Crazy Train

Thursday night, Amy and I left Hanoi for Hoi An. It’s a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage site on the South China Sea – low slung, brightly-washed buildings on a slow-moving river, and at night, twinkling lanterns that give it a romantic feel.

If it wasn’t a real place, you’d think this was the Epcot version of Vietnam. Situated about halfway up the coast between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), it’s accessible via Da Nang, which is a very quick flight away. But we didn’t fly.

We took an overnight sleeper train.

Neither of us was terribly excited about a 15-hour train journey, but there’s a company in Vietnam that offers a “luxury” overnight sleeper car for western tourists: all the amenities of a hotel room crammed onto the rails, and at a very reasonable price, not unlike a room for a night. So we determined we’d give it a try. I’d convinced Amy of the romance of the sleeper, having experienced it several times during my study abroad. And while Amy has never done a sleeper, she did enjoy a classic train experience on our honeymoon, when we took an Orient Express train from Machu Picchu to Cusco, a three-hour trip that included a five-course meal and a mariachi band.

We were delusional in thinking this journey would be the same. This would not be riding a Eurail pass on an efficient German train, and it would be far from the luxury of the Orient Express. We came to realize this very quickly when we went to the tourist train office. The luxury train was sold out for days – it’s the holiday season, and there are lots of tourists around. Our next best option would be to take the “soft sleeper” offered by Vietnam Rail itself, basically their first class sleeper. So we headed across the street to the Hanoi station ticket office.

Buying train tickets in Vietnam is one part DMV, one part Spanish Inquisition, and one part Rollerball. You have to navigate the bureaucracy, ask relentless questions to get any answers, and meanwhile keep elbowing and shouldering fellow ticket buyers who are literally trying to push you away from the window. We took a number, sat in the airless waiting area, and watched the numbers slowly click by. Eventually our number was called. We approached the window:

“Tomorrow, 26th, Soft Sleeper to Da Nang, 2 persons.”
“NO. SOLD OUT.”
“Next day? The 27th?”
(A guy came up on my left and tried to push me out of the way to access the window. I elbowed him in the shoulder. I lived in New York for twenty years.)
The ticket seller started typing. Then more Typing. Numerous glances at an ancient computer screen. Then a look at several columns of numbers hand-written on the back of an envelope (what?!). Leafing through a rubber-banded packet full of tickets. More typing. More typing….
(The same guy tried to push me again, shoving his number in the window. I elbowed his ribs. An older man sidled up to my right side. I was not afraid to elbow an old man, if it came to it. I needed to get to Da Nang, damnit.)
“NO. SOLD OUT.”
“Okay, HARD-sleeper, two persons, on 26th…”
(I elbowed two people, including a young woman, simultaneously on my left; checked my pocket for my money; looked over my shoulder to make sure Amy was okay on my right – she was shooting daggers at the old man – and I leaned in to obscure any possible entry to the window, making my shoulders broad. I basically stuck my head through the window, like an ostrich. Though perhaps a guillotine is the better metaphor here…)
“NO. SOLD OUT.”

You can see where this was going. Nowhere, fast. About a half-hour and several bruised ribs later, we secured two hard-sleeper berths on the 26th. This is after the ticket lady told me repeatedly that the soft AND hard sleepers on the 26th were sold out, and the 27th would require moving berths to a different car at 1:00am midway through the journey. I think ultimately, after my refusing to leave, my asking question after question after question, and my callous disregard for human life and clear dominance playing “pushy-shovey”, she simply wanted to get rid of me. So we got two tickets for the day we wanted.

An explanation of the hard sleeper: a hard sleeper is a compartment with six bunks and mattresses about an inch thick. Not the luxury tourist tickets we originally wanted, not a first class car as we’d hoped. It was a sleeper car, yes, but now we were riding with the great unwashed. The romance was over… The nightmare was about to begin. There would be no mariachi band.

At 6:30pm on the 26th, we boarded the train at Hanoi Station for our 7pm departure. After walking past a “washing up” area with two already polluted sinks, we squeezed into the hall past about 100 Vietnamese people carrying oversized bags to find our berth. We approached the door and peered in to see which level of hell we’d been assigned.

To our great relief, we found two absolutely delightful British women – Jo and Sam – who, like us, had been stuck with the hard-sleeper. The four of us made introductions, traded war stories, and had a few laughs. We also had two Vietnamese gents with us. They each had the uppermost berths, and retired there almost immediately for most of the journey. They were pleasant, unassuming, and generally kept to themselves except for the occasional trip to the stainless steel bathroom at the end of the train car.

With fifteen hours ahead of us in a room the size of a crowded prison cell, the four of us quickly broke into a handful of tepid beers we brought along, or, in Amy’s case, a bottle of red wine.

We exchanged travel stories and watched the world pass by our window. About an hour into the trip, Amy decided to explore the train and go find the “Club Car,” where we’d heard rumors you could buy food and drinks. From here out things got interesting.

Like a modern-day Marco Polo, Amy came back with fascinating tales of strange people, foreign lands, and a Shangri-La where one could enjoy life with cheap beer and open spaces. The Club Car, we were told, had café seating, big windows on either side, and a small staff eager to serve the weary traveller. But first, Amy warned us, to reach this fairyland, you had to navigate through two cars of open seating – the Greyhound bus of Vietnam Rail – the cheap seats – a veritable Scylla and Charybdis of cranky old people, crying children, snotty teenagers, cellphone zombies, aisle-standers, leg-extenders, loud-talkers, and worst of all, vestibule-packing smokers.

(Please note: many of these photos are blurry because of the rocking of the train. It’s not a terribly smooth ride in Vietnam, and we tried our best.)

I was game, of course, but Jo and Sam were happy to stay back in the sleeper, likely looking forward to a little peace and quiet. Amy and I went into the hallway and immediately started following two other gents headed in the same direction, each tippling a can of cheap Vietnamese beer along the way. We had encountered another advance team from the rear of the train.

After a few minutes, we reached the elusive Club Car. And Amy was right: there were about six train employees, all looking incredibly bored, and a handful of Vietnamese passengers eating bowls of soup. Wooden booths were set next to large windows, and a run-down bar at the end of the car stood opposite a few refrigerators and cases of beer, soda, and other supplies. The two advance-men slipped into a rear booth by the door, and with no other seating available, Amy and I asked if we could join them.

Here we met Chris and John, an Irishman and Aussie, respectively, who had only recently met as part of a tour group. They were the reason we couldn’t get the luxury tourist berths, as their group was taking up the entire car. Apparently they had been through a rough tour day together, and were escaping their wives, families, and less sociable tour members. They had been to a Vietnamese “water puppet” show earlier in the day. We asked them how it was. John replied, “it was SHIT!” Chris said he was unsure, because he fell asleep when it started. John said he would recommend it to all fellow travellers, because “if I had to sit through that rubbish, then so does everyone else!” We all got along swimmingly.

During our conversation with Chris and John, a clearly inebriated Vietnamese fellow sat at the table across from us, drinking a glass of hot milk. He interrupted our conversation to ask where I was from. He laughed and we shook hands. Then he asked Amy for a piece of paper, and wrote something totally illegible. He laughed even harder, so we all laughed with him, nervously. Then he made a two-finger pointing motion, a la the Three Stooges eye-poke, and said something like “FEE-SHEE!” Then he made a slashing motion: “CHECK!” He repeated this several times. I mimicked him. “FEE-SHEE! CHECK!” He laughed even harder. We did this about 10 times, back and forth, and he was laughing hysterically. This guy would not stop laughing. He slapped me on the back several times, shook my hand again. Then I tried to explain to him as best I could that I had no idea what he was talking about. He asked Amy for more paper, and wrote something equally as illegible. Then he motioned to take pictures. He couldn’t stop laughing. We took this picture:

Then we shook hands AGAIN, and he made another “FEE-SHEE! CHECK!”, laughed like a hyena, and was off into the night, never to be seen again. If anyone out there is familiar with Vietnamese culture or humor, and can explain this to us, please do!

After that new friend left, we met a newer one. I spotted a mouse. A small black critter the size of a ping-pong ball scurried across the floor from one booth to another. From here out, Amy kept her feet up on the booth. Several times over we would see the Club Car mouse flitting from booth to booth. Chris and John wanted to buy the mouse a beer. With all the excitement, Amy went back to liberate Jo and Sam, letting them know the Club Car was a good time. They joined us, and we all shared several good stories told over several bad Vietnamese beers.

At one point I got up to use the restroom. This is what it looked like:

Like all the other bathrooms on the train, it was stainless steel, the floor and seat covered in water. Chris and John told us their Vietnamese tour guide had actually taken sheets of newspaper and cut holes in them to make seat covers for the tour group. We were not so lucky. But I’ll tell you this without any going into any graphic detail: I never once sat in one of those bathrooms the entire trip, I only stood. And in standing, I noticed an electrical panel. Here’s a close-up of what caught my eye:

I have no idea what that button does, or what you would push it for, but I sure as hell was not going to find out.

Closer to ten o’clock, a few other things happened. We were joined by a bunch of Vietnamese military who sat in a booth near us. They looked at us and laughed.

John was now stacking beer cans. The mouse was getting cocky and making regular appearances. And one of the waitstaff put her hair in curlers to create buns on the sides. We called her “Princess Leia.” I tried to take a stealth picture of her, but because of the increased rocking of the train, the green focus light kept flashing, and she waved me off angrily. The picture never turned out because the train was rocking so much.

A few minutes later, we were presented with a sign that said the Club Car was closing at 10pm. We hadn’t seen it before, but it was obvious we’d worn out our welcome. We all said goodbye, and retired to our respective sleeper cars. Jo, Sam, Amy, and I got back to our bunks to find our two upper-berth mates fast asleep. We all quietly rearranged our bags, got ready for bed, and I slipped into the middle berth, with Amy on the bottom bunk. Here’s a point-of-view shot of my berth:

I had my toiletry bag hanging next to my head. My day-pack was at my feet, along with my button-down shirt and jacket. I had two posters rolled up next to me. It was a tight fit, not helped by the two chains that hold up the berth on either end. And I was otherwise fully clothed, minus my shoes.

The pillow and duvet were actually pretty nice, but the mattress – what there was of it – had no give. If you lay on your back, your spine started to get sore. If you lay on your side, your hips started to get sore. If you lay on your stomach, your knees and pelvis felt the brunt. It wasn’t horrible, by any means, but it didn’t help me sleep at all. And I was stupid enough to keep my belt on, so the buckle and leather ate into me as well.

Amy, of course, can sleep in a hurricane. I, on the other hand, am a light sleeper, and spent most of the night awake. I heard the guy in the upper berth snoring. I felt the rocking of the train. I heard the whistle, I heard coughing down the hall. I heard everything. As I told everyone in the morning – either I couldn’t sleep, or I had a very vivid dream that I couldn’t sleep. I occasionally peered out the window, but couldn’t see much, other than once seeing a beautiful sliver of the moon that faded into some trees all too quickly.

But it could have been worse. Consider the following photos. This woman’s bed is in the hall, right by the bathroom. No doors, nothing, just an open platform next to the latrine.

See this folded up lounge chair in the sink area? – a woman SLEPT in that lounge chair, next to that sink. And her husband slept in the desk chair – upright!

People were sleeping anywhere there was a flat surface, or a surface to lean against. I say this with a great respect and jealousy – the Vietnamese can sleep anywhere. At one point, in the midst of my restlessness, I took a trip to the can. I slowly eased my way down to the floor and my shoes, and saw a mouse – maybe the same Club Car mouse? – run across the floor. I withheld that information from Amy until morning.

Eventually morning did come, and with it the news that we were running two hours late. Of course we were. Bathed in our own filth, each of us got up, rearranged our bags, and quietly waited to arrive in DaNang. We had become the great unwashed.

We did get to see some pretty good scenery along the way, though, as we chugged along the coast of the South China Sea.

At one point Amy and I returned to the Club Car to get coffee and tea. First we walked through the open seating car – Oh Lord! It smelled like a ripe high school locker room. Just humid and sweaty and reeking of humanity. When we got to the Club Car, Amy ordered a coffee, and I pointed to a menu at the words “Lipton Tea.” What I realized all too soon, however, was that the menu was printed over a picture of some of the beverages on offer, and the person serving us thought I was pointing at the picture, not the words. I was given a Heineken for breakfast. I was not going to complain. I needed it. FEE-SHEE! CHECK!

We returned to our bunkmates, and a few uneventful hours later – 17 hours after leaving Hanoi – we pulled quietly into Da Nang station. We said our goodbyes, grabbed our bags, and after an hour-long taxi ride, Amy and I were at our hotel in Hoi An. We took long showers. We stretched out and napped on the queen size bed. We watched bad movies on HBO. It was a great afternoon.

Today is our last day in Hoi An. We’ve recovered fully. We also ran into Sam and Jo on the street; they seem to have recovered well, too. We’ve been taking bike rides through town and the surrounding countryside, generally enjoying the wide-open spaces. And tomorrow morning, after we say goodbye to Hoi An, we’re flying from Da Nang to Saigon.