Singapore, Vietnam and China: (Hanoi – Halong Bay – Lang Son – Ning Ming – Huashan – Liuzhou – Chenyang – Longshan – Long Ji)
Saturday:
The metro transfer from the airport into downtown Singapore is enlivened by a loop of safety videos on the programmed queue of train telescreens: graphic vomiting and meat-on-tracks scenes: nice!
Christmas day:
A leisurely walk through the inner city streets west (the non-tourist/wrong side of the tracks area) of Hanoi station. Through the massed motorcycle exhausts and the chatter of families eating breakfast pho on tiny stools in pavement cafes, shriek the many public loudspeakers ranting government messages followed by martial music. No-one seems to take any notice. In N T Hien St the swarms of motorbikes are temporarily halted as the Reunification Express to Ho Chi Minh City crawls out from between the yellow station security walls as motor cyclists (twenty across and six deep) wait for the officious level crossing attendant to roll back the red and white barriers, after the security gate has been closed over the tracks to the station. The sudden, accelerating roar of 50+ accelerating bikes is deafening. The exhaust cloud: thick blue and choking.
On the road to Haiphong, it’s a school day so every blue and white uniformed child is walking along the highway, carrying his or her own plastic stool and satchel for the day of learning ahead. As we ease across or pass steel bridges, it’s obvious where newly repaired sections have been added to repair US bombing damage.
Christmas night in Cat Ba, Halong Bay:
Friends of the local guide have have invited our small group and tour leader to a beach barbecue. It’s 20 kilometres in the van of narrow winding road at dusk with occasional hazy glimpses of enticing green mottled limestone formations in glassy, milky, green water through which we would languidly cruise tomorrow.
At the thickly tropical-warm darkening beach a series of electrical leads runs across the road from a local house and along the sand, powering a small tree’s coloured lights among the coloured paper strips, and a silver quarter-moon stuck to the top. The driftwood bonfire is becoming slow embers in which foil-wrapped marinated chicken has been slow-cooking and where prawns are grilling. Adjacent to the two kegs of local flat, weak beer are freshly wok-fried chips. This food was great, except for the teetotal vegetarian in the group, especially as one of the local kids had grabbed and drunk her cold Sprite.
Adjacent is another similar family bonfire but the kids are grabbing the leafy branches from the fire and are dragging them up and down the beach in a race of sandy smoke and sparks. Our entertainment was endless cassettes of Boney M, much amplified! In this country of tight government censorship, Boney M is “approved” “western” “music” (and their concert tour posters were plastered around Hanoi). The Boney M Christmas Album groaned inexorably on and on and on and on… as the Vietnamese men on the sand toasted Christmas and friendship and many other things (real and imagined). I met a local school principal (very drunk) and we toasted that. The women and children sat on the sea wall, avoiding the smoke and silently observed all this as we chewed our not-quite-cooked chicken and burnt prawns and chips. For some, this continued until dawn. For most: the mini bus back to Cat Ba town and port was looking good.
Vietnamese urban housing is narrow and tall. We were on the top floor of 5, enjoying the port sounds, lapping water, houseboat chatter across the ripples, fine dawns and views of small fishing boats (with serious painted eyes on the bow), sampans and barges. There was a tiny and unevenly tiled balcony, but the “safety” railing was only 30cm high and the tiles were lethally slippery: not the best place to go with a mild Boxing Day hangover unless you are a surefooted midget.
Thursday: Lang Son:
It was a subdued drive to the northern border town, often along gentle back roads past cyclists and motos heading to market with bulky packed bundled goods weighing down the rear wheel. One struggling cyclist had a small cage of 4 dogs lashed onto the back. We were delayed behind a road accident: an upended moto driver had lost his load of spring onions and was scraping them from the road. In the distance, coal fired power stations belched black smoke over the patchwork rice paddies.
Friday: The Border:
Breakfast in Lang Son: the usual Vietnamese tourist budget fare: excellent plunge coffee (tubes of sweetened condensed milk if needed), banana, spongy white-sliced baguette and pineapple jam. We consumed this in the tiny hotel lobby, looking through spotty plate glass across the street to a local man who was blowing his nose into his hands, then wiping it into his thick black hair. Just like “product”, really.
The border: from a modest Vietnamese building: usual queues, formalities, change Dong to Yuan, turn watch back an hour… you proceed to a far more lavish grey-marbled affair with large, cold, chandeliers to be “welcomed” by the Chinese.
Ning Ming, far southern China: few cars and the narrow streets (no footpaths) are an orderly parade of cyclists and three-wheeled tuk-tuk taxis and vans. Out of town at Hua Shan on the Zuo River are the high-cliff red paintings from AD 25-220 of large ochre-coloured hunting figures. From the white limestone cliffs they reflect deeply across the still, bottle-green water, occasionally rippled by wallowing water buffalo, gentle passing riverboats and the river side family wash. The “Hua Shan Hotel”: really a bunch of guest house huts on a ridge surrounded by rice paddies full of bamboo-hatted farming workers from early mornings. Awful karaoke was available, loudly, for a full 24 hours, which possibly made up for the lack of any towels.
Friday: Ning Ming to Liuzhou:
And a fun day was had on the rapidly growing long distance coach system as freeways expand massively across China. The “rest stop” toilets are not quite as dire as you might expect and there are no flies (the winter cold seems to help). Nanning bus station was as secure as many airports and clustered among gleaming White Horse road coaches. The connection to Liuzhou was on one of these in large and overstuffed white leather easy chairs. (Our Tour Leader “done good”!). Entertainment was the “Mission Impossible” movie set in Sydney, dubbed into Mandarin and subtitled in Chinese: interesting to see how Americans present Australia on a Chinese express bus. It was a close-run thing to make it from the “Transportation Mansion” to a local bank to complete the convoluted bureaucracy to change a travellers’ cheque before closing time.
Liuzhou is a neat Chinese industrial city on the banks of the Liu River with few tourists and much “haze” leading to lovely soft landscape photos across the river from the open top, double-deck local bus. Many locals crossed the street to say hello and to gawk at the “foreign devils”. The combined sex toys and dog meat café street stall across from the very grey, grand and fortified railway station was a bit of an eye-opener, but the clothing market offered lovely, lurid clothing options for a new year’s eve party. Favourites were the animal head scarves and animal face-with-ears ear muffs.
Saturday: Liuzhou to Chen Yang:
A quick taxi transfer to the “Transportation Mansion” (full airport-style security scans and a standing-room only waiting area with exhausted passengers tumbling off the “overnight sleeper bus”) led to another afternoon “on the buses” to the minority mountain village of Chen Yang. The last 20 minutes was in a van along the narrow mountain road from Sanjiang, passing several elegantly black-wooden and traditionally layer-roofed “wind and rain” footbridges across river rapids to tree-surrounded hill villages beyond. Walking across a 400 metre “wind and rain” bridge (infested with old women selling textiles and repellent souvenirs) led us to the guest house, and the wonderful Mrs Wu and her family, and her COOKING!
New Year’s Eve:
Our day in the Dongzu minority area began with a cold but leisurely wander of four villages with the Wu family sons, visiting a multi-layered wooden roofed drum tower where the old men of the village clustered in the dark, smoky warmth, looking after the village toddlers in multi-acrylic-coloured voluminous puffer jackets. Wandering the hilly and rocky narrow lanes to the outdoor wet market and school involved regularly and gingerly stepping over irrigation channels rushing with icy mountain water through wooden water wheels then pooling into concrete tanks for hand laundry. Chugging tractor-trucks forced their way past at 15kph in the wider stony streets, loaded with cut stone for embankment building down at the river ford. An extended traffic jam clogged the clothing market when two tractor-trucks attempted to pass.
The Dongzu minority have government permission to have more than one child (“two without tax”), and easier entry to some universities. In the village, culture is maintained through largely reed-pipe music ensembles (male), choirs and dancers (female in traditional dress including ornate silver-framed multi coloured pompom and small-chained back-of-head “tiaras”). The freezing cold seemed to dampen their enthusiasm for performance in the open air outside of another drum tower. Chenyang is a bit like Asian travel used to feel like, with welcoming smiles, excited kids and very few hassling touts.
New Year’s eve group dinner:
Downstairs in the family area (guests have small rooms on the top floor with occasional hot water) was a banquet produced by Mrs Wu in her tiny coal-fired kitchen, and “interpreted” by Mr Wu as he generously doled out warmed rice wine. The heating was coal braziers underneath the broad wooden tables. Feet and knees: VERY warm. Thick jumpers or puffer jackets and silly acrylic ear warmers above the table edge completed the dimly lit new year’s eve fashion for the inevitable group photo. At midnight we were advised to dress warm, for tomorrow was a “3 to 4 hour bus trip, very bumpy, on roads as bad as Cambodia”.
(Apparently all is not so harmonious for Mr and Mrs Wu following our visit as Chinese internal tourism reaps changes in the old order. This is the view from Mark Jackson in “An Intrepid Traveller”):
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=1u3tAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA532&lpg=PA532&dq=chen+yang+mrs+Wu&source=bl&ots=TJ44oo-grG&sig=uQvaolfGAWrpe6--3cvhEZzaOV8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwia9tiIkojMAhVGGZQKHasVAh4Q6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=chen%20yang%20mrs%20Wu&f=false
New Year’s Day:
More than 3 hours of being jolted and thrown around on a hired, hard-seat local bus through drizzle and mist with any conversation or dozing drowned out by the front engine roar and crunching gears, lived down to expectations. The jarring ride was over muddy/rocky “repairs” that covered most of the route. Because we looked like a local bus, rain-sodden local people tried to flag us down, looking more than downcast when lurched onwards. Towards the end of the “repairs” there were concreted sections where we could enjoy forested mountain ravine scenery before rolling into the unlovely mountain service town of Longshen. The Spartan concrete hotel room (uneven green paint, meagre bed, no heating, squat loo), where we left most luggage before tomorrow’s Longji Rice Terraces walk, did reinforce how relatively luxurious our small group tour was… A quick spring roll lunch on child-sized wooden chairs, crowding out a local bus to Longji, a couple of belligerent police checks and one truck-over-a-cliff later we ground across a narrow river and commenced many hairpin bends twisting up into the thicker and denser fog. Apparently we passed the famous rice terraces. Who knew?
The Longji guest house is run by locals who are learning on the job. They were fearful that greedy entrepreneurs from Yangshuo will arrive and swamp their modest tourist accommodation. If you can imagine a Chinese-style chalet with hot and cold service, and a 10 Yuan fee for a remote control for the room heating, where the staff hover around the single brazier warming their hands in Reception, you can imagine the rest. The rain became downfalls then drizzle then steady showers before easing back to heavy drizzle as the group read under doonas, drank tea, bartered for silk scrolls or enjoyed the large and frequent “how to use contraception” health posters through the village.
Tomorrow’s promised 5 hour rice terrace walk was looking to be a dark, dank and a chafingly moist experience indeed…