Bound for Vietnam Read online

  The road was as appalling as I had been warned. Detours continued for hundreds of miles and at one of them we were held up for over an hour. The road was not being repaired in small sections; the whole lot was being done at once. Then our bus suffered a breakdown and we sat on the side of the road for another hour.

  In the front of the bus next to the driver was a flat bench on which the co-driver slept. Despite the bumpiness of the road and the hours of detours I also had some sleep, but it was full of vivid and strange dreams. At one stage I woke and, looking up blearily, I saw a man I thought was the driver outlined in front of me. Then to my absolute horror I saw him lie down flat. I was in shock before I realised that the driver was on the other side.

  Four hours after dinner we had a comfort stop by the side of a dark piece of road and I had to perform what is normally a private affair among hundreds of men. By this time I didn’t care. Even when I got caught with my pants down by a truck coming slowly up the hill with its lights on high beam I wasn’t phased. China is a great leveller.

  7 The Bike Police

  Guangzhou straddles the Pearl River, the fifth longest river in China, which links the city to the South China Sea and is thronged with ferries, freighters, junks, sampans, small tankers and big gun boats. Foreigners have been coming to Guangzhou, as they called China’s first major seaport, for a couple of thousand years. Established around 200 BC and the capital of the Guangdong Province for over a thousand years, it is one of China’s largest cities. By the end of the Han Dynasty, in 200 AD, foreign trade linked the port with other areas of Asia, as well as India and the Roman Empire. By the ninth century a large colony of Arabs, Jews and Persians had settled here to trade in silk, tea and porcelain. In the sixteenth century, Europeans came to Guangzhou. First the Portuguese, then the Spanish, Dutch and English, who set up trading posts in the late eighteenth century. Now, although Guangzhou is primarily an industrial city, it is still involved in making money and hustling.

  At six o’clock in the morning, our bus pulled into Guangzhou. It was still dark, and I had no idea where I was. Only the main bus station was marked on my map, and this was not it. A couple of English blokes, who had also been on the bus, and I lined up with a bunch of local workers in the station café for some breakfast noodles. Later I realised that the twelve yuan I had paid had been for all three of our breakfasts. The boys had paid as well. But a refund was out of the question. The cashier was programmed to take money, not give it back.

  Mark, John and I decided to travel to the Guangzhou Youth Hostel together. Yanshu had been my first experience of hostels, and I had formed a good opinion of them. Three taxi drivers turned us down before we found one who could read the map we were using to indicate our destination. At the hostel, the boys paid to leave their luggage – they were going to Hong Kong that night by train – and I put my name on the waiting list for a room. I was told to come back at check out time. I went to a café across the road from where I could keep an eye on the hostel. When I saw the night receptionist leave, I returned to stake my claim with the day staff. You see how much I had learned! Then I moved to the hostel’s café. Adjacent to the foyer, it was closer for a speedy ambush if I saw guests departing.

  At ten o’clock I spied people leaving, so I presented myself at the reception desk. Here I discovered that the staff were not keeping rooms for those they had written on the waiting list. I caught them in the act of admitting several middle-aged Chinese who had just trickled in. And this was supposed to be a youth hostel.

  Other travellers had told me that Guangzhou was a ghastly place, but I was favourably impressed with it. Later I wondered if I had enjoyed Guangzhou because it was not totally Chinese! The youth hostel is situated on Shamian Island, a small residential area that was formerly the colonial foreign enclave, and is linked to the city by two bridges. The island retains the peaceful ambience of the nineteenth century and staying here was what helped me to appreciate Guangzhou. The streets are lined with beautiful old buildings that have been carefully restored. Lovely big banyan trees hang over the cobbled footpaths that are bordered by gardens edged with low concrete walls topped by white iron fences. The hostel is housed in one of the fine old buildings and looks nothing like I imagined a youth hostel should.

  It was no mean feat, but I did finally get a small room on the fourth floor of the hostel. The first thing I noticed in the room was a large document that was pasted in a prominent position on the wall. ‘Youth Hostel Rules,’ it read.

  We hope that you will be comfuble and safe stay in Youth Hostel in this case we will proceate your co operation number one etc or you will get a fine.

  If you loose your registration card you will had to pay two yuan compensation

  Only water washing. (??)

  Please swiss off lights and lock windows

  Articles in room were for use only not for momento to be taken away

  Please don’t dismantle the electricle appliances and equipments otherwise compensation must be paid according to price

  Were not allowed to bring in inflamable explosive poisons radio active materials livestock rancid materials

  You should not cook food light a fire or explode fire crackers in room as well as smoke in bed a fine of 30 will be issued to voilaters

  Visiting protitution drug taking and gambling in room strictly forbidden voilaters will be punished according to Chinese law

  Keep your room tidy don’t spit to the floor litter cigarette ash and end as well as rind and groceries pour tea into wrong place don’t put tea bags into wash basin or below but dust bin don’t pour water out from windows if having done so you will be punished according to the corcerning the regulations

  Please pay attention to your appearance when leaving the room don’t wrap yourself with sheet and quilt cover

  Visitors were required to register at reception those who come for visit after eleven Pm are not welcomed

  Please don’t make confused noise or play card after ten Pm

  A couple personns who are opposite sex grown ups who want to live in same room must had a legal marriage permit.

  A list of fines payable as compensation for anything that went missing followed. And heaven forbid that anyone should be so depraved as to want to take away the hostel rules. That crime would cost you fifty cents.

  The hostel had recently been re-vamped after a massive fire (firecrackers, smoking in bed, exploding radioactive devices, or all of the above?) and the rooms were comfortable and well equipped. My room had no wardrobe, but a curtain pole that swung across its width did a fine impersonation of one. This piece of equipment was more grand than the length of wire I’d had in Yanshu, but it was positioned a metre down from the ceiling and there was no way anyone less than a giant could have reached it. I hung my clothes on the cord that stretched from the wall fan instead, in the process disturbing a large spider that had come down from the ceiling to investigate me. My room also ran to a bed light, a rare commodity in Chinese hotels, which would have been fantastic if it had not been immovably fixed over the foot of the bed. If I got the urge to examine my toe nails in the middle of the night, however, I had a good light to do it by. The bottom halves of the floor-length curtains were covered with dark smears of polish that looked suspiciously like someone had cleaned their shoes on them. The plug of the television set had been smashed, apparently with a sledge-hammer, in order to remove its third prong and make it fit a two-point plug.

  The communal bathrooms along the corridor were tatty and already bore much evidence of ill use. They contained a toilet, hand-basin and a hand held shower that ran directly onto the floor. There was no toilet paper; the maid dished you out a personal ration each day. The first bathroom I tried had no hot water, a fact that was only revealed to me after I had undressed and stood hopefully shivering on the tiled floor for some time. The wooden doors of the bathrooms were beginning to disintegrate from all the watering they received and the shower taps were falling off the walls. The bracket meant
to hold the shower-head had been, as usual, the first casualty and washing was once again a one-handed affair. But it was most convenient that the lid of the toilet cistern was also missing. I could put the shower down in there while I soaped up.

  My room ran to the luxury of a phone, but making calls presented the usual problems, and if I did not unplug it every night I was repeatedly disturbed by wrong numbers. No matter how often I explained to the switchboard operators that the call was not for me, they kept on ringing. I tried several times to call CITS, thinking that I could ask about the ship that was alleged to sail from Guangzhou to the north of Vietnam. But none of the staff who answered spoke English. When they couldn’t understand me, they either hung up or put the phone down and walked away, hoping that I’d get tired of waiting and do the hanging up – thereby relieving them of doing so. I kept trying until I found someone who said, ‘No such thing as a boat to Vietnam.’ He gave me a number to call to enquire about a visa for Vietnam, but unfortunately this turned out to be an office for Chinese visa extensions. Persevering with the telephone, I eventually obtained the number of the Vietnamese Embassy and, after being hung up on many times, someone gave me the address, but only the street, not the number of the building. When I did finally locate the Vietnamese Embassy I discovered that the only way to find it was to have a map and the only way to obtain a map was – you guessed it – to go to the embassy.

  The epic voyage of discovery to the embassy took two hours. Having taxied a long way across town, I was deposited in the street I had been given as their address. Simple, I thought, you walk up the street and find a sign that announces –Vietnamese Embassy. Wrong! The street ran for kilometre after kilometre and meandered all over the place. I walked and walked and then it started to rain. Deciding to call for more details, I stopped at a tiny grocery shop that had a red pay phone. I showed my map to the proprietor and he said, Yes, this was the street I wanted. I pointed to Vietnam in the phrase-book and this kind man obligingly found me the telephone code for Vietnam. I might as well have called Hanoi. Someone there may have had more idea of the whereabouts of the embassy in Guangzhou than the people who worked in it. They could not tell me how to get there, or the number of the building. The shopkeeper spoke to them. But they could not tell him either. The discussion continued to no avail, until the woman at the embassy put someone else on the line. He said, ‘You wait there. I will come and get you.’ I said, ‘Are you one of the staff?’ To which he replied, ‘No, I am only here trying to get a visa for Vietnam too.’ The shopkeeper took the phone and in great detail told this person how to find me. My would-be rescuer then said, ‘You wait three minutes.’ I waited thirteen and, deciding that my help was also lost, I set off again in the direction that I thought the embassy staff had been indicating. The shopkeeper didn’t want me to leave. He worried that I might get lost again. We discussed this in pantomime and I finally convinced him that I would meet the man from the embassy on the way.

  After walking a long way I came to the intersection of two main thoroughfares where a board with a large map of the city stood on the footpath. I was studying this map when a man rushed up to me and said, ‘Excuse me. Are you the person who was ringing the embassy?’ My saviour had found me! ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ he said. He told me that his name was Li and that he was an Australian Vietnamese who had lived in Sydney for twenty years. He had been selling veterinary supplies in China and now was trying to get a visa to do business in Vietnam. Even though he was Vietnamese by birth, it was still not easy for him to enter the country.

  Li marched me kilometres further along the street, up a back lane, through an apartment building, out the other side and there it was, Guangzhou’s best kept secret, the Vietnamese Embassy. My new friend took me inside the building and presented me proudly. ‘Look! I have found her.’ He should have been given a medal. I shook his hand with fervour, thinking that if this was an example of Vietnamese behaviour I couldn’t wait to get there.

  At the embassy a young woman officer dealt with me graciously but firmly. I asked if I could cross the border at the place named in the guide book as a possibility, but she said, ‘The Mon Cai Pass will be a better place for you to cross. I will put this on your visa and then I can only let you go through that pass. And I can only let you go for a month.’ I forked over sixty-five American dollars, a steep price for a visa, filled out numerous forms and was told to return in five days.

  Leaving the embassy I found myself in one of Guangzhou’s main drags, a huge dual highway with wide bike lanes and multitudes of trees on each side. Lock-up bicycle stations were everywhere. They were guarded by the Bike Police, some of whom even had guns in holsters on their hips. The Bike Police will take good care of your treadley machine, but woe betide you if you don’t put it in the proper place. The delinquent bike will be towed away and impounded and a stiff ransom will be required to liberate it. Naturally the fine is especially hefty for foreigners.

  Although Beijing has more cultural sights, I thought that Guangzhou’s main streets were much nicer and, except at peak hour traffic times, not as crowded. I found the Friendship shop. It stocked everything except the one thing I needed, deodorant. The person who can convince Chinese women that they smell will make a fortune! Someone had obviously persuaded them that they all had dirty teeth, and now after years of managing without western toothpaste and brushes, they have gone the whole hog and you could, for more than a hundred dollars, buy a teeth-whitening kit.

  In the street I passed a white wedding with all the trimmings. Mao must have been doing cart-wheels in his mausoleum. A haunting bird call that I always associate with the tropics attracted my attention. Outside a shop a large bird, far from his habitat, squatted dismally on the floor of a cage so cruelly small that he could not even stretch his wings.

  The next day I saw a far sadder thing. In front of a restaurant, live food – snakes, birds, chooks and animals –waited in wire cages to be selected for a meal. In one cage, too small for him to have stood up in, a handsome badger with a broad stripe down his nose, lay with his head on his paws. The day was warm, the cage was in the sun and there was no water. The badger looked up at me with lovely knowing eyes that were as intelligent as a sheep dog’s. I felt so strongly for him that I nearly went in and bought him. But the real tragedy was that five days later I went past again and, to my dismay, he was still there. A little flatter on the wire mesh floor of his enclosure, he was a picture of abject misery. I stood, stunned with pity, before him. A big dead rat now kept the badger company in the cage. It was the lucky one.

  The next day I woke to find that it was raining again and it poured off and on all day. Brolly aloft, I went for a walk around Shamian Island. It was a delightful place. I could have stayed there indefinitely. It was pleasant to stroll along the quiet, narrow streets that were more like private lanes. You could also take an enjoyable walk under leafy trees along the riverside, resting now and then on the seats provided at intervals. Once I spent hours stuck in a taxi in peak hour trying to cross the bridge to the island, and from then on I walked back from town along this path.

  I noticed that in Guangzhou an attempt was made to remove rubbish from the river. A cleaning boat chugged regularly up and down while a worker scoured debris from the surface of the water with a scoop net on a pole. Among the craft that crowded the water, ferries criss-crossed the river ceaselessly. Where the ferries pulled into the bank a great flood of people, many wheeling bicycles, streamed ashore and swarmed all over the road. At these spots enterprising vendors sold hot chestnuts and other tempting edibles.

  The Shamian Island area had all I needed, big hotels that were handy for the use of their post offices, coffee shops and other facilities, as well as plenty of cafés and restaurants to restore the inner man. One restaurant displayed a large cage of big writhing snakes at its front entrance. I gave it a miss. I’d done my snake eating act once and had no wish to repeat it. At the Victory Hotel the doorman helped me to park my b
rolly in the umbrella station. He locked its handle in a slot with a key that I kept until I returned to claim my umbrella. I discovered that you had to be wary of some of the staff at big hotels. The postal clerk at the Victory quoted me thirty yuan to send a postcard. I went to the other end of the counter where the receptionist asked me for five – at the post office the price was two and a half yuan.

  Walking along the riverside I passed people, mostly old men, who sat watching life on the water, did their exercises or aired their birds – and I don’t mean girlfriends. Shamian Island has two large parks that require a fee to enter. By now I understood how the infamous sign, ‘No dogs or Chinese allowed’ came about in Shanghai. Nothing has changed. The sign now says, ‘Admission price’ but it serves the same purpose – keeping out the Great Chinese Unwashed, who otherwise would have stampeded into the park and demolished it – spitting, littering and sleeping in it overnight. The Chinese are just as class conscious, if not more so, than the British. For a supposedly classless society, China is more conscious of it than any place I have been.

  At the bigger park on the riverbank, I paid one yuan to enter. The Chinese paid one tenth of a fan. But the park was worth my eight cents. Under the shelter of huge trees, it was beautifully kept. There were shrubs, palms, creepers, bushes, flowers, lawns and vantage points where you could sit and observe the river. The Chinese opera company, complete with full orchestral backing, were rehearsing in the rotunda at the water’s edge. What an awful din.

  For a while I joined an audience that surrounded a group of old men who were playing chess. Nearby a bunch of men and women clicked and clattered their bamboo mah jong pieces. This was very serious stuff; they had even brought a black cloth to cover the round stone table. Other park users did tai chi, read the paper, played cards, or had brought their birds in wicker cages for a walk.