All aboard the night train

Last night I went from Ninh Binh to Hue (Hwe). Instead of taking the tourists' bus (nowadays taken by locals too) I went by train. Vietnam's Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City railway crosses most of the country. It covers about 1700Km in a slowish day and a half. I decided to take the Ninh Binh-Hue part of the trip by train because, according to Lonely Planet, this is the part that gets the most complaints and it is a nice way to meet local people. The price is more expensive than the bus, as the only thing cheaper than the tourists' bus is walking. Seriously. They get commissions from the hotels and restaurants where they drop the passengers and the fierce competition make the price unbeatable.

I bought a ticket for the lower bed in a hard sleeper cabin. Each cabin has four to six beds in two rows, two to three beds one above the other. The lower the bed is the cheaper the price. Although I had a sleeper cabin, I found out that "hard" means almost no sleep at all. The bed is a metal plate with a thin mattress on it. I had to use some of my clothes to pad pressure points. The ride is quite noisy and not so smooth. In addition there was an annoying whisper low song repeatedly playing that didn't help much. Under the lower bed there is a box for storage, so you can be quite sure that as long as you sleep on it, no one will be able to open it. As a result I was at least calm about my luggage.

The morning started around six AM, when the train stopped, so everyone could buy additional food to the packed bun and tiny water bottle handed in the train, and brush their teeth. Of course, food can't be eaten without some music , right? After an hour of further sleeping attempts his majesty finally rose and met the people sharing his cabin. One elder guy spoke and wrote English quite well, so we managed to have an interesting conversation. He knew quite a bit about Israel and admired our country. I wondered whether to tell him that we are not that great these days and ruin his image of us. He is a writer that write poems (forgot the word...). I found out that the annoying song was a small device he had, with a small figurine of Buddha attached to it and a speaker sounding Buddha's name, chanted by some monks. If I would have known I might have taken the batteries out... or not. Next there were a mother and a son, traveling to Danang. They didn't know much English but you don't really need much to play rock-scissors-paper-needle(?!) and listen to how they pronounce Vietnamese from my brand new photocopied phrasebook. They were very nice and bought me sugar canes as a parting gift. When I went looking at the rest of the train, I met a fourteen years old girl (I didn't know she was fourteen, I swear!), who was brushing her teeth at the moment. She came to my cabin (I didn't make her, officer!) and we had a nice chat. She reminded me how it is to be a child, where your opinions are very black and white, the future seems bright, you are full of enthusiasm about many things (Am I getting old or what?) and blue is your favorite color and not pink (This might mean wrong things about me. I'm talking about her here, ok?). She also knew English quite well but was very apologetic when she didn't find the word, which is expected, but my efforts to convince her not to apologize were in vain. Heck, I'm the same.

So in all, in was a lovely experience. I don't know about you guys, but I'm heading to my soft sleeper bed at the hotel right now.