The JaYmes Escape

“Hello, Where are you from”, asks the young Chinese lad. Anyone who’s visited this country will know that this question isn’t exactly uncommon, and after a few days is usually rudely ignored as it’s often the prelude to some kind of sales pitch. Still, the boy is young and I’m in the Oriental Pearl Tower, which seems to be a magnet for earnest out-of-town Chinese tourists. One wonders how long they have to save for a trip to Shanghai and up the tower, which in itself costs Y135 (£9 or US$18).

“England”, I reply, and as this is met with blank stares from the child and his mother, “Ying-gwor. London.”, and I gesture the nods of understanding behind me to a large picture of Tower Bridge. The building at the foot of the tower contains a number of these illuminated images; they include Red Square, The Niagra Falls, Sydney Harbour, The Louvre, Mount Fuji and Venice. Having forked out a small fortune to see Shanghai from the top of the tower, wide-eyed Chinese tourists get to take pictures of themselves in front of these large backdrops of world landmarks, which really sums up so much about modern day China.

The boy stares at Tower Bridge for a moment, looks back at me and says, “you’re beautiful”; he’s obviously been listening to too much James Blunt but I can’t help but be moved by the sheer awe he seems to have for my homeland. The mother, simultaneously proud and petrified that her son is conversing with a strange Englishman in a language she doesn’t understand, starts talking. With a smile and a wave he runs up in front of Tower Bridge, spreading his arms for the picture, and I decide to quickly slip away before they ask me to join in.

I’m walking along a meandering alley surrounded by strange eating houses, telephone stalls, street cafes and garishly coloured neon lights. The air is thick with the rich aromas of food preperation and the ever-present waft of excrement. Behind me a rickshaw driver rings his bell trying to pass the crowds; only this isn’t a normal bell, he has bought some ridiculous electronic noise maker which makes a bizarre bleeping sound. Some way in front of me a horn sounds; the rule seems to be that you can drive your vehicle down any of Beijing’s Hutongs you can squeeze it into, provided you hit your horn constantly so that the crowds of pedestrians, bicycles and rickshaws grudgingly make way for you.

I left Hong Kong aboard the very comfortable Beijing express train, which runs the 2000km or so from city to city non-stop in 24 hours. Night fell over the beautiful mountains and lakes of south-central China and I awoke on the other side of the tropic of cancer to see the flat green plains south of the capital. By nightfall I was among the excited kite-flying Chinese tourists of Tiannamen Square posing for my picture in front of Mao’s famous image at the gate of heavenly peace, and my stomach was wondering when I’d get to sample that famous Peking Duck.

“Ice-a water, coke-a”, comes the cry as I approach the tower, “tin yuan”. It’s hot up here in the mountains outside Beijing and hiking for 10km along a mainly runied section of the great wall is a tiring business. I brought as much water as I could carry but the local hawkers are onto a good thing with their ice-a water and coke-a. So much for communism.

“Wuh”, I reply holding up five fingers; this is met with a scowl and some attempt at negotiation, but the woman quickly realises that I’m not going to settle for more than wuh and hands me the can. As I leave the tower I pause to admire the view. The wall stretches away in front of me across the top of the mountains and into the haze. It truly is an incredible sight.

“How much?”, I do a double take at the menu and try to decide if my mental calculation can be correct. I’ve just walked across my sixth border in Asia and my second in as many days, and I’m starting to wonder if it was such a good idea.

I left Hanoi on board a typically packed Vietnamese minibus heading for the border town of Dong Dang, where I walked through the mountain friendship pass straight into the enormous building site that is 21st century China. The paint still looked wet on the walls of the huge and deserted new immigration building as I scribbled my details on the arrival card, and I walked across the mud through the Chinese arch that marked the end of the border zone wondering how the dirty old Vietnamese roads were going to cope with the traffic from the huge new motorway the Chinese seem to be building all the way to the frontier.

A taxi, a bus, an overnight stop in the city of Nanning, an overnight train to Guangzhou, a 90 minute local train to Shenzen and a ten minute walk has brought me finally over the heavily fortified border that is the Shenzen river. I’m tired and just want to sit down for ten minutes with a coffee and a pastry before I take yet another train; from the border to the city, but after 8 weeks in South East Asia paying the equivalent of two pounds for a coffee seems horrendous. In Thailand this could buy a room for the night; it would be five large bottles of Beer Lao or a decent meal in Hanoi.

Some hours later I’m watching the sun set over the city from Victoria Peak and I realise why I came here; there are no major iconic landmarks like Sydney or London but the skyline is strangely familiar, and as the skyscrapers begin to light up under the crimson sky I forget about my grubby overpriced room and the cost of beer. I’m in Hong Kong!

A cacophony of horns continuously sounds as I walk purposefully across the road. Motocycles whizz around me in all directions as I pass a woman in a conical hat balancing two large baskets of tropical fruit across her shoulder on a pole. She catches my eye and gestures towards the fruit hopefully but I shake my head; I’ve just eaten a big plate of beef luc-lac for dinner.

Collections of plastic chairs and stools spill out onto the uneven tarmac as more conical-hatted women pour glasses of Bia Hoi from a pile of kegs on the pavement. A motorcycle arrives with a fresh beer keg balanced on the back, and drives off again with an empty. Apparently this is the cheapest street bar in central Hanoi; a glass of about 330ml costs just 2000d (About 8p or 17c US). Suddenly an open-backed vehicle with red and blue lights pulls up and a man in uniform shouts at the bar in Vietnamese which results in some frantic shouting and plastic stool collecting. It seems that sitting around on the tiny pavement drinking Bia Hoi is fine, but crossing the threshold onto the road is objectionable.

Vietnam has slowly improved for me as the last week has progressed. The first day was a personal apocalypse, after the struggle at the border I ended up spending the night in the wholly unwelcoming city of Vinh. After the relaxed serenity of Laos, Vietnam seemed hot, unfriendly and expensive. I stayed in a crumbling communist-era concrete bunker of a hotel and ate tofu, rice and unidentifiable vegetables with chopsticks and beer before I collapsed in my shabby room through sheer exhaustion from an early start and a long journey. Thankfully things began to improve when I arrived in Hanoi the next day.

“Where the dragon descends into the sea” is the literal translation of “Ha long”, a stunning bay of 2000 islands some 200km east of Hanoi which is undoubtedly one of Vietnam’s top attractions. It is a heavily touristed area with thousands of junks carrying sightseers around the polluted waters day and night, but it is still an incredibly beautiful sight.

The wonderful people at the British embassy had my new passport ready in no time at all so I’ll be heading eastwards into China shortly. Over in the gallery, the Laos album is now complete.