A haphazard chronicle of my inevitable misadventures during a year in Vietnam and points east.

p.s. I'll be pitifully grateful if you send me email during my exile: TravelerKaty@hotmail.com

October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 February 2006 March 2006 May 2006

 
Road from Guilin to Pingxiang, China, border with Vietnam

Well, I'm back in Hanoi after a typically awful bus ride from Guilin. And it always makes me feel better to complain about these things, so here goes!

At first it seemed promising. Iwas on one of China's "sleeper buses", and actually one of the better ones as I later learned, in which I got my own minimally cushioned bunk upon which to lie prone during the seven hour trip. There was no sheet, but there was at least a blanket and it was certainly more comfortable than sitting upright all night. Unfortunately, this bus lacked a certain amount of, shall we say, efficiency.

I arrived at the bus at 6:30 pm for its planned departure time at 7:00 pm. We eventually left our parking place in Guilin at 8:30, but proceeded to drive around the city for an hour picking up things in various places -- obviously this bus carried cargo as well as passengers. So we eventually left Guilin city limits around 10pm and managed to stretch the 4 1/2 hour journey into six, arriving in Nanning, the halfway point, at the lovely and inviting hour of 4:00 am. That was the good part of the trip.

At this point things seriously degenerated. I had been told that we would arrive in Nanning, stay for an hour while most people got off the bus, then continue to the border town of Pingxiang, arriving around 8:00 am. Perfect! Right when the border stations opens!

As you might expect, the reality proved far removed from that glorious proposed schedule. At Nanning, I was told to get on another bus. Also a sleeper bus, but considerably down-scale -- they managed to fit another six berths in by making each one just recline significantly rather than provide completely flat bunks. Also, dirty vinyl, no blanket, and the bus was utterly filthy and smelled funny.

Many, many, many hours later, when we finally finished our leisurely tour of the city and got underway, the reason for this became clear -- it was essentially a local bus. We stopped for everyone and their chickens, and rumbled along at about 30 miles and hour the whole way.

It was basically a frustrating and detious six hours, with the exception of two elements -- the excitement of escaped chickens being chased around the bus, and the frequent medical roadblocks.

The chicken chase doesn't really require further explanation, but perhaps the roadblocks do. As you have probably read in the news, after two months of stonewalling the WHO and downplaying the SARS situation in China, the government was suddenly forced to admit it had been covering up SARS cases and had basically lost control in Beijing. As I mentioned in an earlier post, their initial moves after this revelation were to tell everyone not to travel (after which announcement millions of Chinese fled the cities to their provincial home towns), closed the schools, and cut short the week-long May Day holidya. They also created several layers of new bureaucracy and encouraged everyone to wear masks in public places.

During the first week after this I didn't notice a whole lot of activity on the ground. Our bus was stopped in Chongqing, but the monitor didn't do anything, and in the provinces where I was travelling very few people were wearing masks. By the end of my stay in China, however, it was clear that the government had gotten into gear with a vengeance. Every little town had an official labcoated person sitting at a table under a big umbrella answering SARS questions, all employees at bus and train stations were wearing masks along with most of the passengers, and along major highways (and possibly minor ones) SARS roadblocks were set up with big blue tents and swarms of labcoated, bemasked purported medical technicians scurrying about.

Which brings me back to my original point -- my bus ride to the border. Every few hours the bus would be stopped at one of these checkpoints, and either the Chinese masked medical police wouldd pile on, or we would all have to get off. The purpose of this exercise was to take our temperature and hand out literature. Now, even if you know you're not sick, this is a very nervewracking experience. The raised temperature that is a symptom of SARS is not so very high -- only 100.4, a temperature that could exist for any number of non-SARS-related reasons. And the problem is, you don't only worry about your own temperature passing the test -- you worry even more about all the other passengers. Because if someone comes up with a temperature in that bus, I'm pretty sure the medical police wouldn't just let the rest of us go on our merry way. We might all be quarantined, and I'm damned sure Vietnam wouldn't let me re-enter under that cloud, given that they've closed the border to Chinese nationals already. So we all sweated it out during each of the checkpoints, all attempting to look alert and avoid coughing.

All's well that ends well, though, and I've made it out of China SARS-free and ready to head to Laos tomorrow.

Copyright 2003 Katy Warren
posted by Katy at 7:08 AM