So You Think Traveling Is All Fun And Games????

Try this day out for size: today we were heading from Sapa, Vietnam, across the border into China. We were staying up in the hills of Sapa and we rode a mini bus down to the border. As it was a big holiday in Sapa, the minivans were racing up and down the hills to get as many fares as possible. Michelle yelled at our guy to tell him to slow down or he would get his money, as the steep, winding road was a little treacherous. He did listen, but shortly after, a motorcycle in front of us skidded and then did an 'endo' and the man and woman went over the steep edge. Our van wasn't going to, but we shouted for them to stop, and I rushed out to find the lady face down the very steep hillside, and the driver holding on to her with one hand and a small bush with the other. I managed to lift the lady up to safety (I think she had a broken arm) with help of a couple of others, and then helped the man up, and eventually the motorbike. It was a scary scene on a pretty steep slope. After a while, we managed to persuade our minivan to take the lady to hospital (an ambulance was going to take two hours - we were an hour away from the big city) . We hope she was OK in the end, as she was half unconscious and in shock when we dropped her off.

So, from the hospital, we got dropped off at the train station and took motorbike taxis to the border with our big packs on our back - Michelle almost fell off trying to get on the bike from the weight of her pack! It was Saturday, but we had been reassured that the banks in the big city would be open. Not so. Even the Money Exchnage inside the Border Control was closed. So I had to exchange our remaining Vietnamese Dong to Chinese RMB at some shady black market exchange area off to one side of the border control building. Here, there were about ten ladies sitting on plastic chairs with huge bags of money, doing much larger transactions than mine. Anyway, I got a good exchange rate - almost too good - so I had to hope I wasn't getting ripped off. It was either that or not at all, and we would lose $70 by not trying to exchange it. Crossing the border was probably the easiest part of our day. Even then after giving Michelle's passport back with no problem, we had to wait for a scary10 minutes while they took mine into the back room - a little stressful. All fine though, and out front to get ripped off on a little golf cart ride to the bus station which turned out to be just around the corner! Unfortunately, we didn't have a map and our chinese travelling skills/communication are a bit rusty!

So, there we were at the bus station in Hekou when some guy claiming to be the 'manager' tried to help us, but was really no help at all! He was a real pain! We were cautious, but we couldn't get rid of him. He found us wherever we went in town, and eventually we let him take us to his friend's restaurant where he put us in some little back room he called the room for foreignors and ordered us some food that was a disaster. When he left before the food arrived, he said something like 'If you leave before the food comes, they will hate you' which was a little weird. He also tried to get us to pay for his beer, but we certainly weren't having that! Somehow, in the whole situation we must have been scammed for some money, but at least not much, I think.

So, we took a horrible 13 hr sleeper bus (they actually have beds in the buses) from Hekou to Kunming. Right out of town we skidded to a stop and got a flat tyre that held us up for an hour while they repaired it. Michelle had hassle with some guy claiming she was in his bed, but the numbering was so random, she just played the 'stupid foreigner' card (pretty easy, ha ha). Then at some checkpoint, the police took our passports and we waited and waited. Next minute, the bus driver starts to take off and we didn't have our passports! We had to yell at him to stop. Of course now, as we were over an hour late, the bus driver figured he needed to make up time on the windy roads so we got very little sleep. It was bumpy and I almost fell out of my top bunk many times. I awoke once to the guy beside me attempting to throw his cigarette out my window, but I just got a shower of sparks in my face and legs as the cigarette lit up when it hit the fresh oxygen - idiot. I was yelling at him for being so stupid, but he just closed his eyes and faked being asleep. I got a few choice words in though.

We arrived in the morning to a big rainstorm in Kunming which continued for the rest of the day. From Kunming, we decided to just keep moving and got on another 5 hour bus to Dali City. Even though we checked multiple times and had the correct city on our ticket, the bus didn't take us to the right town! So we had to get yet another bus. To put the icing on the cake, we boarded the local bus with all our stuff. A lady beside me had a little grocery bag on the seat next to her, so I motioned if I could sit down there, but she yelled something in Chinese and ushered me away angrily. Welcome to China! For the other people that got on the bus, she moved her bag with no problem so that they could sit down if they wanted to - Bitch!!!

As if this whole day was not enough, I was also dealing with a case of travelers diaorrhea to boot! Right now, I'm thinking "WHY" did we come back to China again. Hopefully things will get better. If not, we won't finish out our 2 months here and we'll come up with a new plan! *STUB