This is the final piece in my series Christmas in China
Is it my imagination or does the air smell sweeter on the Vietnamese side of the border? There’s certainly more greenery around. China seemed suffocating now looking back but it’s only 200 meters away. The austere concrete high-rises stop suddenly at the river and then on this side there are rows of typical tacky faux-classical Vietnamese villas. Looking at them now with fresh eyes, I appreciate them as expressions of individuality, if not of great taste.
I’ve always imagined there’s a certain romance to crossing a border on foot. Leaving one countries soil to set foot on another without a plane or boat in between. After getting off my the morning train from Kunming, I took a taxi to the border. I was confronted by a huge queue, several hundred meters long! But I realised this was for goods to declare and people with nothing to declare could skip this queue entirely. The building was not entirely dissimilar to an airport or the ferry terminal in Shanghai. However queuing at passport control which was a nightmare! People were pushing and shoving and the chinese staff did nothing to control it. Eventually I got to a counter and was given the worst interrogation of my life: about why I’d been in china and what my business was in Vietnam. After that I was out onto the bridge. The bridge is a couple of hundred meters long. One side is china and the other vietnam. There was a steady stream of people going each way.
The other side of the bridge had a grand colonial style building, very Vietnamese taste. Inside was peaceful with organised queues and beautiful wooden counters where I was stamped into Vietnam. The officer teased me about my poor vietnamese language skills. I realise that I missed the vietnamese playful sense of humour.
It’s a few hours until my train home and Lao Cai town doesn’t have much going on. Its walking distance from the border crossing to the train station. I wander down the side of the narrowguage railway that once crossed the border and went on to Kunming. Apparently the track is still used on the chinese side of the border but only for freight. I wave to a train and have a moment of childish glee when the driver waves back, followed by the guard in his coach on the back!
I have dinner in a restaurant aimed at western tourists and indulge in entirely inauthentic banana pancakes. I muse over the 2 week journey. Have I learned anything? Maybe that Christmas doesn’t need music, decorations and a big dinner (although I do miss that if I’m honest). Or maybe the main lesson of this trip was that the destination was disappointing and the best bits of the journey were serendipity along the way. Perhaps next time I’ll plan less and find my Shangri-La by going with the flow. Nah that’s cheesey, I’ll stick with the dinner thing.
Eastward Ho! 