How to…travel from China to Laos overland

Mohan is the only border crossing from China to Laos. There are a number of ways to get there and once you do the procedure is simple as long as you have dollars and long arms.

We took the 15 hour night bus from Dali to Jinghong [180 yuan]. Buses also depart for Jinghong from Lijiang and Kunming. From Jinghong it is an easy three hour bus journey to Mengla [35 yuan] where we had to spend the night to take the morning bus to Luang Prabang, Laos. There is one bus daily that leaves at 7.50am and takes a good 12 hours including immigration and customs time [98 yuan]. It is a sleeper bus so has beds for lounging, not seats; rather a luxurious way to travel when you don’t need to sleep. Buses also depart from Kunming to Luang Prabang and Vientiane.

The bus stops at Mohan, the last town in China before Laos, where everyone disembarks and you walk 100 metres down the road to the immigration queue. Hand is your China departure card and get an exit stamp. You then have to wait to get back on the bus while Chinese customs search under the beds, open people’s boxes and shake coconuts. Then you drive on to Laos.
Three minutes later you get off at Boten, the first town in Laos after China. You can buy your Laos visa upon arrival. Go to the window with the blue sign reading ‘Visa arrival unit’ to fill in a form, and hand over a passport photo, your passport and $35 dollars. You are then given your Laos visa (30 days for Brits).

Next you need to get your arrival stamp. Go to the next window on the left and fill in an arrival form. Take it to the window with the red ’Check in’ sign and join the scrum. Most people going into Laos are Chinese so the Chinese queuing system applies. Sharpen your elbows and wade in. Thrust your passport and form through the window and keep pushing until an official takes it and stamps it. Then you can get back on the bus. For another ten minutes.

Laotian customs follow and depending on what your fellow passengers are carrying this can take some time, an hour or more. Our coach contained boxes of chillies, bags of rice and flour and a sack of cabbages. Why would you take rice and cabbages to Laos?

Finally on the road for the nine hour bus potholing experience and the scenery starts to change. It gets warmer, there are more banana plants and concrete box buildings are replaced by thatch huts on stilts. It starts to feel very tropical and remote. There are noticeably more children in Laos than China and an abundance of potbellied pigs that decrease in number as you head south. Women wear sarongs, not trousers and there is a lot more mud and dust. It is the most extraordinary way to enter a country and was quite a surprise when we terminated in the French style backpacker oasis of Luang Prabang during their Ork Phansa and Lai Hena Fai (end of Buddhist lent and end of rains) Festival. Talk about arriving with a bang!

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Turning to the bottle?

“We should get some plastic bottles to wee into”.

It wasn’t a typical suggestion from Lara. But then, we weren't in a typical situation.

We found ourselves crammed in with 30 other Chinese people on a sleeper bus down to the south of Yunnan province.

Catching the bus at Dali, we found the bus almost full. The choice of beds was thus limited…to the very beds any traveller wishes to avoid on China rudimentary rural roads - those right at the back.

Squeezed into our five-foot berths, clutching our bags tightly to our persons, we weren’t exactly eagerly anticipating this journey. 15 hours, through the night, on a bus reeking of BO and full of scary-looking types. Oh and with no toilet on board.

We had been warned about these buses: ripe for thieves; poor safety records; drivers popping funny-looking pills to keep themselves awake.

Perhaps we should have headed back to Kunming rather than attempt this shortcut, skirting along the edge of the Burmese border all the way down to Xishuangbanna in the tropical south of Yunnan.

A tubby chap in front of us didn’t seem to share our concerns. He yawned, scratched his crotch and smoothed his whispy moustache, a soup-strainer teasing the corners of his mouth.

Tubby wore the usual attire of polyester jogging bottoms, a worn-out t-shirt and pungent nylon socks. No wonder the bus stank.

After an hour and a half on the road, the driver turned off and steered his vehicle into a dusty yard. On opposite sides dirty fuel tankers were lined up. A couple of mangy dogs drifted about in front of them, sniffing each others’ behinds.

At one end I could make out what looked like a public lavatory, at the other a chap in a old cream suit and spotty tie implored this new batch of potential customers to savour the delights of his dingy restaurant.

I plumped for the WC. I soon wished I hadn’t. A stygian nightmare of a place.

Stepping inside I was almost overpowered by the reek of a thousand digested stir fries.

Beneath bare bulbs a line of grunting men squatted, their behinds clearly visible to all for each ‘cubicle’ consisted of a low wall, minus door. Above an overspilling trench, which had clearly long since had a good flush through, they crouched, shouting to their mates and even smoking cigarettes.

I desperately searched for a free, and perhaps slightly sanitary spot and made my leave as soon as possible. Back on earth’s surface I staggered out into the yard, gulping in air like an asphyxiated asthmatic.

Walking over into the half-light of the restaurant entrance, I came across Tubby and his wife. He stood proud, his legs far apart and hands on his hips, making half-hearted stretches and fully-committed guttural sounds.

Tubby’s copious burps rattled the windows, his hocking-up rocked the ground. The earth nicely coated in his spittle he raised his t-shirt and patted his rotund midriff contentedly.

At last, when he had run out of cigarettes our driver reappeared and squeezed into his seat behind the wheel. We were back on the road.

Many passengers chose to eschew the charms of Jackie Chan on the temperamental on-board televisions and got down to the serious business of sleeping. We did similar. Or tried to. A good night’s kip on this night bus soon proved to be rather elusive.

The road conditions were atrocious, with more bumps than flat. And our driver seemed to have a taste for offroading. Indeed, speeding through the mountains, I wonder whether our bus touched asphalt at all during that long, long night.

Lying in my prime anti-gravitational positions at the back of the bus I seemed to spend more of the time in mid-air than on my bunk.

Whilst Lara had wisely found a belt of some sort with which she managed to strap herself firmly to her berth I contented myself with shooting up into the air at every bump. Crashing back down onto my bunk I winced with the impact

Sleep, or at least more than the odd doze, was impossible. Instead, in between the snatched periods of semi-conciousness, I grasped the handrails and admired the landscape, bathed in the light of the full moon.

The road intermittently followed the course of the Lancang River, destined to become the mighty Mekong at the Laotian border.

Having already come across this river, on the fringes of the Tibetan plateau, this river will soon become an old acquaintance, as we follow it, on and off in the next few weeks, through Laos, along the border with Thailand, across Cambodia and down into Vietnam, where it finally empties into the sea, chanelled through the Mekong Delta.

Leaving the river behind for now, through my sleep-deprived haze I watched the mountains of the north gave way to smooth green hills, decked with rice terraces and rubber plantations, interspersed by banana plantations and the odd remote village.

We had crossed the tropic of Cancer.

By first light the scenery was decidedly tropical and I was decidedly disoriented as we pulled into our destination, Jinhong, a staging post for our journey down into Laos.

Still, mustn't complain: at least I didn't need to turn to the bottle.

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How to…travel around China

With an area of nearly 10 million square kilometres and a population of over a billion, a good public transport system is essential to China. We have been surprised and relieved at how easy it has been to get around.

Trains
Travelling by train in China is the best way to see the bits in between; the real life away from the sights and cities. However, catching a train is manic and buying a ticket a trial. It’s a very Chinese experience.

You can only buy tickets from the city you are departing from. In Shanghai main station this is at window 43 and in Beijing main station it’s at the window labelled ’foreigners’. You can also buy tickets at ticket booking offices in town or from your hostel, for a small commission. Staff at train stations rarely speak English so get a local (such as hostel staff) to write down your destination and desired class of travel in Chinese before you go. You can find train routes and timetables at http://www.chinatripadvisor.com/ or http://www.china-train-ticket.com/.

There are five classes of train travel: soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, standing. The quality of each depends on the age of the train. The Z trains are the best, with T and D being the next best. We went for soft sleeper on a Z train, or should I say hotel on tracks, from Shanghai to Beijing. We were sharing with Mr Chair and a woman who’s husband lived in Shanghai (she lived in Beijing), in an air conditioned berth with clean, crisp sheets, duvets, towels and two pillows each. You are given complimentary slippers (useful in the rather sloppy toilet) and a flask of boiling water to make tea and pot noodles [475yuan, 12 hours]. From Beijing to Xi’an we took another Z but this time an older model and only managed to get beds in a hard sleeper carriage. It’s not called hard because the beds are hard (they’re not) but because it is hard to sleep. You are squeezed in with five others in a cabin that doesn’t have a door. Not great for security or slumber. Only one pillow this time and no slippers, but the flask of boiling water remains. Our third and final train was a K from Xi‘an to Kunming. Steam engines may have gone out in 2000, but the rest of this train was pure 80’s. We were in soft sleeper with one pillow, no towel or slippers and a lot of Trans-Siberian Railway style chintz. The problem wasn’t so much the cabin as the brakes. This wasn’t a hotel but more of a chicken shed on wheels. To slow down or stop the brakes would be suddenly clamped on lurching everyone forward. In my disturbed sleep I imagined us dropping off a cliff. That said, this was the best journey of them all. Forty two hours watching China change as we headed north to south. We passed people ploughing paddy fields with water buffalo, men smoking skinny pipes on the stoop, tiny coal mines, smoky factories and deep limestone ravines eaten away by jade rivers. Further south women were carrying pails of water on yoke sticks, farmers harvested corn in the fields and set the chaff ablaze into the night sky. There are so many people here to watch and as Paul Theroux noted ‘a hill is not a hill in China, it is a vertical way of growing rice.’

Soft seats are normally recliners, hard seats are wooden benches and if you can’t get anything else you can buy a ticket to stand in the hard seat carriage. Upgrading looked to be an easy process. On our journey from Xi’an to Kunming most of the train disembarked at Chongching giving us the cabin to ourselves. A stroll down the train to an empty bed you fancy and a chat with the carriage attendant should enable you to upgrade.

There is reams of information on how to prepare for the Trans Siberian Railway but very little on the Chinese Railways. So, bring toilet paper, soap, food and drink. Hot water is available for tea and noodles and a food cart is wheeled up the corridors regularly selling meals and snacks. The meals are good. In hard sleeper cabins there is only one light so take a torch to read and ear plugs and an eye mask to block out the light and piped music, which starts early.

When catching your train leave plenty of time get to the station (city transport and roads are unpredictable) and to go through the departure procedure. Allow 30 minutes to an hour before boarding time to put your bags through security scanners and to work out where to go in the gargantuan train stations. The neon board will give the departure lounge number for your train. From here you will be told thirty minutes before departure which platform you need and then the scrum beings. This is a remarkable and unforgettably Chinese experience. A trainfull of passengers all pushing, shoving and elbowing their way to their carriage so that they can be the first on the train. The scrum is all over in ten minutes and then you can leisurely stroll on and find your berth. I don’t understand the rush, all tickets are numbered. Once the train has departed the carriage attendant will swap your ticket for a plastic card. She will then wake you up an hour before arrival to swap it back again. Another unfathomable feature of train travel in China.

Buses
Where there are no trains there are buses. Big ones, small ones, express ones and sleeper ones. During our limited travels in Yunnan province, the roads were pretty good and the buses frequent and adequate. Turn up at the station on the day of travel to buy your ticket. The sleeper bus is a new phenomenon to me - beds instead of seats on a bus. It’s not as bad as I thought although I offer the following tips:
*Board at the point of origin and arrive early to get seats at the front of the bus (minimises the impact of bumps) by a window (for views and to control air flow);
*Take a pillowcase or T-shirt to put over the pillow. The mattress and bedding are filthy;
*Use the seatbelt. It’s the only way to stop yourself being propelled into the air over every bump (we were at the back). I fastened it tight around my waist and arms and slept on my back;
*Use the duvet as a pillow/padding to prevent your head being bashed against the sides when cornering; and
*Don’t drink very much. The bus has no toilet but does make occasional stops.
As a bonus on the bigger buses and journeys over 3 hours you will normally be treated to a film that features at least three kung-fu sequences.

Around town
Beijing and Shanghai have excellent, if not heaving, underground networks. City buses are slow but to the point and can be packed to a rib crushing density. Taxis are affordable, but of course, bike is best.

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