Shopping

After five weeks, I was pretty eager to leave cold and wet China and get on over to Vietnam. In order to save time, and skip going on a sleeper train for the one last time, we decided to fly. Buying our tickets however proved to be yet another example of how Chinese can often be poor sales people. Although sometimes it felt like many people would have sold us their own mother for a decent price, on other occasions, we were met with blank expressions and blatant lack of service. Eventually, we worked out the pattern, an individual would sell you anything if they were getting the benefit of the cash, but good luck if you want to buy anything from a department store or corporation. So, one piece of advice, if you ever set up a company in China, then be sure to offer a bonus system.

In this case, the first travel agency we went to informed us that in order to fly to Hanoi from Chengdu, we'd have to travel via Amsterdam. I don't think so. I tried to explain that Vietnam was just over the border and even offered to point to our destination on a map (which they mysteriously didnt have any of...), but no, we'd have to go to Europe and back. So, we left in search of the Southern China Airways building where we were again initailly met with protests that they didnt fly there but after some persuasion we were finally offered a quote. This we accepted to their shock and amusement. In fairness, it wasnt particularly cheap (we could have bought a few gourmet meals for the price) but definitely preferable to getting a long, sweaty train across the border in the middle night.

Anyway, after much time and frustration, we finally got our tickets and were off to Hanoi. Hurrah.