Overnight ‘soft’ sleeper train from Hanoi to Hue

Mandy: Wednesday 2nd/Thursday 3rd October

The train rattled, jerked and creaked through the night and ensured that I woke every hour. I couldn’t help but sit up and look out the window each time. (Smile) The others never stirred. The black silhouette of the hills glaring back at me. Not sure where the claim ‘soft sleeper’ came in as I have hardly slept and the ‘mattress’ was hard not soft!

I finally woke at 5.40am to see the iconic Vietnamese countryside shrouded in mist. It was light and the villages were alive with people and animals and school children going about their business and waving at me as the train passed. The affects of the typhoon a few days earlier (and maybe the two stronger typhoons a week before) were aparent as the flood waters are either side of the train tracks and into the distance at some points. Bags (of what I assume are sand) are on the tin roofs of villagers houses. Although some tin roofs had clearly blown off and lay nearby. Leaf laden trees were uprooted and bare branched trees were twisted and bent in half. Many large trees had obviously fallen across the train tracks. Freshly sawn trunks poked towards the train window for miles as we wobbled along the track.

In the fields boys and men are tending their water buffalo in the rice paddy fields that gently stepped back towards the green pointed hillside.

Everyone in my compartment is still asleep, annoyingly so as my camera has ran out of memory card so I can’t take any photos.

I ventured down to the toilet and notice that all the compartments that are up and awake are full of Vietnamese families. None of the westerners we saw last night in the waiting room have surfaced yet. They all seem to get up very early in Asia as we have noticed before.

It has been an eventful eleven hours so far. I have slept less than the others who do not seem to have heard the spitting and chatting that is going on in the corridor and the clanking of the carriages as we have stopped and started through the night. I have watched the clock around and peeped out of the window in the dark with just my bra and shorts on assuming no one would be awake in the middle of the night only to see guards with little lanterns staring back at me ….no expression on their faces, mind you at 3am in the morning my expression must have seemed pretty bland too. The absence of a nightdress didn’t seem to register with him, I think he had probably seen it all before.

I want to go back to sleep but I don’t want to miss the scenery.

The sky is a beautiful pink colour as the sun rises……soooo annoying that I do not have a camera. Although a certain very kind person who prints this blog off each time for my parents will be pleased there will be a few less photos I am sure! There is a beautiful pinkish-orange full sun coming through the mist with rice fields in front……. such a perfect shot…. mmmm do I wake Glen up? …..too late the clouds have covered it and the train has turned away from that direction anyway.

I have decided to delete some other photos and get a few shots of the scenery………..

I can see people stood inside of their houses, well little more than huts and the floors inside are flooded too. They are stood around holding their toddlers. How awful. One house stands in the middle of what looks like a lake with boulders placed all around it to try to keep the water out. How frightening it must be.

People are trying to cross flooded roads walking across carefully holding huge tyre inners for safety. In the rice fields where the very tips of the rice can be seen the men are walking through holding fishing nets to catch fish instead of tending the crops beneath their feet. None of them look worried or stressed in fact they seem calm and happy. Maybe this is nothing new and they are used to it.

We eventually arrive in Hue 3 1/2 hours late. The whole journey took 16 1/2 hours! We could have flown to London, caught a coach to Bristol and be settled with the family in the time it took us to travel down the cost of Vietnam!

We said our goodbyes to the girls (one of which we found out is a famous actress/singer well on her Canadian Island) and jumped down on to the station platform.