China:Vietnam

Crossing the border from China to Vietnam through Friendship Pass was interesting.

After doing days of research on the easiest way to cross the border and reading up about Vietnam, Sauce and Mustard were finally ready to venture into the unknown world of Vietnam.



Getting from Pingxiang to Friendship Pass was relatively easy. While munching on a couple of fried bread sticks for breakfast, Sauce and Mustard hailed down a taxi. The difficult taxi driver refused to accept the current going rate of RMB30 for a ride to the border. Luckily enough there was a van near by that was ready to take them there for RMB30.

 Friendship Pass is actually a tourist attraction in itself, full of Chinese frontier battel history dotted with forts, walls and battlements. There is a ticket office at the entrance for sightseeing tourists, but with a valid passport, Sauce and Mustard went through the side gate free of charge.

After taking a short tour around the forts and fending off numerous hawkers trying to get us to exchange our money with them at a ridiculously low rate of RMB 1¥ to VND 3000dong, Sauce and Mustard finally gave in and exchanged 100¥ @ 3150 dong before crossing the Chinese border. There is a short 600m walk between the Chinese and Vietnamese border and the difference between the two nations wealth is obvious right there.

While the Chinese border was well organised, the Vietnamese border seemed a little ramshackle with only a few signage and no border control at all. There were people pushing in, jumping the queues while the custom guy was in the middle of processing Sauce and Mustard's passport. Walking outside of the gate, there were mini shuttles waiting to pick up passengers to take them to a bus stop 1km down the road for 3000dong. Not being able to speak any Vietnamese at all, Sauce and Mustard decided to walk instead.

After successfully crossing the borders, the next challenge was to get themselves to Langson (18km away). Looking around at the bus stop, all Sauce and Mustard could find were buses heading to Hanoi and a friendly taxi driver that offered to take them to Langson for 70,000dong. Not knowing what the going rate was supposed to be, they decided to ask the driver to take them to Dong Dang (3km) for 20,000dong.

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