Not Approved by LP

Finally made it to Vietnam, a chance to relax on the beach etc etc only for it to rain non stop !, should have longer in China, the weather was really nice the last few days !.  But lovely just to forget bus timetables etc and catch up with English news, sports etc.

Journey from Guilin easy enough. Bus to Nanning and then Dongxing on the border, all on good roads. Having taken the coastal road before I knew it was a poor road but then most roads in Vietnam are.  Unfortunately they have dug it up to expand it so it was a hell of a journey.  Worse is the never ending huge great jugernaults  doing the China route so plenty of holds up as everything got snarled up and then having to entangle themselves. As if things couldn’t get worse from Halong Bay we had to tow a broken down bus.  This wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for the fact the tow “rope” was old bicycle tyres.  So everytime we had to stop to let someone off the tyres broke on the restart so then had to get our tyres fixed. For anyone familar with Top Gear in Vietnam, Halong Bay was where they crossed the water to CatBa and the fun they had had to make me laugh as we tried to reenact it.  Then to hit the motorbike madness of Haiphong City in rush hour towing another vehicle was an accident waiting to happen. In China you can travel thousands of miles and rarely see an accident, in Vietnam they have display boards with running counts.  On this occassion we saw 3 majors, two with vehicles going off the road and turning over and one splattered motorcyclists. Vietnamese roads are not for the faint hearted, everyone gets a moped for their first birthday but it hasn’t occured to anyone to build proper roads.

But now no more travelling and hopefully the sun will come out at some point.

Took a day longer than planned to get here as the Kailli nightlife proved a lot better than its hotels. Popped into a bar/disco and everyone friendly and very good atmosphere so made up for a lousy day. Then when that closed carried on drinking\eating to excess with some locals and never got home to 6am so never made the bus to Guilin. But worth it as most enjoyable and needed cheering up after being messed around big time.

Paradoxically when I went to leave the weather was very nice so then decided to do some village hopping instead of going to Guillin.  Only trouble was couldn’t find the buses I wanted and people always referred me to the bus station I had just come from – Guizhou is probably one place where it would be useful to speak Chinese. So in frustration went back to plan A and bought a ticket for Guilin. Despite having major suspicions that the bus everyone referred me to was the wrong one i.e no other passengers at departure time – it wasn’t until 25 minutes after departure time that someone came running over and whisked me of to the correct bus as it was leaving the bus station – at least someone had a brain but seems in short supply there. So right to the end the place had it in for me.

Journey took longer than expected, over 14 hours and a grotty old sleeper bus with toilet stops where thankfully I didn’t need the toilet, the bushes would have been preferable. At least some very nice scenery along the way. Then at midnight kicked of the bus at some junction and left at a restaurant to wait for another bus heading for Guilin. Fortunately these people knew what the were doing and eventually a bus turned up, usefully going via Yangshou so able to get off there.

As bad as Kailli is, Yangshou couldn’t be easier even at 2.30am. Hundreds of good hotels/restaurants/bars, friendly people, all the old backpacker favourites like hire bikes, go climbing, learn to cook etc etc and best of all great scenery. Still one of my favourite places and nice to have blue skies and sunshine. Surprisingly few people, I would have expected more Chinese escaping the cold north.

So that brings things to an end. Next stop Vietnam and a month to rest on the beach and catch up with friends. After 4 trips to China have done a pretty good job at seeing a fair bit of the country and whereas the East coast lacks the stunning scenery of Yunnan/Sichuan and Xinjiang it was still good to see and thoroughly enjoyed it.

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