Vietnam (In and Around Da Nang)

Our next destination in Vietnam was Da Nang, which would be our hub for trips to other outlying areas close by. David wanted to experience a train journey, figuring that this would be a great way to see the countryside. We had read that traveling by train was far more comfortable than a bus, so we booked a soft sleeper in a four-berth compartment, which gave us the option of lying down during our 14 hour journey.

We got to the station and found our platform. When the train arrived (a rattling old Russian one), we found our compartment and...
I think I'll list the things that struck us at that moment and made us want to get off the train and run to the closest airport...

- We couldn't get the door to our compartment to open. It wasn't locked, just stuck. In fact we left it open for the duration of our journey, afraid that we wouldn't be able to get out at our station.

- We weren't alone. A young Vietnamese lady was asleep on one of the upper bunks and didn't seem too happy to be disturbed, as we trundled our luggage into the compartment and got busy making ourselves as comfortable as we could. There was not going to be much conversation between Bob and Betty on this trip!

- Our 'soft' sleepers consisted of a plastic 2-inch mat with a pillow, a sheet (which kept sliding off the mat onto the filthy floor), and a thin brown quilted thing, all of which were pretty filthy and were obviously not washed in between passengers (if ever). Unfortunately, it was cold on the train so we had no choice but to cover ourselves with the 'quilt thingy'...

- Everything on the train (including our compartment) was dirty, sticky and grimy!

We left our luggage in the compartment, thinking we would go and find some seats to occupy, until we got tired of sitting upright and had to lie down. We walked through several carriages, but it seemed that we were lucky enough (!) to be on a train with no seats at all - just soft or hard berths. So we went back to our compartment as it seemed to be the lesser of the two evils. I hated to think what the hard berths were like!

You could say that it was a pretty uneventful journey except for the following, and again I will list them for ease of reading:

- The train rattled, banged and lurched from stop to stop, and there were many, many stations.

- Food carts would go by at regular intervals selling boiled (I assume) eggs, chicken parts and other unrecognizable 'delicacies' but after our Laos TD episode, we were both reluctant to sample their wares. We also declined the 'food tickets' being sold by our one woman train staff (let's call her Cong which means hard-working in Vietnamese - because she was NOT). We finally stopped a cart (twice) which had all sorts of packaged processed food (again the lesser of all the evils). Our sustenance today consisted of: a salty, spicy rice cake, little cheese cracker thingys, coffee, sweet popcorn, Pringles and bananas. No wonder we both had stomachaches that night!

- Cong was so full of charm (NOT)! I had taken an extra pillow from one of the other bunks for my poor, long-suffering back, and she promptly took it away saying, "Only one pillow!". Besides selling food tickets, the only other thing she did was to fold the sheet and 'quilt' after a passenger left and leave them on the berth for the next poor sucker! She certainly didn't busy herself cleaning and tidying! On one of her 'fold the bed linen' forays, she accidentally spilled one of our full cups of coffee all over the floor, spraying our feet in the process. Then she disappeared without even a "Solly!". We kept thinking that she would come back to clean it up but she never did. David went out to tell her to come and clean it, but all she did was hand him a mop which was even filthier than the floor, and he had to clean it himself! No tip for her!!! She later had the gall to help herself to one of our bananas as he was bringing them to our compartment. She just reached out and broke one off the bunch.

- Our co-passenger (let's call her Hanh, meaning 'nice behaving') had given up trying to sleep and sat on David's 'bed' like a monkey would sit on a branch, chewing on round fruit which looked like miniature apples. She didn't speak any English, but every so often would lean towards David and point at the e-book he was reading. At one point she sat near me and asked me where I was from. This is probably the first English phrase taught in schools here, because everyone, from street vendors to taxi drivers to anybody who wants to part you from your money, will accost you with this sentence hoping it will lead to more... In Hanh's case though, her English couldn't take her further, and when I answered, she smiled, nodded and went back to her phone calls and Facebook.

The rest of our journey was spent in reading, dozing and snacking with a couple of trips to the closest lavatory, and I won't even begin to describe that one.

We arrived at our hotel at around 11pm. Our epic first and last train journey had started at 08:20 am!

In Vietnam, I seem to be writing more about the journey, where we have most of our adventures, than the destination, since for the latter I let my photos of a really beautiful country speak for themselves. In any case, wise men say, it's not about the destination but about the journey!

David says that writing about it is therapy, and he might be right...I'm still smiling!

Moral of this story: Don't take public land transport in Vietnam...fly or walk!!

24 January 2016
Only one thing on our agenda today. The Marble Mountains are about ten minutes away from our hotel. You climb up a bunch of steps halfway up the mountain to the main temple and from there climb more steps in different directions. Some lead to cave temples, some to outdoor pagodas and others to caves or viewpoints. All very nice and a good morning out, until it got very windy and started to rain a little so time to get back and be lazy...

25 January 2016
Today we took a taxi and wandered around the city centre of Da Nang for a while. We popped into a 'western' cafe and had our first capuccino in a very long time (heaven!) after which we went to a supermarket and stocked up on plain instant coffee. In Asia, a standard, instant cup of coffee consists of a sachet with a 3 in 1 concoction of coffee, a ton of sugar and creamer. Vietnamese coffee is very strong and is usually mixed with condensed, sweetened

milk, making it very strong and super sweet at the same time. After the supermarket, we went to Son Tra Peninsula about 17 minutes away from our hotel, where there is a temple complex with a 67 metre high statue of the Bodhisattva Goddess of Mercy (known affectionately as the Lady Buddha), overlooking the Eastern coast of Da Nang. It is taller than the Redeemer statue of Rio de Janeiro and very impressive...

26 January 2016
We asked our hotel to organise a private driver to take us to the 3 major sights around Da Nang. Today we went to My So'n Holy Sanctuary. Situated on a mountain, this once religious area in the Champa kingdom is home to ruins of Hindu Temples. Similar to Angkor in Cambodia but not as impressive though still a UNESCO world heritage sight.

In the afternoon we went to Hoi An, an important economic port in it's time and yet another UNESCO heritage site. The old town is quaint and very pretty, though lined with souvenir shops. You get the impression that everything that happens there, is put on for the entertainment of tourists, but it is still worth visiting none the less. Old architecture with lots of

wooden features, narrow streets, art galleries, restaurants, the river with sampans, chinese lanterns, pretty lights in the evening, and thousands of tourists milling around everywhere...

27 January 2016
Another World Heritage Site scheduled for today - Hue Imperial City (The Citadel). A walled fortress built in 1804 and ringed by a moat. It was severely damaged during WW2 and the Vietnam War (know here as the American War). You can still see bullet holes and other war damage in the fortifications. It was about a two-hour drive from our hotel and we also drove through a 6.3km tunnel, the longest we've been through so far and the longest in Vietnam.

28 January 2016
Today we flew (yay!) out of Da Nang for one night in Ho Chi Minh City before taking a bus (yikes) to Can Tho for 3 nights. Our hotel room is amazing...very fancy compared to most of our other Asian hotels. It has all the mod cons, a seating area, proper bath tub (not wet room), a comfortable bed (with a proper mattress, not a slab of rock) and soft pillows (not stiff or

lumpy foam with no give). Hope all this comfort doesn't keep me awake tonight :) ....