April 9th

We got up at 6am to catch the 7 am bus to Simao only to find it was not leaving till 9.If we had not already decided that the next leg of the trip would be by plane, this bus trip would surely have pushed us to do so. The 145 km trip took from 9 AM till about 4:30. We followed a road over several mountain passes. The road was, unfortunately for us, about 80% under construction. It was a long, dry and dusty trip.
As we followed our travel plan, we were hoping to get to Bank of China ATMs in towns where we stayed. Again, unfortunately for us, there were no branches after Hekou, our very first city. When we arrived in Simao, we had about 30 yen(about $4) but had been assured there was a Bank of China ATM. Indeed, there were several branches but all of the ATMs were “temporarily out of service”. Tim was able to change some dollars and Euros that he had so we had some money to pay for a hotel (no luxury digs!) The big question was whether the ATMs would be working the next day.