Provided you are eligible for a Vietnamese visa, you can get a same-day Vietnamese visa at Hekou 河口, the Chinese border crossing with Vietnam’s Lào Cai 老街 (allowing access Hanoi by train or to Sapa by bus). It is easy and quick, although possibly not entirely legal. Below is how you do it, why to do it and what the risks are.
This section from Hekou to Sa Pa is the tenth instalment of my bicycle ride from Yunnan to Cambodia – if all goes according to plan. Titled “Slap the Belgian!”, it is simultaneously published on Crazyguyonabike.com, where you’ll find a map with the itinerary and many other bicycle diaries by me and others. I hope you’ll enjoy.
I’d submitted my passport to the Hekou visa office at 9 am, hoping that it’d be ready in a few hours. Unfortunately, I learn that I can pick up my visa by 6.30 pm. It seems the best thing to do is get into the visa office before 4 pm on any weekday. That way you can be across the border by 7 pm the same day. Price is 450 RMB if you’re handsome, and 500 RMB otherwise – according to the giggling girls running the business. Bah. Another day at Hekou, it’s starting to get on my nerves.
I spend the day slowly – Yunnan style – walking around town, ignoring attempts by pompous Chinese trying to make conversation in abominable English. The hours tick away slowly. A visit to the Hekou uprising museum and trying to decode the text kills a few of them. The museum is actually quite interesting if you can read what it says (no English, although the titles are in Pinyin, as if that helps anyone). There are quite a few interesting pictures and maps from middle nineteenth to the early twentieth century, including the building of the railroad by the French and portraits with biographies of the revolutionaries.
This section about Hekou is the ninth instalment of my bicycle ride from Yunnan to Cambodia – if all goes according to plan. Titled “Slap the Belgian!”, it is simultaneously published on Crazyguyonabike.com, where you’ll find a map with the itinerary and many other bicycle diaries by me and others. I hope you’ll enjoy.
As I arrived just thirty minutes late to get my Vietnam visa done on Friday, I had to wait the entire weekend for official services to resume on the Vietnam side. In a town like Hekou, that’s a bit of a punishment. The town is not really boring, but isn’t interesting enough either to spend three full days in.
Fortunately, two French cyclists (Anaïs and Romain from Toulouse on their trip from France to Thailand) made the boredom bearable. It’s fun to listen to their descriptions of the cultures they’ve encountered and they kindle in me the desire to ride around Turkey and Iran some time. At the same time they remind me of how difficult it is to enjoy China without speaking any Chinese and on how much great food you miss out if you don’t know where to find it.
The riverside juice shop I used to go to has a new owner now and there’s no more Vietnamese ice coffee, which is a bummer, but the Vietnamese coffee on Vietnam street is still great – even though they get the coffee out of a bottle rather than making it fresh. There are also Banh mi stands (like French baguettes with pâté and veggies and eggs), a refreshing novelty in this town.
This section from Manhao to Hekou is the eighth instalment of my bicycle ride from Yunnan to Cambodia – if all goes according to plan. Titled “Slap the Belgian!”, it is simultaneously published on Crazyguyonabike.com, where you’ll find a map with the itinerary and many other bicycle diaries by me and others. I hope you’ll enjoy.
It’s only 9pm and the Chinese are already on my nerves. I’m sitting at a communal tofu grill, shovelling down a quick bowl of mixian. Around me, it’s raining prejudice. I’ve never heard a Chinese person say anything bad about me or other foreigners, mind, even if they’re unaware of the fact that I can understand them. But the prejudice is just outrageous. “Oooh don’t put peppers, they don’t eat peppers,” a woman next to me says to the cook. “Woah, this one can use chopsticks,” says another. A passer-by urges her kids to say “hello” to the foreigner. And then there’s always know-all who feels the need to explain to the whole group that we only eat bread and steak.
I finish my bowl, pay the bill and tell them in my best Yunnan dialect that we eat rice every day – and meat only on holidays. A blatant lie, but that’ll teach him to be a wise guy. It has no effect: “ooooh this one speaks Chinese. Exchange student, right?” I grunt a goodbye and make for the town gate. (more…)