Hanoi to Beijing
China - a land under construction
Although our stop in Hanoi was brief, it made a good impression. I didn't feel I got a good understanding of the place, but as a tourist it was a comfortable and convivial place to drop into – streets with footpaths still functional, old buildings still common, tree-lined streets and lots of public places where people exercised of just hung out. We came across a few new recreations such as 'foot badminton', where, instead of using a racket the players use their body to hit the shuttlecock back and forth. From what I understood from watching you could only use your foot to hit the ball over the net, so it had elements of karate too! There was also 'nano-skateboarding', where the only part of the skateboard left are the two bits of board on top of the wheels.
We also had some ice-cream at Kem Trang Tien, which may – or may not – be an ice cream factory, but certainly is a very popular place for locals to come for an ice cream. It's just a big internal space, where you can drive your motorbike into, with a few stalls and almost no effort made at any decoration or comfort – but the ice cream is excellent. They also do this delicious thing called Mochi, which are little balls of rice 'dough' filled with ice cream.
After some evening wandering and food grazing, we went out to the small suburban station of Gia Lam, where there's a Chinese standard gauge track (Vietnam has metre gauge) all the way to China and got on, what we realised was a Chinese train. So Chinese in fact that they didn't accept Vietnamese currency, which, had there been a dining car or any food or drink for sale, would have been inconvenient. The train itself, was very comfortable and almost completely empty; our carriage had us and an English bloke in one cabin, and a Chinese couple in another, but was otherwise empty. There was carpet in the cabins and the corridors, curtains on the windows and two pillows and clean linen for each bed!
We went to sleep about midnight after chatting with our travel mate for a while and less than two hours later were abruptly woken by a member of the crew, lights on full, to be told we'd have to get off, with all our baggage, and go through Vietnamese customs and immigration. This was to be a proper border-crossing, not one of those mere formalities!
Most of the crossings, while serious, have also been quite shambolic and routine – going from East to West Timor (Indonesia), while a bit bureaucratic, was friendly enough and there didn't really seem to be a very effective sterile zone, though for apparent porousness, nothing compared to the Thai-Cambodian border, where between the crossings there were stalls, shops and even hotels with gambling facilities, as well as a steady stream of traffic in both directions! Leaving the Indonesian island of Batam, just across from Singapore and entering Singapore itself, were very clean, sterile affairs, but very routine, speedy and efficient, as was entering Malaysia. The Malaysian – Thai border was a little bit shambolic, but just involved us getting off the train, without our baggage, and going through the normal passport formalities. And Cambodia to Vietnam involved two stops of the boat and small border posts, which had a lazy, tropical feel, but again, little interest in anything more than ticking the right boxes and getting us through.
This crossing was not at all like that! We lugged all our baggage off the train at 2:00 in the morning, walked around and put it through a large scanner, pushed through the people behind us waiting to scan their luggage, picked up our bags and pushed through more people still waiting to scan their luggage, handed our passports in and waited until they were all handed back en masse. Given the limited number of passengers it was not all that chaotic, but as far as security procedures go there were a great many flaws! Eventually we got back on the train, had a little sleep and were woken again with Chinese arrival cards, a preliminary passport check and told we'd soon have to get off on the Chinese border, with all our luggage and do pretty much the same thing in a flasher, somewhat better organised building.
So, it was well past 4:00 (or 5:00 Chinese time) before we were settled back on the train … which then stayed put for another few hours and didn't depart until the sun had well and truly risen! We then ambled through very pretty countryside until Nanning, where we stopped for over half an hour, finally arriving at the station almost an hour late.
Nanning station was, like much of China that we've seen so far, part construction site, so it was a bit of a hike to the ticket collection office to pick up our onward tickets to Beijing. But, after doing that, some semi-panicked running around in the rain trying to find an ATM that would dispense some money (there appearing to be no money changers anywhere), a hurried, but tasty, noodle soup and some grocery shopping, we boarded the train. This involved showing our tickets to get into the station, putting our bags through a scanner, waiting in a large departure hall, shuffling along to the platform after showing our ticket yet again, then finally getting onto the platform and into the train!
Trains definitely seem to be taken pretty seriously here – each station I've seen has been huge and many have been in the process of significant expansion. The trains themselves are clean and comfortable and seem to depart rigidly on time - although both the trains we've got have been late arriving!
Our train from Nanning to Beijing (from which I'm writing this) is lovely, everything that makes train travel the best way to travel! Comfortable berths for sitting and lying, big windows for seeing the countryside and a nice dining car with good food.
The people too have been friendly, without being obsequiousness, two factors which have been really nice. Although our Mandarin is close to non-existent and few people speak much English, we've been able to have some really nice interactions with people, including the world's nicest policeman. In between halting conversations we've been able to gaze out at the lovely scenery. I'm not quite sure what I expected, but it's been far nicer, particularly in the south, with small flats, full of corn and rice and other crops, copses of pines, eucalypts and other timber trees, everything bright green bound by sharp hills and small mountains, all making up a very picturesque scene for miles on end. The reputation of Chinese cities as being pretty characterless, modern places of endless block housing seems to be deserved so far, so the many urban areas we've passed through haven't been particularly inspiring, but the scale of them and the obvious past and present pace of construction is very impressive.
Southern scenery
What I've seen close up, the railway stations, are huge and very similar to the ones that we saw being completed in Malaysia, except bigger. The platforms, often over twenty, are wide and covered by huge, high curved awnings. The stations themselves give the impression of being busy, but very orderly.
As we've headed north, the country has changed dramatically, from a very tropical 'south-eastern Asian' character to flat, open country, with large rice fields, raised railways and power lines criss-crossing the plains; but the biggest change is the vegetation, which, to my eyes looks quite Russian, with lots of deciduous trees which may include birches (it's so long!, I don't remember!). We've crossed a large part of a huge country, so it shouldn't be a surprise, but it does really feel like we're in a very different part of the world.
A few photos of the northern part of the journey