It was a childhood dream to get to China. And I arrived on foot. I spent six days here. It was good for a first experience. Next time I will be more prepared.
That’s enough for now.
In retrospect, this post looks like a “what doesn’t work” monument.
So please imagine it while you read it!
I’m smiling, listening to music, laughing as I write this post. It wasn’t hard to experience it at the time, and in retrospect I’m actually enjoying it.
Lao Chai
The train that left Hanoi at 11pm arrived in Lao Chai, a border town, at 7am.
I can’t tell you much about this town, because I had a coffee there and walked 2+ km.
But of course I had adventures during this short time.
The arrival was quick. The train stopped, so I woke up. T-shirt, socks and shoes. And I jumped off the train.
Straight into the arms of the taxi drivers.
It was like Sapa was tattooed on my forehead. Everyone wanted to know where I was going. It’s a good thing that I write a blog and have made my life an open book. That way I don’t have to worry about strangers asking all sorts of questions that can disturb my peace.
Step by step, following.
Let’s just say I was a little surprised that one of the taxi drivers followed me to the bathroom. I hoped he wouldn’t ask me what I was doing there.
As I left the railway building, the second wave of taxi drivers arrived. Heroically – like the officers of the cruiser Potemkin – I fought my way through the crowd.
On the other side of the square in front of the building, I spotted a café. A small group was being served, so I saw that the shop was open despite the early hour.
But not for me. I sat peacefully next to the other group for five minutes. Then I sped across the square again, because now I saw a café there.
The only danger of this zigzagging across the square is that the taxi drivers saw me again.
I got coffee at the other café. I like to get my bearings over coffee. I sometimes try to tell the taxi drivers this, but they don’t care. We could both have a good time. If I sit down and can see where I’m going, check the price, then one of them could take me.
But for some reason they’re usually impatient. I’m not.
The border crossing was 2 km away from me. According to the lady at the cafe, that’s a long distance. I feel lucky that we absolutely disagree on this.
The truth is, if it had been further, I would still have walked.
Because I was finally able to make it happen that I’m entering an Asian country on my own two feet.
Border control
For some reason, I always feel like I’m in a good place when I’m the only Westerner in a huge building, among many, many people. And I don’t think so because of the special attention. The adventure is simply more exciting when I see that others avoid it then and there.
I waited my turn. As a Hungarian – according to the rules in force throughout this year – I can travel to China without a visa. I applied for the visa on arrival, it was on my phone.
I didn’t expect a surprise. I handed over my passport. The surprise came.
The official tried to scan my passport in vain, but the system didn’t want me. After 8-10 attempts, my paper was transferred to the neighboring table. There the scanner loved me.
The process continued with the taking of four electronic fingerprints of the right hand, then the left hand, and then the thumbs. Then looking into the camera, suppressing a stupid grin, wondering if I could ask for my retina image, because they were definitely recording that too.
Along with suppressing the stupid grin, I managed to be stupid again, but now I’ve learned that I won’t do it that way again. When the border guard asked me how long I wanted to be in China, I told him the truth.
Namely, that I had no idea. In such cases, it’s not the eyebrows that jump to the top of my head that are the most worrying. It’s the fact that this information is immediately shared among themselves. I thought I could feel the tension between the truthfulness of my sentence and the mini consultation analyzing its consequences.
But in the end, they decided that it was an acceptable answer. The seal clicked and it said: “All right sir! Welcome to China!”
I admit, I was moved by these words. After all, it was just a childhood dream. I’m here. I’m in China. This sentence is packed with characters of happiness.
Tsunami of problems
The few hours after arrival were quite fun because of the set of problems I had to overcome when crossing the border.
China – at first – is a real hardcore terrain.
I wrote just the other day that after 10 months I considered myself experienced.
Well, here came the real test of whether the digital nomad life is for me or not?
Payment
People in China don’t pay with credit cards. They use AliPay or WeChat. Both work with QR codes. Even the smallest street vendor has their own QR code, so if I want to buy a coffee, I don’t need cash, just my phone.
There are several ways to pay
- I scan the QR code with my phone, then enter how much I’m paying in the field that appears (the amount the seller says), approve it and show him my phone so he can see that we’re okay. About half of the sellers use loudspeakers, in which case I don’t have to show that I paid, because the loudspeaker shouts over the noise of the street with the volume of a ship’s horn that I paid six Yuan. I almost had a heart attack a couple of times over the course of a few days because of the ear canal-killing loudspeakers placed behind the vase…
- I scan the QR code and it also contains the amount, I can’t change it. This is a less common method, because here you would need a code for each amount. The first method is much more flexible.
- In the store, the scanner next to the cash register reads my QR code and immediately deducts the amount.
In summary, this cashless payment method is a pretty useful little invention. No scanner needed, no internet needed. The little vendor puts his code on a sticker and that’s it. Then he checks the bills at home.
Leaving the huge building of the border post, about 200 meters away, I saw a street coffee shop.
I explained to the young guy that I wanted to have a coffee with him. But I’ve never used AliPay before, I’d pay first, then drink. Sure, sure, he said. Let me sit down. And he would have made the coffee. I love this kindness.
But I stopped him. Pay first.
I already had the app on my phone. I still couldn’t pay with it. On the other hand, I sweated for half an hour to try it. The guy was really nice. He brought me an iced tea, I was his guest. He must have seen that I was sweating terribly from all the attempts.
A few hours later, I solved this payment problem.
This system is atomic. After it was installed on my phone, I confirmed that the phone was mine with an SMS. After I linked my bank card to the app, I confirmed that the bank account was mine with a bank authorization.
My face still had to be validated before I could use the app. This is what it looks like in the following picture. I had to scan my passport – which of course the system processed immediately – and then show my face to the camera. But not just by hearing it. You can’t bypass the system, because while the camera is watching, it tells you what to do to make sure the recording is live. For example, I had to hold my right ear while looking at the camera.
You understand this system, right?
From now on, if I buy a carrot at the market, I will do it by showing my passport. I don’t mind this control, but it’s good to know about it.
I couldn’t get the other app to work because it simply wouldn’t send the SMS, and wouldn’t let me continue without it.
Luckily, I had 100 Yuan (CNY). That’s exactly 4,500 HUF, or 14.5 USD.
The story of this unfolded before I crossed the border.
I had to fight an army of taxi drivers near the railway station. After they saw that I was foolishly walking the terrifying two-kilometer distance, they gave up on me.
As I approached the border, another attack came!
Someone jumped in front of me, clutching a huge wad of money and muttering the mantra “change, change”.
I drove everyone away with a smile.
Then, when I sat down for one last Vietnamese breakfast – thinking I didn’t know when I would have the chance to eat in China again – I bought 100 from the guy selling the food after he told me how much it was and I checked the exchange rate. This method always works. Sit down, gather information, check, decide.
So I had some cash with me, but I didn’t need it for now, because the tea was a gift.
Mobile network
I have been using an eSIM provider called JatPac since I have been living in Asia. I have been completely satisfied with it for 9 months.
Then it simply did not work in Ninh Binh. So I lived without my own mobile network for almost three weeks.
Two days before arriving in China, I changed the provider to Saily. It worked perfectly in Ninh-Binh as well.
As I crossed the border, I was pleased to see that my internet was not interrupted.
The unpleasant attempts to revive the payment system brought me two realizations. One is that I would rather lick cactus than try to make a non-functional eSIM system work. The other is that my internet only worked because my Vietnamese eSIM package was using the Vietnamese network.
After the necessary restart of the phone, the Chinese package was on the Chinese network. Well, that did not work.
The solution was simple. I switched back to the Vietnamese network and – voila – everything works. Just to give you an idea, such a switch takes about 1 minute, so if I have to do it five or ten times in a row, then I start thinking about the cactus.
Anyway, the solution was there. Let’s go to some accommodation.
Yeah, I was wrong. As I walked 100-200 meters away from the Red River, the natural border between the two countries, the Vietnamese network gave up its soul. The Chinese one hadn’t come to life yet, had it?
So there I was, standing without internet in a Chinese city.
Where most people don’t speak a word of English. Here, you can interpret not a word quite strictly!
Accommodation
However, it almost doesn’t matter whether I have internet or not.
I didn’t find the accommodation using the internet.
Agoda, Booking, HostelWorld, etc. apps are dead. At least for this city. For example, Booking doesn’t return any results. Agoda does. Only for the town of the same name, which is 2,000 km away.
I almost booked the first good-priced room on Agoda. Luckily, I checked the map to see how far I had to walk from where I was. When I saw that it was 2,000+ km… Well, I like adventures and challenges, but not on this scale.
Google is not the state system in China. I was actually trying to make a funny point that there is no big Google life in China. That’s why I can zoom in on the map as much as I want. Google shows dozens of accommodations on the south bank of the river (Vietnam), and almost nothing on the north bank (China).
Whatever, I thought, I’ll walk around and see something, then go in, book it, pay for it… Oh, I don’t have anything to pay for now. I’ll think of something else, I thought.
I walk down the street and find a place to stay. At first, it seemed like a good plan. It soon turned out to be a virgin idea wrapped in pink mist. Everything is written in Chinese. So my chances of reading it were practically zero.
Most hotels look exactly like a bank, a shop, or a restaurant from the outside. It’s as if everyone had switched to incognito mode.
The point is, I found only one hotel at first, and as I suspected, I didn’t find a hostel afterwards. This hotel cost 8,000 HUF (26 USD) a night. I didn’t want to spend that much, but I had no other option.
And then back to the question of no internet, no cash. Luckily the hotel reception had internet, so I was able to pay for the room.
I will come back to the accommodation, because if you have the feeling that we are at the happy end regarding the room, then I ask you to forget about it now!
Hotel internet
The internet worked perfectly on the seventh floor of the hotel.
Except for one thing! Google…
It just won’t start.
I first experienced this in Laos. My first thought was “well, then I won’t listen to Youtube music.”
Then other connections quickly came, and here in China it became a pretty depressing reality.
I can’t listen to music. I can’t see my emails. I don’t have a map. There’s no search engine I can use. ChatGPT doesn’t work. And, to make matters worse, the captcha service doesn’t work either. And this is a basic objection to many functioning sites, so a bunch of websites can’t be accessed with one click.
So, this is no joke.
You have to use a VPN. And for some reason, it starts up worryingly slowly. I even had to joke about the fact that I wasn’t connecting to a Hungarian server with it, but to a German one, for example. This game just increases the excitement. Can I work or not?
The visa issue
After I had my chosen accommodation offline, turned on the VPN and had the right infrastructure, it was time to start applying for a Vietnamese visa.
I came to Vietnam 45 days ago with the idea that I would stay in the country with a free visa valid for 45 days and then move on. However, in the meantime, I realized that this country is much more beautiful and much bigger than just spending 45 days here.
However, you can’t apply for a visa while you are in the country. That’s why I had to come over to China. I arrived in this city with the idea that I would stay until I got the visa. If it’s beautiful and worth it, I would stay a maximum of two weeks, but I didn’t have to decide that in advance.
In any case, it wouldn’t hurt to have a valid visa as soon as possible.
I searched for it on the already working Google (isn’t it strange that I have to emphasize this separately?) and started filling out the form.
The visa application processing time is 2-3 working days and the cost is 25 USD.
I have already gone through 5-6 visa application processes. My experience so far has shown that it is never an easy feat. Now, too, the point has come when I did not understand what they want from me.
There could be two reasons for this. Either the English term they use is not entirely correct, or the question is really incomprehensible.
I can handle small things like where I will live as a routine. Now I said that I am from Tam Coc, and asked the AI to help me select the region, district, area, city series so that I can fill in the relevant part.
They have never asked me how much I want to spend in the country. Expressed in USD. Nor what religion I was. What could I have said to that, for example? Atheist? Or a non-dualist Buddhist philosopher? Or a follower of my own religion? In the end, I chose safety and declared myself a Christian.
I was confident that if they were seriously interested in the question, I wouldn’t have to explain the OM tattoo on the back of my hand. LOL.
Then, during the application process, I reached a point where it was not clear what they wanted from me. The AI gave the answer, but drew my attention to the fact that I was not on the official visa application site. Let me see how much more they ask at the end of the process.
Soon, I found myself with only the payment left. The bill would have been 200 USD. Instead of 25. If I ask for an expedited process, they will process it the next day in 2-3 business days. For +50 USD.
Great!
I left this site and went to the official one. It was down due to a server error. Neither was the backup site.
So at that moment I was stuck, unable to start applying for my visa.
But at least I had time to deal with my mobile internet problem. First, I went through a half-hour troubleshooting and repair process with the help of AI. At the end of this, we decided to contact the service provider’s support. There, I went through the same half-hour process of sending a screenshot, replying, and moving on again, only this time with the help of a human.
An hour later, my mobile internet was working. By then, the government website for applying for a visa had been fixed.
I submitted my application around 2:00 PM on Wednesday. I was hoping to get a response by Friday.
Finding another place to stay
Since this room cost more than I wanted to pay for it, I tried to find another one the next day while working and sightseeing, but finally gave up and ended up staying another night in this hotel.
Finally, on Friday morning, I found another hotel.
Since I had to leave the room by 1:30 PM and I hadn’t received a response to my visa application, I had to wait longer.
With a Google search (not through the hotel search engines!) I finally found the Garden Hotel. And the option of how to book a room there.
The only strange thing was that the hotel was on the map in a part of the city where there were no roads leading to it according to the map. Anyway, I thought, I’ll book the room and then I’ll get there somehow.
This “getting there somehow” became another story.
I left the hotel and hit the street. The map suggested a detour. The problem with this suggestion was that I would have had to swim to the other side of the Red River and then back a little later. Even if I had felt like swimming for a while with two backpacks, I wouldn’t have been able to do it, because the other side of the river is Vietnam. I don’t think they would have welcomed me with applause when I got out of the river. Especially since I didn’t have a visa.
My idea was to go as far as there was a road on the map, and then just find some path that would take me to the destination. Although, at that moment, I remembered thinking the same thing in Laos. And then I ended up – literally – in the jungle.
My initial enthusiasm was broken after 200 meters. When I turned the corner, it turned out that there were two paths leading further. One to a courtyard surrounded by a fence. The other up a large hill in the opposite direction.
I went into Winnie the Pooh mode and started to think about it.
Then the taxi driver appeared! For once, when I really needed him. I showed him the hotel on the map. I saw the joy in his eyes that he had a passenger, but this joy was not accompanied by the light of recognition. There was a sense of confusion in the air.
Anyway, he told me to get in and continue the discussion. He pointed to the map, furrowed his eyebrows, and explained frantically in Chinese. I stared blankly at his map, sighed, and explained frantically that I only spoke English.
He asked a few times “should we go in that direction” and pointed ahead down the street, and I told him several times that since I didn’t know what he was asking, I couldn’t say yes or no. He should know the direction, not me.
I could already feel that this idea was also turning into a hazy swan song. I thought that the taxi driver would take me to the hotel, and from there I would know the way. It was not part of the plan that he would not know either.
After five minutes, the car finally started, although this action did not bring me any relief at all. I was sure that despite the long consultation, the driver had no idea where we were going.
My feeling, based on my precise observation of the situation, was correct, because after a few hundred meters, he stopped and we held our second crisis analysis activity.
Here I finally found out what the problem was. I never thought it would be so simple. But at least I gained another experience. The driver reluctantly admitted that he didn’t understand what was written on the map.
I told him that many people don’t speak a word of English. But I didn’t even think that they couldn’t read Latin letters…
After the phrase Garden Hotel appeared on my screen in Chinese characters, a miracle happened: the driver’s eyes lit up!
He turned around and stopped at his destination after 200 meters. It turned out that the second hotel was about 800 meters from the first, but its actual location had nothing to do with the location indicated on Google Maps. It was in the opposite direction…
In a few moments I took my room on the sixth floor. There was no elevator here, the corridor was narrow. And from the fourth floor on, there was no lighting in the completely dark staircase. It was an experience to go up in the pitch darkness.
My room was nice. It would have met all my criteria if I had such criteria. A double bed, a dressing table on the wall, a water-heating sink and a private bathroom. And of course, working internet.
However, there were other serious problems with this working internet. It dropped the VPN from the network after a minute. So it quickly became clear that the experience was not complete. It was like sitting in a Michelin-starred restaurant all day, except that I couldn’t order food.
From then on, I was forced to use my eSim service for three days.
In a normal place, a 3GB internet package is enough for an entire month. Here, I used 3GB every day. By monitoring the traffic. The never-spoken question arose in my mind: what was my computer doing in the background to use up so much data.
I did some mental math. I didn’t want to pay 8,000 HUF (26 USD) per night for the room, so I changed my accommodation to a room of a different category. Here I paid 3,000 HUF (10 USD) per night. However, I paid 3,300 HUF (11 USD) extra every day for the internet. In other words, instead of 8,000 HUF (26 USD), it came to 6,300 HUF (21 USD) per day. I saved 1,700 HUF (5 USD) per day.
That’s probably how much the elevator and the breakfast at the other hotel would have been worth.
Oh well! It’s easy to be smart in hindsight.
Enough of the technical difficulties!
I think so, I have written enough about the problems I found myself facing in China.
Now comes the part about what such a city is like.
I will answer this very simply now, and I will show you what I think from two different perspectives.
I will start with my former self, because after that the picture of the present will be different.
Hekou is a very clean, orderly city. (Of course, I have been to streets further away, so not everywhere!) Streets arranged like a chessboard, clean as a pharmacy. Lots of street vendors, restaurants, shops everywhere. Luxury stores and normal stores.
Lots of lights, lanterns, neon in the evenings.
And there is nothing interesting or special here.
Apart from the tall buildings and everyday utilities, I did not really discover anything else.
If I arrive with an eye for sights, then it is time to leave the next day.
A boring little town.
My eyes today, of course, see differently.
A miracle at every step.
But these miracles are not there because the city was built for this.
They are there because I created them for myself.
So I won’t start telling you now how I saw happiness in the eyes of older women rehearsing a dance in the square.
How I was able to enjoy a coffee. How I didn’t just film the 10 minutes until every drop of it dripped into my glass, but also watched every single drop.
The smiles of the little children who were happy for me were an experience.
It was a joy to keep my boundaries with those who didn’t approach me with due respect.
But once again!
These miracles are already growing inside me, it doesn’t matter where I get their seeds.
Goodbye!
I left China on Tuesday.
My Vietnamese visa arrived on Monday afternoon around 4:00 PM. I had already paid for the night that day. And although I briefly considered leaving the country immediately, I quickly decided against it.
I headed to the border early on Tuesday morning.
On the Chinese side, they asked me a lot of questions, starting with one of the border guards already in line.
His colleague at the counter continued. How many days have I been here? I tried not to mess up my mental calculations, lest I fail here. After all, he needed to know exactly how long I had been here.
Do I have a visa for Vietnam? I said yes. Then please show me. He was right. If it is not valid, the Vietnamese will send me back and then he will have to work twice. He accepted the visa.
By the way, it was the same border guard who let me into the country. Now he said goodbye to me like this:
“Good luck, sir!”
I am grateful that my life has turned out in such a way that I was able to see China. A tiny piece of it.
Next time I will go further and visit other places.
I stood in line on the Vietnamese side. From there, they pulled me aside and then led me away.
A border guard came to pick me up and took me to a small office. There was nothing threatening about it, it was just an extra check.
He offered me a seat, asked me a few questions. He gave me a glass of water. He smiled and was nice the whole time. But for some reason it took a long time for them to make sure that my visa was valid.
Finally, he took me back to the line, where the previous border guard checked everything again.
Finally, I was able to enter Vietnam.
Here I said to myself, “Welcome back!”
Leaving the building, we started the same process, only in the other direction.
The same faces, now waiting with cries of “change, change, taxi, taxi”.
I turned everyone down.
I walked 1 km further. I sat there and figured out how to continue.
Within 10 minutes, I booked a room in the nearby Sapa area, ordered a taxi.
After 12 minutes, I got into the taxi and slept through the 20 km, 1 hour journey that awaited me.
I am writing these lines in Sapa. The continuation will come soon.
In the meantime, a little spoiler:
Ninh-Binh was beautiful.
Sapa is beautiful on the square.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
Linktree
Short introduction