First of all, I wanted to let everyone know that I have made it to Vietnam safe and sound! I ended up meeting up with my Italian friend in Kunming and hopped a night bus to Hekou on the Vietnam/China border. We had exchanged messages when I was still in Dali and he purchased the bus ticket for me. I literally had 30 minutes between exiting one bus and catching the other; I had to run to another station (lucky for me, it was the right one and only a couple blocks away, and I was especially lucky since there are 4 stations only a couple blocks away from each other).
The bus ride from Kunming could not have been any more, well, rough and sleepless. Sleeper buses are not always the best, and after yelling for a couple minutes in Chinese that one was my seat and that I would not sleep at the back in a 5 person bed with random Chinese (because afterall, it was not my seat), I was finally in rest mode. At least, that's what I thought. The bus driver said to me as I got on hao kan nide dongxi... which means good look your things... aka people are going to try and steal your stuff. My rusty Italian allowed me to eek out a warning to Alfonso about watching his things during night. Alfonso had already met the Dutch couple that joined us on the bus, both of them would later become our travel partners to Sapa.
The bus stopped maybe 8 times all together for the occasional repair, dropping off construction materials, the driver's proper dinner, and all sorts of other things I couldn't really figure out. The most surprising this is that the bus was still on-time, meaning that they knew how long each of the stops would take. But in the end we made it and the border was only 5 blocks away from the bus station (extremely easy to walk to, don't listen to what anyone tells you). [Head right from the bus station and walk towards the river]. I think the border crossing is much easier going from China into Vietnam and in the wee hours of the morning. We were there at 8:30 AM (Vietnam time, China is an hour behind since there is only one time zone for the extremely large country), and we slipped through without a second glance. I thought maybe as an American that I would encounter some hostility, but there was none. There were tons of Vietnamese crossing over into China, perhaps for the start of their work day and the others seemed to have cheap wares to sell.
Random tip: Don't exchange money at the border (Yuan into Dong or US Dollars at all). There will be plenty of places to buy your money. I get the feeling that Yuan is heavily demanded as people almost fought each other to exchange with us. US Dollars are preferred to Dong, most prices are even quoted in USD first. Always ask the exchange rate, if you can't haggle the price, then try to haggle the exchange rate.
I managed to avoid all hassle with my visa for China being so extremely close to expiration and move on to the next country, while finding a travel mate in the process. Life is good and I feel fortunate to keep finding such luck. I hope every0ne is enjoying their summer at home. I hope to be able to post pictures again soon, good internet access is hard to find for long periods and on computers without viruses...
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