plausible enough

Wake up. Fully clothed. Soaking wet. Being snap-frozen by air conditioner. Bunk shudders and sways. A train? Okay, a train. Think.

Running, heavy pack chafing.
Rain.
A taxi driver laughing at my futile race to the station (don't need to speak Cantonese to understand "Haha no way buddy you're screwed").
Rain.
Impossible crush of humans at train station, desperate hope that the characters on ticket match ones on the board.
Rain.
Foot on train.
Feet on train.
Train starts to move.
Bag on rack.
Ladder.
Bunk.

Plausible enough for the moment. Move onto next item on to do list: don't freeze to death.

Locate bag, extract (relatively) dry clothes. Find tiny, rapidly oscillating aluminium box marked TOILET. Enter. Put on (relatively) dry clothes (Don't. Touch. Anything).

Wet clothes back in bag.
Bag on rack.
Ladder.
Bunk.

Awake standing. Squinting. Pack on back.

5.30am. 35 degrees. Nanning. Terrible Mandarin + non-existent Cantonese + (hopefully) universal gestures (c'mon baby, do the locomotion). Ticket to Pingxiang secured. Relief at successful transaction, neglect to check the length, seating class or any other details of journey.
Many hours. Hard seat. Lots of curious smiles. "Hello"s. Duck embryo snack? (no thanks).
Look up from terribly important book I'm pretending to read. Notice that I'm not the only Laowai in the car. Two amiable Brits. Heading in the same direction (nowhere else to go). Forces are joined. Sharing of hip-flask and massively over-inflated fare to moto-taxi driver for last leg of journey.

South on a dusty highway (from the trees: "Currency exchange!" "US dollars!") to the border. "Friendship Pass". Established at the conclusion of last Sino-Vietnamese war. China did not win. Kind of friendship best expressed in glass and marble (towering), images of Mao (gargantuan), concrete plaza (boundless), flags (innumerable), teenagers (bored) in army uniforms (too big).
Exit customs, set out across unshaded concrete towards defiant Vietnamese response to Sino-brutalist edifice (small corrugated tin shack).

Inside. Hot wet darkness. Passport on teetering pile. Wait. Wait.(Etc).

Note that I need only walk around the building to be in Vietnam.

Decide that illegal border crossing is a bad way to start a holiday.

After forever, blessed union of passport and stamp.

(Accidentally?) walk right past man collecting "entry tax".

Decide that only mildly illegal border crossing is an acceptable start to holiday.

I'm in.
Now what.