Friday we left Hanoi and took a taxi to go to the train station. The train station was packed with so many tourists asking questions about Sapa and Bac Ha which are beautiful places in Vietnam, but we were going to the border to go to China. We got on the train and the train left exactly at 8:50 pm. We were tired since we went to get the Chinese visa and buy the train tickets to leave immediately.
We shared our sleeping compartment with a younger couple. She was from Brasil and he was Swedish. We talked for an hour about our travel experiences and then we said good night. The train started to move and was going quite fast; each of us got in our tiny little bed. The three of them seemed to be sleeping, and I was looking through the window, but of course it was dark and couldn’t see anything. Once in a while I could see some dim lights and some houses. I felt like I didn’t have enough air, and the train was bumping along. I really wanted to sleep, but I was dead tired. I felt dizzy and wanted to leave the train, but the train was moving really fast. I got a terrible headache and I felt like throwing up. I tried to meditate, but it was difficult since the train was moving fast and making a lot of noise. I felt really miserable. Just when I falling asleep, an attendent knocked on the door and said, “here we are; get your possessions.” I felt drowsy and did not want to leave, but we had to. It was a little bit chilly and foggy. We had a very good breakfast at the border before leaving Vietnam. We walked two kilometers to the border with our backpacks. We went through customs,crossed the river into China, and went through customs again on the Chinese side.
Allan started to practice his Chinese and asked for the bus to Yunnan that was easy. Then we bought the tickets and it was about 9:15 am. We got on the bus at 10:50 am. After two hours the bus broke down with some kind of problem, but we didn’t mind since the ride was beautiful. We could see high mountains, rivers and small villages of twenty or fifty old adobe houses. I love to see the rice paddies on the mountainsides and the farmers working or selling their products along the highway. While the bus was being fixed, we ate in a small restaurant. First, they brought us a dish of bacon which we didn’t order, so we went into the kitchen and pointed out what we wanted (eggplant, tomatoes, scallions and garlic)which the cook soon fried up in his wok. We had a delicious lunch in that little place.
Finally, the bus was fixed and we started the journey again, but broke down several more times along the way. What it was going to be 10 hours ended up being 13 hours. We got to Kunming at midnight, we were cold, tired and hungry. We got a Taxi and here we are in Kunmin.
beautiful asia
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