Since the family left

So I hadn't planned anything to do after my family left, so I checked into a hostel and got a dorm bed with my own money, and gained a little freedom from Dr. Yin. I knew that I wanted to go to Tibet, but my visa requirement of leaving the country every 30 days was quite annoying. So I just planned to stay for a few days until the best way to go about traveling and border crossing would hit me. Then I realized I could get a new tourist visa for 30 days, but could extend that by 30 days, 2 times, a total of 90 days. From within China. That 90 days would be enough for me now. But you can't get that Visa from within China, you have to leave. So I applied for a Vietnamese visa and planned to travel to Hanoi, because they have pickup frisbee. While my visa was processing I hung out with the Chinese guy named Jay from the city of Hangzhou that was in the same room as me. I visited Hangzhou with my school back in the fall. Jay was probably 24, he studied geography at the University of Sichuan, but now he wants to learn to program Java. He had been traveling around for a little while and was planning to go to Hainan, the big island south of China, where our Navy aircraft was shot down and kept a few years ago, and ride a bike around it. But he was just chilling in Kunming for the time being so we went about our daily business of eating breakfast at noon, spending a lot of time at the web bar playing computer games, and walking around. We went to Yunnan University where I was surprised to see a strong foreign presence, I guess they teach Chinese there. We threw the frisbee, played more computer games, etc.

 

So he took off to wherever and my visa was finished on Friday. I got on an overnight bus to the Vietnamese border, and this bus trip was worst than the last one. I complained about the last one but it was a fine trip. This bus was an old school bus, real dirty etc, open window for AC. While riding I found myself wondering why it smelled like a Chinese public bathroom when there was no on board toilet. We'll be lenient and blame it on the area of the city we were in. When I got on the bus it was at the last minute because the travel agent who I bought the ticket from got me there late, so when the 2 people in bunks near me said that the foreigner was running late, I told them it wasn't my fault. They laughed and that of course sparked the token conversation about me speaking Chinese. One of them turned out to be Vietnamese, the other Taiwanese, and they worked in Vietnam and said they would help me get where I was going.

 

So yeah, the trip was interesting as always. Looking at a map you may think a trip will be short, but thats forgetting that theres no real highway, and its not just a public bus from A to B, but a delivery service from A to Z, stopping everywhere in between as well. All cargo area was stashed with boxes and those token Chinese woven plastic sacks, and at random times and random points in the middle of nowhere we would stop, people would get off, sometimes unload cargo, sometimes the people would get back on, sometimes a guy would approach the bus and get something and pay money. So by the time we reached the border it seemed as if the foreigners were the only people going to the border Hekou, on a bus that just said it was to Hekou. We crossed, I decided to go straight to Hanoi on a 9 hour train ride, instead of staying the day and waiting for the sleeper train. A Canadian couple formerly living in Taiwan went with me. That was a great trip, sitting on a hard straight back seat, and being pestered by the ladies selling drinks and snacks walking up and down the aisle. I think the deal is they don't buy a ticket, or get a cheap ticket, as long as they don't sit down.

 

While in Kunming, I was chatting with my friend Jiew from Bangkok Frisbee through email and she decided at the drop of a hat that she wanted to go to Vietnam so she said she would meet me in Hanoi the next night. I told her I would meet her at the airport. She's 32 and not interested in me like that so don't get the wrong idea. Well during the 9 hour train ride to Hanoi I was slightly nervous because I had no clue it would be that long, and I thought her plane arrived at 7:30, when thats actually when it departed Bangkok. Our train was due to pull in at 7:30, I figured a direct taxi ride would get me to the airport on time. I was given a Cambodian SIM card for my cellphone by the Taiwanese guy and I sent Jiew a text message to her Thai phone, although I had no clue if she would receive it. It had the hostel phone number in it, I told her to wait at the airport I would be late. So we arrived, I had the hostel pick us up at the train station, we went to the hostel and I immediately went to the airport, it was a 45 minute cab ride and I was fairly nervous. We got split up for about 10 minutes of confusion at the Bangkok airport last month when going to Cambodia, and I didn't want her to be mad at me again, or even worse, not see her. But I walked into the airport, checked the arrivals, her flight had actually arrived at 8:40 and she walked up at that moment. She had only waited for 20 minutes so all was well. Sorry that I write about these boring to read travel details, but this is the reality of traveling, so I'm giving it to you uncut, unedited, no spin, no political bias. And its hard to read about the fun times unless you were there, so if you want to have fun, just go travel. Anyways.

 

Next day we walked around the old quarter of Hanoi, where we are staying. Hanoi is pretty cool. Its a large city but there are hardly any tall buildings and the old quarter which is the only place I've been, obviously has a lot of French influence(I had the best French toast today that i've had in long time) and is pretty neat, at one point I thought it was like commercial parts of the Fan in Richmond, but with 10x the number of people, and Asian. I played frisbee today, it was basically all Vietnamese people, which is a first for my ultimate adventures. The level of play was nowhere near what I had seen in other parts of Asia, but there were a few decent players and it was fun, they get even more riled up and tease each other more than the Thai people.

 

Tomorrow Jiew wants to go see Ho Chi Minh. Like all other communist leaders, he is lying in a majestic mausoleum. However, just like Mao, the place is hardly ever open because of the maintenance it must take to keep a dead body looking heroic, and packed with pilgrims, so I don't know if I will be able to wake up early enough.

 

Traveling around the country and seeing if any of the war history is interesting sounds tempting, but time is limited and I would have Tibet in the back of my mind. I have to go to Tibet. So I will go back as soon as my new Chinese visa arrives, probably Friday. I think its cheapest just to fly to Tibet, it appears to be double that of flying to take a 4WD even when splitting it with other people. I guess so many people go 4wd for the experience. As I said, time is limited and its only one of those experiences you want to say you've had, not to actually experience it. This guy named Tommy from Hanover County, and UVA, same year as me, plays some ultimate, has been hopping around India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal since last summer, and he will be in Tibet, so it would be cool to meet up with him. He really gets down and dirty when traveling and reading his emails makes want to kick it up a notch. I'm not too hardcore right now to be honest. But you have to have a balance.