Journey from Hong Kong to Hanoi, Vietnam (Nightmare!)

Hi guys,

We are now in Hanoi, Vietnam after a very eventful 36 hour journey from Hong Kong - it started out well: we boarded a clean, spatious high tech train in Hong Kong and after a 2.5 hour journey we arrived in Guangzhou in southern China - we were the only white people and were stared at from the moment we arrived from then on!! We needed to get to another station in the city so stupidly followed this guys advice and got badly ripped off. He tried to get us a soft sleeper berth on the train but there werent any beds left so in the end we paid for 2 seats and he gave us a piece of paper with 'we are prepared to pay more for beds' written on it. He dropped us off at the station in a minibus and we waited in the city for a few hours as we didnt have a map and didnt want to get lost!

Boarded the train and had a fight with 2 girls as they'd knicked our EXPENSIVE/OVERPRICED seats! We had to give in as we couldnt communicate properly, but then found a station guard, showed them the piece of paper and they nodded, sending us in the direction of the guard office on board the train. Handing over another 10GBP we managed to book ourselves beds, which in fact appeared to be 3 seats with a sheet thrown over them. This was fine though - we were happy as we had much more space. The guards however were not as pleased, they shooed us away and made us follow yet another guard!! We walked through multiple carriages and ended up in what can only be described as hell! sections upon sections of triple bunks, full of chinese people. we slept (?!?) well attempted to sleep on 2 bottom bunks next to the toilet...after 14 hours we finanlly arrived in Nanning at 4.45am. It was pitch black and we had no idea where to go - but a really friendly canadian couple appraoched us and were in the same situation...so we wondered around together, found a new ticket office, purchased our train tickets to the border for just over 1GBP each and played cards with them in a station cafe for a few hours until we could board the train. We then sat with them on the train and have been with them ever since.

I am sooo glad we met them as crossing the Chinese/Vietnamese border was very confusing. The train we all hoped to get didnt exist, and after riding these wierd motorbike vehicle we took a taxi to the nearest town and was told by the taxi driver to get a minibus with most of the local people into Hanoi...very cramped journey!! wayne was shoved in the back with half of the luggae and goods the local people were planning to sell in a market! He had permanent cramp.

The minibus driver then refused to drop us off at our hotel so we have ended up sharing a dorm with the couple we met in china - Hanoi is beautiful - i prefer it to Hong Kong because its less metropolitan. Vietnam is an ex-French colony and therefore seems really European - loads of quaint bussling streets but larger French tree-lined avenues as well.

Anyway I have tro go now - check out our pics on www.snapfish.com as it takes far too long to upload them onto this site - if you want to see the pics let me know and i'll e-mail you the 'share pics' link.

Sorry the photo's dont make much sense without accompanying description but i'll try and sort this out at a later date.

Hope everyones ok, love E and W xxx