With images and apprehension : China

The border between Vietnam at Lao Cai and China at Hekou is very similar to the Canada-US border at Niagara Falls. A bridge you walk across and of course pay a small fee for that pleasure puts you in China where you fill out a visitor card and receive a portion to retain for surrender upon departure from China.All very simple. The officer even speaks english and starts his cross examination very friendly. Shortly into this conversation you begin to wonder if you should have some more plausible reason for being here than just curiosity and start apologizing for not speaking chinese or knowing at least 1 of the more than one and a half billion souls you will be soon be in the midst of. Finishes well however, but the tone of the "best of luck" is a little scary and portents ominous disaster just outside the building.Ends up I could have taken my copy of Lonely Planet after all. Had heard they confiscated it at the border but they didn't even check my bag.  
Hekou, a pleasant enough looking city offered no reason to remain so I made my way to the bus station bought a ticket on a sleeper bus to Kunming and settled down to wait the 6 hours till departure desperately hoping that sleeper buses in China would somehow be better than in Vietnam.
In the station waiting I met a young couple from Poland heading back to some city in China where they were teaching english. They had been to Vietnam during the Tet holidays which are the same as the Chinese Lunar New Year. They were enjoying it, had a small unheated apartment and made enough teaching 20 hours per week to even afford frugally managed holidays.Had actually met quite a number of youn'un's during my travels doing the same and even a few of contemporary ages.All reported great satisfaction with their situations.
In my eagerness to flee Hekou I forgot about stopping at Yangshou an area of dramatic terraced  rice paddies.One of two areas I kind of regret not seeing. The other being Guilin, that karst landscape are which is similiar to Halong Bay which I did go to on a foggy day.Arrived in Kunming about 5am and felt much like I had in Hekou so ended up catching a train, soft sleeper bottom bunk at 8:48 to Dali.