Onward, Upward

I have in-hand my Chinese visa (kind of drab: I'd hoped for a little more fanfare considering the $170 price tag, at least a hologram or something, but oh well) and a ticket for a hard-sleeper from Hanoi to Nanning tonight. Hopefully the term "hard-sleeper" won't be a double-entendre, but even on the face of it, it's a little daunting. I asked Giang (pronounced 'Zang,' like from "Wayne's World 2" when Wayne inexplicably knows the Mandarin word for 'excellent!'), the daughter of the guest house owners, if she could describe for me what the hard-sleeper was like, and she reached over to the wooden bench I was sitting on and rapped it disappointingly with her knuckles. Pictures on seat61.com tell a different story, but I suspect the company that runs trains from Hanoi to Nanning may not be the same as the companies operating entirely within China.

I also have a secondhand Lonely Planet China guide, which warns that Chinese customs officers sometimes confiscate the guide on the basis that its maps represent Taiwan as a separate country. They reccommend putting a cover on the book to make it "less noticable," but don't specify what the average Chinese customs agent considers noticable. For lack of direction, I've taken my usual approach of reckless whimsy:

Lonely Planet's guide to The Moon: 100% researched and updated! A convincing facade if ever there was one? We'll find out.

Into Nanning by tomorrow morning, I will hopefully have left behind the incessant honk and buzz of motorbikes for a friendlier, more laid-back atmosphere, but in anticipation of more of the same, I have no less than 6 (six!) paperbacks: LPs for 'The Moon' and The Middle East, an exhausting Noam Chomsky tome, and three new aquisitions, Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire," Howard Marks's "Mr. Nice," and Aravind Adiga's "Between the Assassinations." Book exchanges are one of my favorite kinds of human interaction. Left behind: Pullman's "The Subtle Knife, Chrichton's "Pirate Latitudes," Keillor's "Lake Wobegon Days." If the book turnover continues apace (and this hard-sleeper issue goes well), the many long-distance trains in my immediate future (Nanning-Xi'an: 33 hours) should be very pleasant.

Only three and a half more hours in Hanoi before the migration resumes.

For those interested (mom), I posted a final farewell to Korea in the other blog, to which I'm adding pictures now.