People who read yesterday’s journal first might be wondering which plan we ended up hatching, and nesting.
People who didn’t read yesterday’s journal first might want to do so, because otherwise it won’t make much sense if I just say that it was plan B, and that it was a staggeringly uneventful day.
The third group of people will be those pressed for time who wish that I would kindly illuminate. The train from Hanoi was indeed late, so we left Hoi An at 11am, got to Danang at midday, waited in the waiting room until about 2.45pm, watched football on a large TV there, while a larger TV played bits and pieces of cartoons and old movies, all of which looked suspiciously like they were from the shop window display mode catalogue.
We bought chocolate bars, paid 1000 VND to go to the toilet, which wasn’t that bad, and while I was peering at the lady womaning the entry desk, wondering what amount she was saying in Vietnamese, the gentleman next to me produced a thousand from his wallet to indicate that was how much it was. Vietnamese people, on the whole, are very helpful and understanding people; for me, this explains why there are surprisingly few motorcycle crashes on such crowded roads.
On the train, because it was originally scheduled to be a day trip, we had booked into a carriage much like what you would find in an aeroplane; two rows of four seats, about 30 seats long, and a narrow aisle down the middle. That would be great for a day trip; not so great if you arrival time in Nha Trang has been bumped back to about half-past-midnight. But with major floods around you just play the cards you’re dealt.
We amused ourselves pretty well looking out the window, taking pictures of the cabin and of the spectacular scenery, and playing Sudoku on Alice’s phone. She also discovered another game wherein you push blocks around to make groups, basically like 2D Tetris, which quickly became addictive. After that we sat on the train for a while, and ate our banana rolls and some of the left over packet egg soups (from China!), and talked about whatnot, and eventually Tuan woke up and we had a good time going through the pictures on our laptop, which he rather liked, so we put a few on his thumb drive, and he also told about some of his favourite and least-favourite tours through Vietnam. And some of his least-favourite groups from 3 years working for Intrepid, the details of which we shall not divulge presently.
One other thing; just before we rolled into Nha Trang there were narrow fields either side of the train line, with networks of lights throughout them, all looking rather magical. These lights, it transpires, are to help the fruit grow; Tuan said that if we had come in the daytime we would see that the train line runs only a few metres from the edge of the water, and you can see all the way across the bay, and we were missing out a little bit. But the night arrival with fields full of lights was pretty nice to see as well.
We didn’t wait long at all for our taxi to the hotel, given it was actually half-past-midnight, and the hotel wasn’t that busy when we arrived so we could check straight in and go straight to bed.
Greg
