A Grand Galavanting: Taking the Crazy Train to Da Nang

Can someone explain to me why anyone thinks the overnight train is a good idea? It seemed so promising. Sure it takes hours and hours, but it's cheap and shows you the real Vietnam. Right? ..... Right?

Neil and I had read all about train travel in Vietnam. As long as you book a soft sleeper for the overnight trains, it's supposed to be comfortable, saves you the cost of a hotel for the night and gets you to a new town bright and early when you would start your sightseeing anyway. We decided to try it out and bought tickets from Saigon to Da Nang for the next leg of our trip. We were ultimately headed to Hoi An, but the town doesn't have its own station. The train trip took 16 hours followed by a 40-minute car ride from Da Nang to Hoi An.

We were instructed to arrive at the Saigon station an hour before our departure time. Since Neil is always nervous about being late, we arrived about an hour and a half early. As it turns out, there is very little to do in a Vietnamese train station for that much time. Luckily, around 45 minutes before departure, we were allowed to board the train.

On these trains, there are four bunks per cabin. Unless you're willing to pay for all four for privacy, you're going to have neighbors and spend the whole trip hoping they don't murder you in your sleep (maybe that's just me). Below me was an old woman, and below Neil were three generations of Vietnamese women. I didn't even know that was an option.

Neil barely fitting in his bunk

Since there's very little to do in a tiny bunk, we each read for several hours before settling into shallow, restless sleep. At one point though, I was woken up by the full volume of the family under Neil. I was so hopeful this meant it was morning and it would all be over soon. Silly me, it was only 2:30AM. I have no idea why those women were awake at that hour or why they were speaking so, so loudly. Did they not realize there were other people in the cabin?

An eternity later, I woke up again from my pathetic sleep to the sounds of ridiculously loud announcements in Vietnamese, which were never translated. This time it was 5:30AM. Does no one else want to sleep through the night?

The event that really solidified my dislike for the train came the proper hour of 9:00AM. We had read online that there would be food for purchase and free food served on board. Unfortunately, we never figured out how to find that free food for dinner. By morning, we were starving. Our cracker and water dinner really wasn't holding us over. At one of the stops, a woman came and asked us if we wanted coffee and baguettes. We said yes. Then another woman came and asked the same thing. Neil said yes again thinking he was confirming the order. At that point, Neil left the cabin to try to sort out what just happened with the two women. I'm still not entirely clear on what really happened next, but somehow we ended up with two tiny cups of coffee, four baguettes and a package of room temperature Laughing Cow cheese. The problem was that it somehow cost us around $30. One woman brought me the baguettes and Laughing Cow, which I assumed Neil had arranged. Turns out he hadn't, and when I paid the woman, she decided she didn't need to give me any change. Then the second woman brought more food. When I tried to ask about the change from the first woman, woman number two started yelling at me in Vietnamese as if I had done something wrong.What just happened?!

At this point, I wasn't doing well. I hadn't really eaten for around 18 hours, I had probably slept for around two hours total and some women was screaming in my face. I just wanted off the train!! Our stop couldn't come soon enough.

By the grace of God we finally arrived in Da Nang. Luckily, we had prearranged with our hotel to have a car to pick us up, so we didn't have to deal with taxi drivers also trying to rip us off. I was in no condition for that. We just rode, mostly in silence, hoping to find a nice bed, decent food (at a reasonable price) and a shower waiting for us in Hoi An. I can't tell you how happy I was to find all of them.

As you can imaging, I wasn't really in a picture-taking mood when we drove to Hoi An, but I did remember to bring out the camera on the trip out of town. Since you stayed with me through my whining, I'll reward you with some pretty pictures taken from a bus window...