Bye-bye Beijing, Hello Hanoi!

On Thursday 5th April we commenced our epic train journey from Beijing West Train Station to Hanoi, Vietnam. Luckily we were not brave enough to go for the cheaper 6 berth 'hard sleepers' and had upgraded to a 4 berth soft sleeper. We were pleasantly suprised when we were shown to our cabin. It actually looked more comfortable than the hostel we had just departed from! There were four bunks in our cabin, with clean linen, thick quilts and fluffy pillows and the icing on the cake was that it looked like were were going to have the whole cabin to ourselves......no such luck!

Our room for the next three days

After travelling for around 6 hours, just as we tucked ourselves into bed at around 11pm, there was a gentle tap on the door and we were joined by our new neighbour. Well actually, we very nearly were not joined by him as when he opened the door and saw Gavin and I, he stormed out and we could hear a very heated exchange with the train conductor. I suspect the conductor must have said something along the lines of "that's your bed mate, take it or leave it" as he reluctantly returned and settled in for the night. Boy did he smell bad (although so did we by the end of the journey!).

Just to help you picture it, once he had tucked himself into bed, he and I were around 1/2 metre away from each other....it kind of felt like I was sharing a bed with him which you can imagine was fairly uncomfortable. We had very little sleep that night.

By the time our neighbour departed at Nanning we were buddies and he had spent the previous few hours pointing out places of interest to us and stopped checking that his wallet and phone were still in his jacket pocket each time he came back into the cabin.

The very best thing about the train journey was watching the scenery change from the grey, polluted city to stunning limestone rock formations and terraced paddy fields. The worse thing was the lack of food (which was totally my fault). I had read somewhere that basic meals are included in the price of the ticket for overnight journeys...erm nope! To make matters worse we had spent our left over Chinese Yuan on ciggies for me (yes I know I was going to give up but they are a pound a pack, cut me some slack) so were stuck on a train with very little food and no money. We survived on the Chinese equivalent of pot noodles and the odd shared apple, for three days, two nights (and you all now how much we like our food!).

Immigration at the border of Vietnam on the second night was an interesting experience to say the very least. We had already had our passports checked by both Chinese and Vietnamese immigration officers on the train. They had also checked our guide books for inappropriate material which was a little unnerving. We arrived at Dang Dong, Vietnam at around 3am on Saturday 7th April and were ripped off by immigration officials! We were subjected to a "health check" (and I emphasise the inverted comas for that statement). Basically a chap holds a thermometer in your general direction and then charges you 2,000 Dong for the privilege. As you cannot obtain Vietnamese Dong outside of Vietnam we had to pay in dollars. Initially he simply made no effort to hand us any change, following my questioning he threw a few dollars change at us. I walked away feeling all smug as I had sussed him out and came away a winner (then Gavin explained that he had still had us over as the exchange rate meant that he had more than quadrupuled the price for us based on the change he had given. Damn it.).

We will fly from now on.

We arrived in Hanoi on Saturday 7th April at around 8.30am. It had a totally different feel to Beijing and we both knew straight away that we were going to have a great time here.