The Road Warriors: Lao Cai / Hekou, into China

This was a particularly bad leg. Full of calamities, some of which I was able to predict, while others flew out of nowhere to bite me in the ass and send my stress levels through the roof. Sort of like a microcosm of the whole trip really. Except minus all of the awesome stuff.

I boarded an overnight bus. Everyone else on board was headed for Sapa, the well-touristed northern destination in Vietnam. I would get off before then at the ratty border town of Lao Cai and cross into China by foot. From that point on, the well-oiled tourism machine of Southeast Asia would end and I'd have to fend for myself in the English vacuum of China. It was a sleeper, the bobsled type, and wasn't terribly comfortable. Before getting on, a Vietnamese employee of a guesthouse was caught red-handed with a girl's stolen ipod and a bit of commotion was kicked up. not sure how it was resolved, but, being a recent victim of theft myself, part of me hoped that they nailed the bastard to the cross.

I had to sleep next to a father and his very young daughter who were sharing a seat. Kind of annoying because that was four extra appendages I had to worry about drifting over into my seat during the night. And they did drift. Every once and a while, a little hand would plunk over onto me which I had to gently remove so as to not wake up the sleeping child and incur the wrath of her father. I didn't sleep much the whole trip, so when we rolled into Lao Cai at 5am and I was ejected from the bus, I was tired and cranky.

It was pouring and the town was barren. I threw on my rain jacket and tried to find some food and a dry place to wait until the border opened up at 8. I found a place that sold pho, but for some reason, the lady couldn't understand that I wanted pho. Like, this actually happened a lot. I'd go to a restaurant that would have no menu and nothing but assorted ingredients on display. I knew that there was know way to communicate what I wanted, and no way for them to communicate what they can make, so I would just ask for anything. "All OK". I didn't care what they made, as long as it was edible. Sounds simple, but they usually got this impression that I had this complicated order I was trying to convey and ask me a million questions, all of which I, of course, couldn't understand. What usually resulted was a plate of random ingredients thrown together without any kind of sauce or seasoning whatsoever; something no one in their right mind would order. That's what happened there that morning, as I got just noodles, chicken and water instead of pho. Terrible.

While eating, someone from this group of drunken old screwups at the next table would occasionally wander over and ask me something in Vietnamese and have the whole table laughing. All I could do was shrug and conceal my rage. Got the hell out of that place fast.

It was 6:30. UGH. Stores began opening their shutters and I found and Internet cafe to thankfully occupy me until 8. Caught a motorbike taxi to the border and was greeted by an army of touts that gunned specifically for me. They wanted to exchange my Vietnamese dong into Chinese yuan. Of course, it was all a scam, and they would have ended up taking 50% with the rates they were quoting me. When I realized this, I became incredibly abrupt and curt with them. They kept spewing crap, saying things like there were no places to exchange money across the border and that there were no ATMs. BS of course. And what really bothered me was how the border guards would just allow these freelance jackasses to run around checkpoints harassing tourists. It didn't stop until I crossed the bridge over to the Chinese side, into the town of Hekou, where a whole other pile of problems was waiting for me.

The guards were friendly, which was refreshing after being treated like a whoopee cushion for the last four hours. However, when I went through customs, they confiscated my newly-purchased Lonely Planet China because it failed to recognize Taiwan as a part of China (which it isn't by the way). Like, is the country run by a bitter, resentful child? Is this petty shit worth inconveniencing, nay, crippling, my ability to navigate the country? This was the straw that broke the camel's back, as I soon realized that no one in China spoke anything resembling English, and there was nary a Roman character to be found anywhere. I was utterly marooned. "Bus station", "hotel", even "toilet". No one could understand what I was asking and they were all TERRIBLE at both charades AND Pictionary.

I wandered the streets with my heavy, heavy backpack in the hot, humid weather in my damp, filthy clothes for over an hour trying to find a place to stay. And the town was a backwater hellhole. Fat, brown-toothed men walked down the road in their underwear gawking at me with hollow expressions. Everyone seemed to be screaming at each other. Phlegm was being churned up and spat on the floor in every direction I looked. The surrounding buildings were all dull concrete and rusty shutters. Not a modicum of tact or decorum to be found ANYWHERE.

I found an English sign saying "HOTEL", and it was the fancy kind, with a staffed reception area, elevators and clocks lining the wall displaying the time in New York, London, etc... Out of my budget, but I was desperate. $50 a night. Euagh! In my dying breath, I asked if they knew of a cheaper place, and surprisingly, I was led to an inconspicuous building a few doors down. It was a guesthouse for $4 a night. Finish line.

The owner laid about in his underwear and it took a shockingly long time to convey to him that I was coming to his guesthouse because I wanted a room. Finally I got one with a bathroom and a TV. Perks, but after a day like this, perks were like a maraschino cherry on a cow turd.

The water shut off halfway through my shower, so I had to bust open a bottle of water to rinse the shampoo off of my head. After that, I thought good and hard about what I wanted to do next. Lonely Planet recommended the Yuanyan rice terraces, but without the aforementioned Lonely Planet, getting to, and navigating, the area would have been a lot more problematic. That, and I wanted to get out of rural China as quickly as possible. So I eventually decided that my next stop would be Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province and about ten hours away. You couldn't have dragged me on another bus at that time, so I fell asleep and hoped that I wouldn't wake up for another 16 hours.

I woke up at 7pm. UGH. What the hell am I going to do? I got up and set out to find food before everything closed. The place I found had no menu and a pile of ingredients on display. UGH. Thankfully, I was able to point to a delicious looking meal being shared by some people and say "That". And it was delicious. Chinese cuisine is a little more familiar than the other cuisines of Southeast Asia, and the meal was just what I needed.

I wandered around town to find the same depressing sights I had passed during the day. Night time had not altered Hekou's character in the least. Back to the guesthouse I suppose. Let's see if the TV works. It did, just barely, and I was able to get the World Cup, which was good enough for me. So I watched that, and didn't sleep a wink, until early the next morning when the bus station opened.

Thankfully, the ticket lady understood her own language when I walked up and said "Kunming". I had about 2 hours to kill, and that's about how long it took to track down which bus I would be riding on and where the bathroom was.

Oh yes, the bathrooms. Not only was the bathroom filthy as can be, but there were absolutely no enclosures whatsoever. Everything went into a trough, and I mean EVERYTHING. And did I mention there were no enclosures? Several men were giving demonstrations and I almost considered dousing my eyes with bleach after catching a glimpse. It reminded me of the barn at my grandparents' farm. Funny thing was, I had to pay almost a dollar to use it, making it the most expensive bathroom I'd used, as well as the most disgusting; two distinctions that are very unlikely to coincide. Bravo China.

Soon it was time to go and I could not have been more thrilled to leave. Not a very good way to start a new country. China needed to step it up big time in the next few days.