(*) here is a tally of what my trip somewhat cost up until this point, for those of you wishing to attempt the same thing.
(*) Hong Kong. $1 U.S. dollar = $8 Hong Kong dollars.
i first took out 400 HK. 100 HK for my room and 90HK for the ride form the airport into the city. 190 HK for the trip from Hong Kong to Guangzhou.
(*) China proper. $1 U.S. dollar = 8 yuan.
guangzhou to nanning by soft sleeper was 274 yuan. 2 pieces of bread total were 10 yuan. a bowl fo noodles & a bit of meat form the chinese muslim restaurant were 5 yuan. the hostel cost 80 yuan. 28 yuan spent on life-saving water during my walk through the 10 pound losing guangzhou first day jaunt and two batteries. since i took out 500 yuan, 103 yuan was remaining after my first day of guangzhou.
on the second day in guangzhou, i spent 20 yuan on beef & noodles, 16 yuan on water & ramen for the train ride, 5 yuan for wataer at the park, 5 yuan for a beer, and 17 yuan for the train ride from nanning to pingxiang.
the economics of the remaining portion of my trip will be inserted here, there, and elsewhere.
here is a picture or 2 for the hell of it.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
(10) Pinxiang to Hanoi: What Locals Will Do For $5
* Upon arriving in Pinxiang, which was only a few kilometers from the vietnamese border, martin, sabine, and myself befriended an israeli traveler named roy. yes, roy. so now the group was up to 4. we needed to get from pinxiang to "friendship pass". to do so, instead of walking, we decided to take the chinese easy rider form of transport - the death rickshaw. there were only 4 times where we almost died on this contraption. if memory serves, i'm pretty sure the guy wore those type of "red baron", dust-cropper, 1920's pilot goggles. if he had a red scarf on, waving in the wind, i would have felt much better about coming so close to death on the open roads between pinxiang & friendship pass.
(*) the border control was a zoo. and with that being true, then the "public train station" from the border to hanoi, vietnam was a nightmarish carnival. the taxi we jumped in at the border promised to take us to the "public train station" in a vietnamese border town named Lingzhu. well, what we got was a guaranteed box of shit. the taxi dropped us off in the equivalent of some guy's backyard. the guy's backyard had 12-15 guys sitting around, and 3 mini vans. after a good 30 minute negotiation with the head guy, who will now be referred to as "captain douchebag", the agreed price was $5 apiece for myself, sabine, martin & roy. sabine handed him the money first. we eventually all followed suit.
we were then all hearded into the mini van which could comfortably fit 12 including driver. however, 1230980234 of us were packed in there. ok, slight exaggeration. 1123423874 were squeezed in there. upon being squeezed, all of a sudden captain douchebag tears ass towards the van, sticks his head in & starts yelling & getting in the face of sabine screaming something in vietnamese that he failed to pay her $5.
great. here we go.
we continue to just sit there and telling him in english "we've paid" "check your pockets" "kiss my ass" and other assorted english phrases which were of absolutely no use. then captain douchebag's assistant, lieutenant dickhead, decided to get all up in our kool-aid without even knowing our flavors. here is a picture of the guy. if you see him, punch him in the nuts for me.
captain douchebag & lieutenant dickhead were then yelling in our face & taking our bags & throwing them off the van. at this point, things are getting somewhat out of hand, so i suck it up & throw $5 at the guy and tell him "here is $5 you a$$h*le". this hurt me because i knew he did not understand it. the guy, excuse me, captain douchebag, knew we already gave him the money as he refused to empty his pockets in front of us, yet he took our money anyways.
then the fiasco continued in terms of we took off from the "public bus station" and stopped outside of a hut where an elderly woman boarded the overstuffed van. this woman either had black licorice as teeth, or had the most disgusting rotting teeth i have ever seen in my life. then lieutenant dickhead gave me a suitcase to hang on to for the entire ride, which he was delivering to someone. i told him i would do so only for $1. he only smiled. if he spoke english, the remainder of that conversation would have been entertaining for myself. he had previously tried to mumble, while we were arguing over the $5, that it was "only $5". i tried to argue with him over the suitcase that it was "only $1". realizing however that my $5 meant a lot more to him & his family then it ever would to me, i cut the conversation & my own form of self-amusement short.
but, i still had to taste vengeance. so, i quietly brooded by taking my keys and carving into the samsonite luggage a choice english phrase or two.
2 hours later, and with a dead ipod, we arrived in hanoi. we were dropped off in front of a hostel. and when i say "dropped", quite literally, we had our luggage thrown out the van before it came to a complete stop, and we quickly had to make sure all of our bags were removed before the van took off. surprise, surprise, they "forgot" to unload my bag. i yelled at lieutenant dickhead, threw my hand back into the van's open side door, and ripped out my bag as the van had begun to take off. the driver slammed on the break, looked back, and gave a half ass smile / i'm sorry. i waved back with my middle finger. i tried to tell him, as the little kid outside the nanning train station had told me, that he was #1.
note to the reader: this was by far the worst thing that happened to me on the entire trip. and, if the worst thing that happened to me over about a month or so was that i got scammed out of $5 and yelled at the driver b/c i was overly tired, exhausted, and irritated, i give the trip an overall grade of A+.
we hadn't taken more than 3 seconds to realize we had just gotten off the van & were now in a distant foreign city with no shelter & no rest for the weary, when the guy from the hostel which we were dropped outside of, was already trying to sell us a room. i immediately turned around, and thinking this was just another guy trying to rip me off, i told him, "i'm sick of getting screwed by you guys, i'm going to get screwed by another group of people". in the end, this guy was a pseudo god send. so if you're reading this, manager of the hanoi blue star hostel, i take back that comment.
martin, sabine, and myself ended up getting a 3 bed room with air-conditioning for $4 a night through that same guy who i had kindly informed i did not want him to screw me. financially or otherwise. it was the equivalent of a 3 star hotel - free internet, western toilets, hot water showers, air-conditioning, and a cook-to-order kitchen and a bar stocked with beer. not bad. for once, the hustlers turned out to offer us a decent deal. hooray for hustlers.
(*) the border control was a zoo. and with that being true, then the "public train station" from the border to hanoi, vietnam was a nightmarish carnival. the taxi we jumped in at the border promised to take us to the "public train station" in a vietnamese border town named Lingzhu. well, what we got was a guaranteed box of shit. the taxi dropped us off in the equivalent of some guy's backyard. the guy's backyard had 12-15 guys sitting around, and 3 mini vans. after a good 30 minute negotiation with the head guy, who will now be referred to as "captain douchebag", the agreed price was $5 apiece for myself, sabine, martin & roy. sabine handed him the money first. we eventually all followed suit.
we were then all hearded into the mini van which could comfortably fit 12 including driver. however, 1230980234 of us were packed in there. ok, slight exaggeration. 1123423874 were squeezed in there. upon being squeezed, all of a sudden captain douchebag tears ass towards the van, sticks his head in & starts yelling & getting in the face of sabine screaming something in vietnamese that he failed to pay her $5.
great. here we go.
we continue to just sit there and telling him in english "we've paid" "check your pockets" "kiss my ass" and other assorted english phrases which were of absolutely no use. then captain douchebag's assistant, lieutenant dickhead, decided to get all up in our kool-aid without even knowing our flavors. here is a picture of the guy. if you see him, punch him in the nuts for me.
captain douchebag & lieutenant dickhead were then yelling in our face & taking our bags & throwing them off the van. at this point, things are getting somewhat out of hand, so i suck it up & throw $5 at the guy and tell him "here is $5 you a$$h*le". this hurt me because i knew he did not understand it. the guy, excuse me, captain douchebag, knew we already gave him the money as he refused to empty his pockets in front of us, yet he took our money anyways.
then the fiasco continued in terms of we took off from the "public bus station" and stopped outside of a hut where an elderly woman boarded the overstuffed van. this woman either had black licorice as teeth, or had the most disgusting rotting teeth i have ever seen in my life. then lieutenant dickhead gave me a suitcase to hang on to for the entire ride, which he was delivering to someone. i told him i would do so only for $1. he only smiled. if he spoke english, the remainder of that conversation would have been entertaining for myself. he had previously tried to mumble, while we were arguing over the $5, that it was "only $5". i tried to argue with him over the suitcase that it was "only $1". realizing however that my $5 meant a lot more to him & his family then it ever would to me, i cut the conversation & my own form of self-amusement short.
but, i still had to taste vengeance. so, i quietly brooded by taking my keys and carving into the samsonite luggage a choice english phrase or two.
2 hours later, and with a dead ipod, we arrived in hanoi. we were dropped off in front of a hostel. and when i say "dropped", quite literally, we had our luggage thrown out the van before it came to a complete stop, and we quickly had to make sure all of our bags were removed before the van took off. surprise, surprise, they "forgot" to unload my bag. i yelled at lieutenant dickhead, threw my hand back into the van's open side door, and ripped out my bag as the van had begun to take off. the driver slammed on the break, looked back, and gave a half ass smile / i'm sorry. i waved back with my middle finger. i tried to tell him, as the little kid outside the nanning train station had told me, that he was #1.
note to the reader: this was by far the worst thing that happened to me on the entire trip. and, if the worst thing that happened to me over about a month or so was that i got scammed out of $5 and yelled at the driver b/c i was overly tired, exhausted, and irritated, i give the trip an overall grade of A+.
we hadn't taken more than 3 seconds to realize we had just gotten off the van & were now in a distant foreign city with no shelter & no rest for the weary, when the guy from the hostel which we were dropped outside of, was already trying to sell us a room. i immediately turned around, and thinking this was just another guy trying to rip me off, i told him, "i'm sick of getting screwed by you guys, i'm going to get screwed by another group of people". in the end, this guy was a pseudo god send. so if you're reading this, manager of the hanoi blue star hostel, i take back that comment.
martin, sabine, and myself ended up getting a 3 bed room with air-conditioning for $4 a night through that same guy who i had kindly informed i did not want him to screw me. financially or otherwise. it was the equivalent of a 3 star hotel - free internet, western toilets, hot water showers, air-conditioning, and a cook-to-order kitchen and a bar stocked with beer. not bad. for once, the hustlers turned out to offer us a decent deal. hooray for hustlers.
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