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3 August: Kunming, China

We were up early, sharing the remains of the watermelon and a cup of coffee between the two of us. Finished and bags in the foyer we waited for the mini van to collect us. It was already 07h00 and we wanted to get to the boarder as soon as possible to catch the first bus destined for Kunming, which was leaving at 09h45. The receptionist had called a mini van early the morning to confirm that we wanted to leave with them, after another call and a long wait it arrived to pick us up at 07h30. We were 5 in the mini van with space for another 5. Problem with these mini vans are that they only leave when full. So we spent the better part of 45 minutes driving around SaPa looking for more passengers also headed for Lao Cai.

After driving around we stopped to wait for more people to get on, when the wait had endured 15 long minutes, some of us got out to ask the bus driver when he was planning to go. At that moment another bus pulled up and our bags and people were seconded out to the new mini van. The new one only needed 1 person so we drove around for a few minutes, picked up one more and headed down to Lao Cai.

Sitting next to us was a man who understood a bit of English and I could explain to him that I wanted the driver to drop us off at the boarder crossing which was on the way to the train station, which was the end point for the mini vans. He mentioned it to the driver and at least we didn't need to take another form of transport, after being dropped off at the train station. We had made the journey between SaPa and Lao Cai on 6 occasions, but each time the stepped rice paddies and steep mountains with deep valleys managed to impress you, this time was no exception. On the way down one of the women became sick, whether car sick or morning sickness we had no idea, you only wonder because every 2nd or 3rd woman in their twenties is usually pregnant in Asia.

We had reached Lao Cai and drove past the boarder crossing, not more than 200m walk, but the driver turned and drove towards the train station instead. We were already late and unsure whether we would have made the bus going to Kunming, now we would be much later. We knew he was headed for the train station and would then start from scratch again to collect people to go to SaPa, our reactions to get him to stop were unfortunately a little delayed.

Sure enough we continued to the train station, dropped off some passengers, drove into the next road and stopped to wait for passengers. By now we were really irritated, we had been waiting for a bus almost 30 minutes and been sitting in one for more than 1 ½ hours. At last we had picked up enough passengers and headed to the boarder crossing, he dropped us off 100m from where we had driven past, while manhandling our bags as we got out.

We walked on to the Vietnam immigration side, where we were directed to wait behind a line. Meanwhile I tried to exchange some money, unfortunately they only had 100 Yuan, not that much! While I had been gone, someone had crossed the line prematurely and one off the officials had apparently shouted at him. We walked across, got the stamp and had our bags scanned, before wandering over the bridge into China. Reaching the Chinese side, we were shown to a line specifically for foreigners. We were then given forms to fill out and taken to a room where our bags were superficially searched. My official didn't make much effort, I opened my bag and lifted one top, explaining that all there was were clothes, after which he left it. Leanne's wasn't so lax, she had to lift up 3 sets of clothing before the woman was satisfied. Also our luck, considering the China lonely planet was under the last remaining layer of clothing she had and we had heard horror stories of officials tearing out the political history pages in the books. Then they pointed a little laser gun at our foreheads to take our temperature and all was done. We stood in line while they processed our visas and passports, before entering China. They had been incredibly friendly and had spoken a reasonable amount of English.

We headed directly for the bus station after they had given us directions. Hardly had we put our bags down when a lady called to us for a bus going to Kunming, what luck, problem was it was 150 Yuan per person and we only had 100 altogether. Unable to go, Leanne looked after the bags while I walked to The Bank of China to convert our VND to Yuan. We had read earlier that the street vendors cheat you so the best place would obviously be a bank. Finding it was another story, but after 20 minutes I located it. Asking for directions was not working so the best I could do was take our one Vietnamese Dong note and one Chinese Yuan note and show someone that I wanted to give VND to them and get CY, it worked better than I thought and they pointed me in the right direction. At the bank I was shown to the second floor where the rate they were offering was terrible, in the end I held back on some VND in the hope of getting a better rate somewhere else.

Outside on the street walking back I haggled with some street vendors and settled on a price that was at least better than what the bank had offered. I walked back to Leanne, who in the meantime had found us a bus heading for Kunming, leaving at 13h00. They only wanted 130 Y, which was also 40 Y less than the first bus for the both of us. We still had another hour to kill in the scorching 38 C heat, so I headed down the road to get some lunch, not 200m away was a small shop with a display of different vegetables and meats with noodles. I tried to find out the price using the Lonely planets phrases, it sounded like 70Y per person, but when she wrote 7Y on my hand I bought two take aways filling them with food, something of everything. With the two big polystyrene take aways came another two filled with rice. This was enough food for 4 people not only 2! I headed back buying water along the way, I found Leanne sitting in the bus keeping an eye on the bags. The heat was intense, but there were no chairs available outside so this was the only place we could sit. The bus driver however was very friendly and had given Leanne a bamboo fan to keep her cool :-)

We sat down for lunch, which was a great change from the Vietnamese cuisine, considering the food had much more flavor although some of it was quite spicy. Neither of us could or wanted to finish the rice and had to dispose of it just before leaving the station. The bus was only half full so we could put our bags on different seats rather than keep them on our laps for the duration of the 10 hour bus drive.

The first 3 hours of drive was up and down mountains, with roads twisting around every hill sometimes almost 180 degrees. The scenery was similar to that of SaPa, although more tropical and denser forests. However, we soon came to areas were all the forests had been chopped out to make room for km upon km of banana and pineapple plantation. Unlike our plantations where the farms are mostly level, these ones are planted on sheer slopes. I would have thought the laborers needed ropes when picking just to maintain their balance. The plantations would literally start in a valley and continue right over a mountain and down another valley. The magnitude of the plantations was astounding.

We stopped at a check point where a police officer collected some passengers ID cards and our passports. That kept him busy for a while and he returned later trying to figure out where RSA was. Lucky for us another man sitting next to us could speak a little English and could explain to the police where it was, the key word that helped him was Mandela. We spent some time chatting with him as we drove on, he had planned to cross into Vietnam but they could only receive visas on Saturdays (?).

We came to some towns where it was evident that almost no one lived there but everywhere were buildings in the process of construction. It literally looked as though they were building a city all at the same time. The magnitude was unbelievable, there were residential buildings, larger than a block at Bella Rosa, 5 to 7 stories high. Instead of only 5 or 6 like at Bella Rosa, there were 40 or more. It would have housed hundreds of thousands of people. For the rest of the drive we would often come across construction sites like these. Another eye opening thing about China was the trucks, there were thousands of them. For every one car or motorbike that you passed on the road there would be 10 construction trucks fully loaded with steel, gravel or other materials. No wonder we export so much steel to them, all they do is build! Another amazing thing was the petrol stations, they were huge! Three lanes for vehicles to pull in with 6 petrol pumps on each lane and housed in a warehouse that looked like a CTM.

We stopped just after 18h00 for a short dinner, short because neither Leanne nor myself had time to finish our rice and selection of 6 other dishes before we had to go. The toilets are another aspect to which we will need to grow accustomed to. I won't go into any detail, but in short it's one long channel running for the length of the toilet building, 20 cm deep by 20 cm wide. The hip level stalls are open and you squat on bricks while everyone passes you by. When Leanne went a lady came and stood in front of her waiting for her to finish. She could hardly pull up her pants, before the lady pushed in next to her! During the 10 hours driving they had shown 4 dvd's, problem was they were either in Mandarin or you couldn't hear what was being said. So except for watching some action scenes, we spent the duration observing daily Chinese rural life.

We arrived in Kunming at 23h30, we disembarked and with the help of Wong, our new found Chinese friend working in Shanghai, we went looking for a hotel. I truly believe it was a blessing that we had his help, there is no way anyone understands what you want and other than that, apparently foreigners could not stay in most of the hotels that we asked at....? This was very strange and we felt quite unwelcome, especially because nobody could give a reason for it. At last we found one after 4 had told Wong that he could stay, but not us. The hotel had first said we could not stay and they would send one of their employees to take us to a hotel where we could stay. After some communication we were able to stay, not the cheapest but reasonable.

The hotel had 15 floors and about 40 rooms per floor! We settled into our room and arranged to meet Wong 10h00 the next morning, it was now almost 01h00!