Vietnam to China

Talk about all day on the bus. An epiphany -- never join a tour that requires a change of hotel everynight and spend most of the time on the bus!!!! So, this is the third day of Chinese New Year. We boarded the bus after breakfast to head to Vietnam's border town. Again, everything is closed. We barely found a restaurant that is opened and while we were eating the tour guide took our passport to the immigration office for stamps and clearance. So, after lunch, we waited for the tour guide to come back and then it's on the bus again to go to the border with our already stamped passport. We waited for our "alloted" time slot to cross the border. So, you show the immigration officer your passport with the stamp and then you have to drag your luggages across this long bridge to the other side and go through the same procedure except that you have to complete the visitor card for China and then -- get this -- climb down this huge flight of steps with your luggages. Needless to say, I had to help my parents with theirs. Oh, what a workout. Then it is back on the bus for a long road trip to Nanning. Had to take a little golf cart to the bus parking lot first. Good thing they were able to put all the luggages on one golf cart. When we got to the parking lot, guess what, it is the same dingy bus that we had complained about in Vietnam. The uproar was so loud that it might have registered on the Ricter scale. Well, there was really nothing they could do because the tour company is based in Guilin and we're in some middle of no-where border town. So, we boarded the bus, complaining the whole time. Half way to Nanning the bus broke down. This did not go over well with the passenger and the men on the bus actually had to push the bus to get it started. That was the highlight of the trip. Everyone was in a foul mood by that time. When we got to Nanning, all we could say was, "I wanna see your boss".