Day 221 - Good Morning Vietnam!!

This morning we woke to the sound of our boat blaring it's horn as we arrived at Beihai harbour at around 6.30am. We spent the next few hours eating breakfast in a local noodle house and waiting for our bus to Dongxing - a border town of Vietnam. On the bus we were twice approached by some locals telling us that Adam was in their seat (number 5) - the rest of the bus thought it was hilarious when Liv (in Chinese) informed our fellow passengers that their seat number was not actually 5 but rather that was the gate number that we boarded our bus through, and then pointed them in the right direction to their proper seat!!

In Dongxing we battled through the crowds of people offering us rides to the border, in our usual stubborn way we decided to walk instead! On the way to Vietnam (!) we dropped into the post office to send some more gear back to Jinan - every little kilogram counts! At the border, while all the other tourists were buying some sort of ticket, we questioned this and got let through the back entrance (without a ticket!) and straight to customs. Before long the Adlibers had arrived in Mong Cai, Vietnam!!

And what an arrival it was! Even though Vietnam is just 1m away from China, the difference was obvious - it immediately seemed poorer and more crowded (how this possible coming from China, we don't know), and the fact that we can't speak any Vietnamese made it even harder as we have become accustomed to being able to ask for help and communicate in Chinese.

Finding money was impossible!! After walking around for over an hour looking for the bank, and finding 3 broken ATMs on the way, Adam finally made it to the bank only to be told that the bank was out of money!! So we did our first black-market transaction on the street in order to get some Dong to pay for our onward ferry ride to Halong City!

Public transport in Vietnam is nowhere near as efficient as in China, but nonetheless we were eventually put on a local bus that took us to a port, and then we were loaded onto a junk boat and ferried to our hydrofoil which was waiting for us in the middle of the harbour! Our boat ride to Halong city was great - we sailed through Bai Tu Long Bay and got our first glimpse of the island karst formations that Halong Bay is famous for. In Halong City we found a room and went our for our first dinner in Vietnam, which was delicious and a nice change from Chinese food. Our hotel wanted to keep our passports for police purposes, but when we refused, Adam scored a free motorbike ride to meet the police in order to fulfil the tourist conditions of this city. Before long we had crashed out, exhausted after a long day of travelling.

Adlibing it to Vietnam.