Cancelled trip to Vietnam replaced by overnight coach to Guangzhou

Got up at 5.30am to the sound of Tan's sister packing for their shopping trip to Guangzhou. They left at 6.30 for their 8am flight and I left at 7 for my 8am train. The 3hr20min train journey was fairly uneventful except for the beautiful mountainous Southern Guangxi countryside. Also it took me 2 hours to realise that the soft background music of ethnic stringed instruments was in fact a loose overhead luggage rail. I felt as stupid as when 15 years ago I reached into my pocket to find 20p while going down the escalator at Tottenham Court Rd tube only to find that the budding violinist was nothing more than the unoiled escalator itself.


That twanging in the background, I later discovered, was not a Chinese guitar but a loose Chinese luggage rail.

Pingxiang is a border town with Vietnam, where Tan's eldest sister "Da jie" lives. She was waiting for me at the station and we went to her flat where the old government building was. It was a bit refreshing not to have so many locals shouting "hello!" and "I love you!" at me, as here they are pretty used to seeing foreigners.

Had a nice lunch with Da jie and her husband, then she explained she had arranged for someone to take me to the border and wait for me to come back. She was also under the impression that I would stay a few minutes just to get my passport stamped. I explained that I might want to stay a bit longer but she said it was too dangerous, especially in smaller places. I knew that arguing further would just result in trouble so I made a decision on the spot not to go to Vietnam at all. As Tan and Leilei were in Guangzhou, an hour or so from Hong Kong, I decided I'd go there that night and save Vietnam for a time I didn't have to tell everyone my every move. Actually it was a bit of a relief as I hadn't learnt any Vietnamese and I'd rather go off the beaten track.

My decision to go to Guangzhou was accepted by Da jie and we immediately went out to buy a ticket for the overnight bus that left at 7.30pm. By now I was knackered and after we'd bought some food for the evening meal I fell asleep for an hour. By the time I woke up there was a lovely smelling huo guo awaiting me. After another hearty meal and a shower we took a three-wheeler cab to the bus station where I got my first experience of the overnighter coaches. I immediately wished Pingxiang had an airport. The coach had three columns of rather thin bunk beds (wouldn't get away with that size in UK). Luckily I was near the back on the left on the top so I didn't have anyone clambering over me to get to the loo. Unfortunately that meant I was doing the clambering during the three times I had to go to the loo during the journey - the last time I kicked some poor bloke on the head as even the aisles had filled up with sleepers for the journey. Unsurprisingly after a few hours the coach began to hum - so much so it wasn't even worth holding in my own farts. The journey itself was reasonably eventless apart from an hour's delay when the police stopped us to search all our bags, presumably as many of my companions had come from Vietnam. The bed itself was comfortable despite its lack of girth and I managed 6 hours of broken sleep.

The grim confines of an overnight coach. Worse if you are sleeping in the aisle and receive my stinky sock in your face while I'm trying to go to the toilet without waking people up.