Welcome back to the next post in our crazy adventure hitchhiking from Thailand to Europe! In the last post we reached the border of China from Laos after some tough days hitchhiking.
Generally people fly into China as that is one of the visa requirements so arriving at the border post seemed to take the immigration officers by surprise. Of course we were the only foreigners at the crossing as most of the people were Chinese on tour buses or truck drivers. The immigration officer waved Malin aside and proceeded to ask her about her Thai visas. After some time we were eventually allowed to enter the country! The contrast between Laos and China was pretty remarkable. The dusty bumpy roads of Laos gave way to a small city which seemed to be much more developed.
By this time we were starting to feel pretty hungry of course! We found a place with lots of locals eating noodle soup, which by the way looked delicious, so we stopped and decided to give it a try without knowing any of the local language or customs!
This was actually one of the best noodle soups that we had in the whole of China and it was our first meal there! The range of different types of condiments, herbs and spices you could put in was fantastic and the taste was incredible! Another bonus was the price, it cost less than 3$ in total for both of us!
After our delicious lunch we started walking to the outskirts of the town and decided to give hitchhiking a go for the first time in China! For the first 15 minutes nobody stopped and then a very persistent taxi driver decided to stop and tried to force us to go with him. We tried to explain but the language barrier made it impossible. Ten minutes later he drove off in a huff and left us to it.
We decided to walk a little further out of town and within a few minutes we were in our first car in China! They were going to the same town as us and even tried to help us find a hotel. Unfortunately the hotel they were staying was a little over our budget so we thanked them for their help and we headed off to find a place to stay for the night that was reasonably priced and accepted foreigners.
We were really struggling to find the place we had read about on Wikipedia and decided to enlist the help of some locals!
One of the guys gave us some directions but signalled that it would be a long walk. As we were putting our bags back on he told us to wait and a minute later he parked next to us on the road and told us to get in. We were shocked at how nice this man was, would something like this happen in Europe? He drove us through the town for ten minutes until we reached our hotel for the night. We thanked the man profusely for his help and then headed up the stairs into the hotel.
The next morning we got up early and started the long walk out of the town. Eventually we found a good spot to start hitchhiking and we got picked up relatively quickly by a man in a small truck. Just as in Laos there wasn't space for both of us in the front seat so Alex had to jump in the back with the bags. The helpful man took us out to the main junction heading in the direction of our next city, Pu'er.
The friendly chap dropped us off right next to a small office that organised buses and the lady inside actually got quite aggressive when we made it clear that we didn't want to get a bus and when we finally managed to wave down a car she started shouting at the man inside! After a heated conversation between the two of them we left with him heading in the right direction. As we mentioned earlier, communication was a bit of an issue and at this point we didn't have Google Translate installed! The guy turned out to be really nice and dropped us off on a small road close to the motorway.
We had to walk for a little while to get to a good spot but soon realised that there was no traffic on this smaller road or on the motorway. We stood there for 15 minutes without any cars passing wondering what the hell was going on! Then all of a sudden 50 cars or more went flying past! Not one of the cars stopped and we were left standing in the cloud of dust left by them. A few minutes later a car came back in the opposite direction and made a U-turn on the road and stopped next to us. It turned out that he had driven past us and felt bad about us standing by the side of the road and decided to come back for us. What an amazing guy! He really saved our day!
He actually had a really great voice translation app and we were able to talk about a lot of things and even about our trip back to Europe. The reason none of the cars were going on the motorway was that it was under construction and all the cars had to take the old mountain road which took two hours longer! About half way we stopped for another delicious noodle soup which of course we were not allowed to pay for as much as we tried! The rest of the ride was really beautiful as we drove through gorgeous mountains and past idyllic rice paddies.
Our new friend dropped us off by the entrance to the section of the motorway that was open and going in the direction of Pu'er and we all said goodbye. If China was going to be anything like this our journey through the country would be amazing, such a lovely guy!
After a few minutes of waiting by the toll gate one of the members of staff came over to us and tried to ask us where we were going. We told him that we were going to Pu'er he stopped the next vehicle that drove past! He told them to take us!!! Amazing! It turned out to be a minivan and Malin got to sit in the front whilst I got the whole back row to myself! About halfway we stopped at a military checkpoint and they were very interested in us and our passports! The two soldiers, both ladies, had a good old giggle at our passports and the picturess before finally giving them back to us!
The driver dropped us off at the entrance to city and we had to walk for about three or four kilometres before we found a very nice hotel for a great price. The room was very comfortable and even luxiourious by our standards!
That evening we took it easy, wandered into the city and soaked up the atmosphere before calling it a night. It had been a very interesting day and we really enjoyed all the company of the drivers! It was a great start to our China adventure!
If you would like to watch our video from this part of the journey you will find it linked below!
If you have any questions about hitchhiking or travelling in China, please feel free to ask! Thanks to everyone for stopping by and following our journey!
Have a great day, Alex and Malin.
