Free Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube

up CITS which the book said was at this address. Despite a huge sign on the outside wall of an adjoining building that declared CITS to be lurking within, this involved much difficulty. I could not locate an entrance. I walked all around the wall and back again, but still found no doorway. Finally, I went up some stairs on one side and found some doors – all with indecipherable Chinese signs. One of the doors was open, so I knocked and entered. A young man was stretched out asleep on a couch. In due time he made me very welcome and did not seem upset that I had disturbed his nap. But the young man couldn’t understand me, and he had to send for re-enforcements. Eventually five men were in the room, smoking, reading the paper, or interrogating me. They could tell me nothing about onward travel. One young man spoke fairly good English. He said he listened to Radio Australia every morning. He tried to help me, but right or wrong he wanted to put me on a plane. I said. ‘I don’t want to go on a plane.’ He was amazed. ‘You don’t like to fly with CAAC!’
    ‘Listen, mate’, I said. ‘I like to live, that is why I don’t like to fly with CAAC.’
    He thought that was hilarious, but he still wanted to put me on a plane. I said, ‘I want to go down to Guangzhou by train.’ At first he denied that there was any such creature, but when I insisted there was, he gave in and admitted it. ‘Yes, yes, yes. There is a train, but very awful and impossible to get a soft sleeper without waiting a very long time.’
    ‘I don’t mind’, I said, ‘I’ll wait.’
    He repeated that it was impossible.
    I asked if he would phone the station to ask. That seemed terribly hard.
    Finally he said, ‘You wait. You wait.’
    Fifteen minutes later another man was produced to make the phone call. After a long conversation, the first young man turned to me, ‘You give me your passport and 1000 yuan for the train ticket.’
    ‘A thousand!’
    ‘Only yuan, not dollars.’
    But a thousand was a bit hot. It cost only 600 yuan from Shanghai to Beijing and that was much further. I began to think that there was something peculiar going on here, so I tried to exit gracefully and make a fast getaway. This was not easy. And later, when I found out how much money these gents had lost because I would not cough up my cash, I understood why.
    The soft sleeper on the next day’s train to Guangzhou would have cost me 360 yuan! How curious! In the event, I changed my mind and went to Liuzhou and Yanshu instead. I walked around to view the Renmin Hotel from the front. It was spectacular. I attempted to climb a colossal flight of steps on one side of it but was stopped by a young woman who removed two yuan from me. I did not know why until I reached the top and discovered to my amazement that I had paid to watch a lecture on Chinese massage in a monstrous auditorium. The inside of the auditorium was as magnificent as the original Temple of Heaven. I gawked and came down again. A pleasant garden at the bottom of the steps led to the street from where I took a taxi to the railway station.
    At the station I encountered massive problems just finding the ticket offices, let alone the one that sold tickets to Guangzhou. Pointing to ‘I want to buy a ticket’ in my book, I wandered around an immense area asking one person after another until I finally came to the right place. There I was confronted by row after row of counters with little windows that had Chinese writing above, and long queues in front of them. I continued asking and was directed to one. But after standing in line for ages, I decided that the prices listed above the window could not be enough to get me to Guangzhou. I moved in front of a window with large prices and the shortest waiting line and when I reached the counter I pointed to Guangzhou in my book. It did not surprise me when the ticket seller said that I was at the wrong window. She pointed to where I should be.
    What did surprise