Have you ever thought, how does the Chinese border looks like?
I did and honestly, I imagined something like a huge fence with a barbed wire and towers with a border soldiers with guns. So, while I was travelling region Ha giang at the north of Vietnam, during my internship there on summer 2016, I got really close to the borders of China, while I was going to the northernmost village of Vietnam.
I was travelling with a member of Polish Iaeste and we decided to stop close to the corn field and go for a look of the fence through it. After while of walking we found a fence which looked totally different, than we expected. It was small and it was long only 5+ meters, so you could even walk around to China and there were no soldiers or control around. Only two stone signs with huge skull with crossed bones and Chinese signs. So we took few pictures and I decided to send my location to friends of mine, but you would be surprised. GPS and map told us, we are already 100+ meters in China, ups. So we quickly came back to motorbike and Vietnamese side and continued. So this is, how you can easily cross Chinese borders illegally.
I still saying to myself, we were out of danger, cause we payed for a special permission of comunist party to get access for whole region around borders, so I think you can use it if you accidentaly cross borders, but… no
I asked friend of mine, who lives at China more than 10 years since childhood, if he can translate to me the sign on stone. He told me I was lucky, to not be killed by anyone, cause those signs meant: “death trap, you can be shotted”. So we were super lucky and have another funny story from life, how we accidentaly and illegally crossed borders of China 😀
