Beijing to Hanoi - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 59

I have no idea what changed, or what the crowd that was here a few minutes ago was expecting, but I'm
not going to stick around and ask dumb questions. I race back to Rebecca, who's still sitting dejectedly on
our bench. “Bupiao!” I shout, waving our new tickets. Her face lights up. “ Bupiao! ” she shouts. We grab
our packs and start walking toward our new berth.
It's a long march, through at least fifteen packed cars. When we get there, we find we've scored adjacent
bunks—the upper pair in a six-bunk arrangement. Conditions in these bunks are still not ideal. There's not
enough headroom to sit up. My feet droop over the edge of my bunk into the aisle, where they get smashed
each time someone hauls down a suitcase from the nearby luggage rack. And, inches from our faces, em-
bedded in the ceiling, are a bright fluorescent light (which stays permanently on, singeing our retinas) as
well as a booming, distorted speaker (which frazzles our eardrums each time there's an announcement).
Nonetheless, we are thrilled. It's easy to forget how wonderful it is to find a flat piece of real estate when
you need to fall asleep.
MUCH as she did on our ferry across the Baltic, Rebecca awakes to find there is a strange man staring at
her face. This time, it's the toothless old fellow who's in the bunk below mine. He's sipping congee from
a thermos, and when Rebecca opens her eyes, he wipes his lips and gives her a wide, gummy grin. She
decides to take it as a compliment.
Our open-plan train carriage, with its sixty-odd bunks, is a hive of activity. Several multigenerational
families have set up comfy homes away from home—with grannies tending infants, moms reading to tod-
dlers, and packs of dads and uncles playing complicated card games. Food is shared. Laughter is every-
where. The mood on the Japanese Shinkansen was polite reserve. On this Chinese train, it's all hearty en-
gagement with the stuff of life.
The train pulls into Nanning around 8:00 p.m. We fight our way through the crowd exiting the station,
into the central town square. As usual, we've no idea where we're sleeping tonight, so when we get outside
we look around to orient ourselves. I notice a large neon sign on a roof across the street. It reads “High-
Class Hotel.” Sounds like just the place for two high-class travelers like us.
Once inside, we surmise from its shabby lobby that this hotel is not quite as high-class as it would have
us believe. It'll do for tonight, though. We check in, take the elevator to our room, and shower away the
previous twenty-eight hours. As I'm drying off, I notice that the bath towels all say “High-Class Bussiness
Hotel” ( sic ).
The implicit effort. The manifest failure. There is something so achingly sad about a typo embossed on
a towel.
WE wake up early to catch a morning bus to Hanoi. At the depot, we run into a European couple also plan-
ning to catch this bus. “Do you know,” asks the woman—she's French, I think—“where can we get the visa
we will need for Vietnam?”
We break the bad news gently. Visas come from embassies. And all embassies in China are closed for
Golden Week. This couple won't be crossing the Vietnamese border until at least three days from now.
Questions about visas are something they probably ought to have asked themselves before they got to the
bus station. I'm not one to judge. Left on my own, there's a solid chance I'd have made the same mistake.
Lucky for me, I happen to be traveling with a logistical genius. Rebecca squared away our Vietnamese
visas well in advance.