That's right... we're still here.

Ahhh, Lao Cai, the bustling and lively border town in Vietnam bordering with China. A great place to spend a holiday. A weeks break can see you go totally insane.

Thursday morning came and went without the sought after crashed car arriving on it's flatbed. The journey that 'should' have taken 2.5/3 days with the 24 hour driving rota (when requested on Saturday) actually took just as long as leg 3 did - 6 days - to get from Langzhou to Hekou (and leg 3 stopped on the way). Perhaps it was unsurprising given a lady of the night was in the cab with the 3 drivers. Apparently they were 'driving slowly' because Land Rover tell them to so they don't damage the cars... (uh huh... damage to a crashed car would be terrible afterall).
By the time the car arrived in the afternoon, it was too late to get the 5 cars released from customs on the China side, and the officials took photos and emailed them off as it is an irregularity to have a crashed car, and had to wait for a response.
The downside was that Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday is some big Chinese holiday, so no customs officials were due to be in. This was resolved with the chief customs official, along with a 'new tax'.
Leg 4 played a lot of cards on Thursday... and possibly turned slightly insane.

Friday arrived, and the news came from the Chinese border that the 4 cars in customs compound were being driven back to the border by Ian and Rachel. Ofcourse this took two goes.
Then at around midday - euphoria from the rest of the leg4 team spectating from the other side of the bridge - a disco was moving in to position to tow the crashed defender across to the vietnamese side. A lot of border guards and chinese were watching, and it was underway. The nearside tyre completely deflated, as the ill fated defender came in to view for the first time, our suggestions of 'why don't we just bash it a bit and carry on driving it' was clear folly. It was definitely FUBAR.. a lot FUBAR.
A vietnamese official on the bridge briefly stopped them before other officials at the gate called him off (they had been in discussions with Mr Cheng our fixer already).
two more trips and the disco was joined by 2 more discos and the defender.

Ian and Rachel came back through the border, and we went for lunch while Mr Cheng set about his task of getting the cars in.
At about 3pm, Mr Cheng was looking stressed. 4 cars were fine. The crashed car - a big problem. You cannot import scrap apparently, and the fact that the crashed defender couldn't drive was a big problem.
The border guards allowed some of leg 4 out to the vehicles to do some repacking and checking over. Periodically locals would turn up on mopeds and take photos (I don't think they have many defenders or discos let alone crashed ones), and the occasional tourists (i haven't seen any other white people in this hole since we got here, so it makes you wonder if the cars have become a local circus feature).
Officials with big hats came with minions to have a look at the crashed car, before going back inside. Mr Cheng said they had to have a big internal meeting about it all... and that was pretty much our day. As negotiations continued, Mr Cheng asked us to leave the border gates as it was putting too much pressure on... so more cards at the hotel.

ho hum. Leg 3 is now possibly the longest leg of GO60... and technically they should still be here sorting out their mess. I hope they are grateful to leg 4 for relieving them of 5 days of hell (so far). I'm so frustrated it's unbelievable. Perhaps it's unfair to think leg 3 should still be here sorting this out (and it wouldn't make any difference having 16 people here to having 10), but i'm pretty sure the swap over point was Hanoi, not Lao Cai. Perhaps leg 4 should have been ruthless and stayed in Hanoi and make leg 3 get there - Hanoi is a lovely city, and one day wasn't enough to explore it - and 5 days in hanoi sounds much nicer than 5 days in Lao Cai.

...


perhaps I'll be in a better mood tomorrow, I think i'm a bit cranky.... but I can't believe I've wasted a week of my holiday allowance here :( .... If we don't get driving soon, I will go stir crazy.