The Moral of the Story

The day did not get off to a good start. Mike and I had a few hours to kill before catching the bus to the Chinese border. We rented motorbikes and headed up the mountain. On the way back down, already pressed for time, I swerved on the muddy road to give an oncoming biker more room. That resulted in a crash that left a few chunks of arm flesh on the pavement and a completely bent pedal shifter on the bike. Mike turned back around and after assessing the damage simply replied, "Well, I guess we're spending another day in Sapa." I thought for sure that I was going to be buying a new transmission. But fortune turned and some Vietnamese construction workers saw the wreck and managed to bend the shifter back to a usuable position using a metal pipe. We rode back and returned the bikes. I got away paying only $10 to cover the scratches I put on the front fender. I bandaged up my arm and hand and we headed for China.

I've always enjoyed border crossings. Border crossing are where it's at - there's people coming and going, usually carrying an absurd amount of goods back and forth, touts are trading money on the black market and it's always a clash of two cultures. Mike and I walked right through Vietnam's emigration. No line, no hassle. As we were entering China's immigration line, I commented to Mike that I was a little disappointed that it wasn't more hectic. That was a mistake. Eight years ago I dropped my passport in a river. My brother and I were canoeing in Belize and had the great idea of backpaddling through some rapids (or as my brother would say, making memories). Anyway, the laminate on my passport is starting to separate from the cover. Mike and I were asked to go to an office for a routine investigation. They questioned us for at least an hour and a half. We were asked all kinds of questions: How did we know each other? How long have we been travelling together? What cities have we lived in? Where did we study? Where did our flights stop on the way to asia? It was exhausting. Then another immigration officer came in, and right in front of our interrogators, asked Mike and I what the problem was.

Finally we were allowed to go through. I dropped my bag on the x-ray machine to go through customs. The customs officer wanted to see my books. I'm thinking, no problem, I'm not transporting Bibles or anti-Chinese propaganda. He starts flipping through my Lonely Planet guide and the map on the second page doesn't show Taiwan belonging to mainland China. Sunnuva.....
Anyway, he took my only guide book. This is a big deal. Mike had borrowed a few older guide books from a friend. But they contained pictures that the customs officer didn't like. One was a picture of a crowd, with a child holding a sign that read: "Honk Kong is our home". Clearly anti- Chinese propaganda. Mike was left with a very old and nearly useless Fordors guide.

Losing your Lonely Planet (LP) in a place like China is a big deal for a few reasons. One, the latest edition wasn't even available on amazon before I left, I had to order it off of lonelyplanet.com. Two, nobody across the border spoke a word of English, key words and phrases are always listed in the back of LP. Three, Chinese people can't read roman characters, and stupid Americans can't pronounce the names of places correctly. Trying to buy a bus ticket anywhere without either the ability to speak or the name of the place written in Chinese characters is near impossible. This pretty much goes for getting a taxi, finding a hotel, trying to get anywhere. Four, LP is a guide book, with lots of other good information on where you might want to go.

So, a few books lighter we were free to wander China. We had booked an overnight bus in Vietnam to take us 12 hours north to the nearest major city. I had the receipt with all the pertinent information but not the actual tickets. We found the bus station and I handed over my reciept, which was met with a blank stare. We had to cough up another $50 to re-purchase the tickets, which meant our cash was dwindling. We got on the bus, and I really hate to be dramatic about this, but it was one of the worse bus rides I've ever been on. It was a sleeper bus, which means instead of seats, it has two levels of beds stacked in the middle and down the sides of the bus. I was in the middle, upper level. The suspension was so bad, and the road so rough, I had to literally hang on to the side bar the entire ride or risk being bounced right out of my bed. Three minutes into the ride I turned to Mike and said, "I'm not sleeping tonight. Forgive in advance for being in a grumpy mood tomorrow."

So the bike accident, border crossing and bus ride all happened in the same 24 hour period. Probably the worst run of the trip, which really isn't too bad all things considered.

The next morning we arrived at 6am in strange city and had very little luck finding a hotel. Mike's guide had a few hotels listed, but the taxi drivers didn't seem to recognize any of them. We finally had a taxi drive us to a very upscale hotel, where the man at the reception desk spoke some English. He was able to recommend a more reasonably priced place. After catching up on some sleep, our hotel staff was able to give us directions to one of the large book stores in the city. We searched the place for guide books but everything was in Chinese. No love anywhere.

Looking for some comfort, I picked nicest looking restaurant in the neighborhood for dinner. And that's when fortune finally smiled on us. The menu of course was all in Chinese and out of nowhere a beautiful young woman came to our table and asked us if we would like some help ordering our food. It turns out she was an english speaking guide working for one of the five star hotels. We invited her out with us after dinner and told her our guide book dilemma. She said she knew of small bookstore near the university that that carried foreign books and offered to take us there the next day. Jackpot. We get there the next morning, I'm looking around and Linda (that was her english-ized name) starts talking to the woman behind the counter. The woman behind the counter pulls out the latest Lonely Planet edition and says that it arrived just yesterday. They were asking $50 for it, which was almost twice the retail price, but who really, who cares.

So that's how things got started in China.

Since then I've done lots of reading in my precious guide book. And this is kind of funny. LP actually warns you that crossing the Vietnam border can be tricky, and that readers have reported losing their book to customs, and to make sure and copy down any crucial information before crossing the border. Crucial information like........ where to buy a new LP in case yours gets confiscated. And of course LP also lists the obscure bookstore that carried our replacement. So the moral of the story is: Read your Lonely Planet BEFORE going to a communist country.