...2am, Monday, there's a knock on the sliding door of our four berth cabin. The train has ground to a halt with a hiss of brakes. Time to get off and visit those charismatic customs lads at the Vietnamese border.
We boarded this locomotive in Hanoi at 9.40 in the evening and managed to get off to sleep pretty much straight away, safe in the knowledge that we faced this interruption in the early hours.
Nastassja Charlotte Leith, is always the most difficult to get started in the morning and we're the last off the train and into the bleak room where everyone stands around silent, having handed their passports over, cold and completely knackered. Three ugly bruisers stare out of a hatch, trying to catch a glimpse of tell tale sweaty brow. But all is in order and we're handed back our mugshots to continue on our journey to Nanning. As we turn to leave, the three little meatheads seem to lighten up and we are wished a happy new year and good luck on our journey.
An hour later, we have to repeat this bloody ritual, only this time it's for the Chinese Border police and we have to clear our cabin of all our luggage, take it from the train and present it to them at their xray contraption.
Gotta say, Stash and Oskar are absolute stars. They just get on with this, taking it all in their stride and no one, but no one is ever in a better mood than Oskar first thing in the morning, however early it is! His sister is a night owl, deffo.
Somewhere between five or six, I wake with golden sunshine seeping in through the curtain at the small window. I reach and peel it back to behold a backdrop of green landscapes, huge rock formations and lakes bathed in sweeping fog. It is quite beautiful. We are in China. So far, so good.
Christmas feels to be over for us already. That was a quick one, but quite a nice little one. Liz got hold of a simcard and a number which enabled people to call us for 4p a minute, so we spoke to our families and i got a call from my friend Murder, just before we left on Boxing night.
We'd visited a Cathedral that morning, a short walk from our hotel, a large nativity scene at one side of the entrance with a huge blue star trailing above. Inside, a woman sang and conducted a service in French.
We saw a tiny dog in a t shirt, sniffing around the stalls at the side of the road opposite. We had a running with a taxi driver who liked my earring and tried to charge us forty odd quid for a short journey to the Presidential Palace. Liz told him, " you are a bad man! " And he didn't get paid anything like he'd attempted to rip from us.
Ho Chi Minh lived and worked at this great pad between December '54 and September '69 and among other things on display are his bed in the house on stilts, fishpond, three of his cars and an orchard. It seems he was very well liked indeed. On the way in we had someone blow a school whistle at us and we stopped dead as if playtime was over. Someone barked and growled a bit, beckoning us to the ticket office where you have to pay if you are a tourist. ( How can they tell who is and who ain't? )
As always seems to be the case, we end up saying goodbye to Hanoi, feeling sad that we are leaving but extremely lucky and glad to have been. Our Christmas in Vietnam, 2010...and what a bunch of stars!
Location:Hanoi - Nanning - Guilin
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