"Hanoi - border crossing" a Hanoi Travel Page by l_joo

From left to right: Sing, the bus station guy, lady owner and Joo

How I crossed the border from Hanoi into China?
The road that most tourists crossed was through the custom pass of Lang-son and Ping Xiang. We arrived in the early morning about 6.30am. Hanoi of Vietnam has big influences from Mainland China especially the toilet. Peoples of Hanoi dress up no dissimilar to Chinese in black leather shoes and Western suit. Smoking habits are similar too together with many more similarities except they don't speak or read Chinese.

The bus of TM Brothers dropped us at their usual booking office which is a hotel, but I couldn't recall the name. Without any guide books or Lonely Planet to refer, I have no idea where am I but only knows I am in Hanoi. After having our breakfast at a roadside stall, I began to draw a train to be able to communicate with local Vietnamese. My drawing works quite well as they show me the way to the railway station, but in quite a distance of walk including my heavy backpack.

We found the railway station but unfortunately the train that cross Vietnam-China border into Nanning only going twice weekly on Tuesday and Friday. Also it cost quite a lot of Dong, forget it. This time I decided to draw a bus on my notebook. I walked out with a bus drawing to ask Vietnamese where to get a bus to Nanning. Communications are extremely hard here as most of them don’t speak English, not even simple English.

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My little notebook

Using my body language
This is the moment of body language and drawing skills. I keep pointing at the bus drawing on my little booklet and say "Bus Station". I asked not less than 5 persons but only one sales girl in the photo shop could merely speak a little, she helps me. According to her direction, I managed to locate the bus station at Long Bien, but much harder challenge is waiting for me.

In the Long Bien station, about 5 Vietnamese try to offer me their motorcycles ride but none of them can speak English. However I show them my booklet of bus and also show them my Asia maps. Later I found out they couldn’t read map and yet they keep speaking Vietnamese to me. I wasted 20 minutes of body languages and pages of drawings but still we failed to communicate to each other. At last I was nearly given up by thinking what to do. Suddenly one of the Vietnamese guy say something like "follow him to drink coffee" in sincerity manner. We hesitated for a while before decided to follow him for a drink.

He brought us acrossed the road to a coffee shop. He then talking to a lady owner of that shop. After a while the lady starts to speak Mandarin to us, asking where we want to go? Well, what a wonderful experience. Expert travelers were right, they discourage using guidebooks. My story of communication in Hanoi proof that if we travel without preparation, the more fun you will enjoy.

As we can speak Mandarin and she was gracious to help us arranged a guy to bring us to the bus station just behind the building. This guy rides a bike bringing me at the back of his bike to the bank and then to the travel agent.

So here is my information of how to enter China from Hanoi for you. The mini-van from Hanoi to Lang-Son (the nearest town to the border called Dong Dang) cost you 50,000 Dong each person. 2 and half hours drive with 20 passengers in a small overloaded jam-packed van. We arrived at Lang Son about 2pm, hiring a local taxi 50,000, finally to the border. The friendship border is the name of this custom pass, very easy crossing, not much of waiting but always the same seriousness in scrutiny. Just a few chops on the passport, hooray!

There are many taxis waiting for us right in front of the border, just hopped on any one of them to the nearest town called Ping Xiang. In Ping Xiang, we can buy train or bus tickets at the station anytime, so convenience. We bought bus tickets to Nanning next morning cost RMB50 each. That night we stayed at this little town Ping Xiang. The hotel we stayed were 5-star, at night we received numerous calls from girls downstairs.

We met a very special Chinese man, he is Chen xian sheng. He treated us a wondrous kind dinner of ‘ma-lak-steamboat’. Thank you so much, it was unforgettable and hopefully one day he can accidentally browse into this page to see the generosity of him.