Day 54 Yuanyang to Lao Cai, Vietnam

On the move today, our hotel here may have had some interesting dinners but we loved breakfast pancakes, french toast,egg and coffee so much that we stayed for it and missed the public bus back to Xinjie. Not to worry though we flagged one of the many minibuses(the tiny vans) heading that way full of women dressed in the traditional clothes going to work with their baskets.
We had read the bus from Xinjie to the Chinese border town of Hekou could take 4hours and could take 7 hours depending on collections and drop offs. We had planned for the 7 hours that ours took and it was fine. A small bus wasn't fun back down the mountain, it was so rough also on the way up, but from there on we drove along the river side for the last 3 hours while the nice 4 lane highway was above us. We passed a couple of police check points which was funny to watch the couple of people without a seat get off the bus and walk through while we waited, then went through and collected them again round the corner obviously avoiding fines for overloading the bus. Then the military check points where ID was checked for most and our passport details recorded.
During the 1st hour the bus was very packed and a couple had a new cabinet inside with them(see pic) which latter got tied to the roof. This couple were dropped in a tiny village of 20 makeshift wooden houses put together with scraps of wood and sticks and a few roofing sheets. This was common for a few villages we past in what was a very tropical area with the river and endless banana trees all with bags over the fruit.

At Hekou we had our 1st too good to be true moment, a taxi driver who was so keen to take us he phoned a translator who explained where we needed to go and we got what we thought was a cheap/painless ride to the border. On exiting the cab a shop assistant wanting to exchange money showed the direction of the border crossing and on further checks turned out to give a decent exchange rate too for the little money we had left.
The crossing was painless and thankfully we didn't have our lonely planet china book taken as reported(Due to Taiwan shown as a separate country).
In Vietnam the in your face sales technique typical to these more touristy countries was instant as Rachel was swarmed while I was still getting my passport stamped, we got an oversized electric golf car to the train station, where we discovered our cash wasn't getting us to Hanoi.
I sat on the back of a bike after what seemed like an endless price argument to get back in to town to an ATM that worked. We got a soft sleeper bunk on the train for the night leaving at 7:30pm, which gave us time to sit have dinner in a cafe and discover Facebook is blocked here too but not blogger so I have functions back and can see again what countries are reading about our trip, Ireland is way out in front with the most 'hits'.