,
might not be so strict ... the Hong Kong man told me that as he walked away he heard one of them say to the other that it was actually OK. I just saw them all looking at the book with a mixture of distain and nonchalance, much like a group of people might look at a snake which they are all 90% certain is non-venomous. Last week an expat living in China told me that in the rural areas there is still the legacy of the Cultural "Revolution" when one could go to prison for associating with a foreigner. It's not the case any more, of course, but not all the rural people know that.
So I found myself in Nanning, China. I set off to change some Vietnamese Dong into Chinese Reminbi Yuan, as I had no Chinese money on me at all. I thought this would be easy and I could then head straight to Guilin. However it was not. Lonely Planet had marked on the map where the Bank Of China was, but it wasn’t quite there, and since the Lonely Planet map only shows the major roads, and the road names on the
Ha Long Bay
Taken from up near the entrance to the caves. streets are positioned for cars, not foreigners lugging around massive backpacks, it made navigation a bit hard. I went to at least eight banks, and their reactions ranged from hostile to unhelpful. None spoke English, so I gestured by waving my Vietnamese Dong around. Several said they could, and went to get some forms, and I took off my backpack to sit down, and then had a closer look and said “oh, cannot” ... I guess they could (or would) change other currency but not Vientmaese Dong. Everyone told me to try the Bank of China. When i asked where this is, everyone pointed in different directions. Near the end, one pointed in one direction and I walked that way for a kilometre or so, found another bank, and they pointed back the way I’d came. This made me fairly sure that I must have passed it, so I went back, but no, it was just coincidence, there was no Bank of China in the direction either of them had pointed.
Finally I did find a Bank of China. They wouldn’t do it either. In despair I wandered around some more and found an ATM and took money out
Ha Long Bay
The entrance to the smaller of the two main caves. of that, leaving me with hundreds of dollars worth of Dong which I had by now given up on ever using. I headed back to the station, having by now been walking around the city for a couple of hours with no food or water, and on the way passed another Bank of China, an asked them. Same response. Then I passed another one. The lonely Planet seems to have got confused and shown their branch half-way between these last two. For shits and giggles I tried this one, and lo and behold not only did they speak English, but they were happy to change the money for me.
I even had a 50000 Dong note with a little tear in the corner, nothing big, but no-one would take it from me in Vietnam. As the Bank of China people were counting my Dong, they tut-tutted over this one, but took it anyway. It was all a bit strange, as the guard counted the money and did the calculations, watched over by one of the tellers and did the calculations on a bit of paper. But I got the right amount, so it’s none of my business why the
guard was doing it rather than the tellers on their computers. By now I was so tired I couldn’t face heading off to Guilin that day, so I found a hotel and stayed there. Nanning is a large city, but no-one speaks English. It’s nice enough, parks and stuff, but I think ultimately it’s an industrial city, from the looks of it, I don’t really know though.
I managed to book a bus to Guilin on Wednesday. This takes about four-and-a-half hours, plus the 40-minute taxi ride to the station. There, I resolved to head straight off to Yangshuo, another hour or hour-and-a-half further on. Wandering around trying to find the ticket office, a man asked me if I was heading to Yanghsuo (most tourists are) and I said yes, and he pointed for me to head in a different direction. Then he led me along, right across the bus station, to a rickety old bus. I was a bit suspicious because I didn’t see the characters for Yangshuo anywhere on the bus, but the bus attendant and the driver both assured me it was going there, so rather than walk all the way back again I thought I’d
give it a try. As I sat down he said “40 Yuan” which is about $AUS 8.50 and seemed vaguely believable, so I gave him the money and he went to the lady at the front and promptly returned with four tickets. I was more concerned that none of them had the character for Yangshuo on them than to ask why there were four tickets, and he left the bus. I soon realised that one ticket should be about 10 Yuan, so I guess that’s where I got ripped off, I should have known there was something dodgy about it. Still, the bus made it to Yangshuo, although it took about two hours, cruising Guilin at about 20 kph picking up people along the way.
The bus dropped me off in the residential, not touristy, part of Yangshuo, well off the area on my little Lonely Planet map. A guy on a motorbike came along and said he managed the Yangshuo International Youth Hostel, which has a good review in Lonely Planet, and offered to take me there. He took me to a place with a completely different name. I pointed out that it had a different name, and
he said “yes, International Youth Hotel bought this hotel”. The International Youth Hotel is supposed to be on “Western Street” the main tourist street, and the street this was on was very quiet. I asked him where Western Street was and he said we were on it. He then led me up about four flights of stairs, tried to show me one room but there was already someone in it. He then tried to show me another room, but again this was locked. He phoned someone and decided a room up one more flight of stairs was free. This one wasn’t either. Somewhere along the way he told me “We also have a lot of beautiful girls from your country staying here”. When he told me that he had a good room for me up one more flight of stairs I walked away. He followed me saying that I should then try the International Youth Hostel, and tried to take me to another dodgy place next door which said “Youth Hostel” but was not the Yangshuo International Youth Hostel.
Anyway, I eventually got to Yangshuo and found an acceptable place to stay. Yangshuo is very nice, very touristy, but
not so touristy that it’s like Khao San Road or anything. Many of the tourists are in fact Chinese, so most people, even those in the tourist shops, don’t speak English, yet there’s enough English to get around easily. There’s so many day-tours one can do and and other things to see in the area, but even the town itself is completely surrounded by massive karst peaks, making it very nice. It’s a fairly popular town with rock climbers. I used my first day there to buy some new clothes, since for my time in Jordan I’m not allowed to wear shorts or short sleeves, and also some of my other clothes is getting worn. I also bought some souvenirs to send back to my family as birthday presents. No doubt I got massively ripped off as I don’t know the normal Chinese prices, and apparently they’ll try to charge five times as much in Yangshuo as in other places, but still it was much cheaper than back home!
I’m going on a tour up the river tomorrow, so that should be nice, I’ll also try to get a bicycle to explore the countryside a bit, although I have
Hanoi - Ho Chi Minh Museum
part of another statue of Ho, thish time leading his soldiers into battle limited time as I’m leaving on Saturday. The train from Guilin to Beijing will get me into Beijing at 23:00 which should be fun, but at least gives me time to get to the embassies on Monday to apply for more visas. It’s a “hard seat” which means I won’t get much sleep either. Anyway no doubt you’ll read about that in my next blog.
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NYCKID
non-member comment
The bus ticket
just so you know, those tickets are actually standard Chinese receipts issued by the government for tax purposes. They come in 5yuan, 10yuan, 50yuan...ect. It doesn't mean that the ticket is 10yuan. But 40yuan does seem a little bit expensive for a 2 hr ride though.