In theory, if you calculate the distance from Saigon to the Mekong Delta it should only take a couple of hours by road. The real story? It’ll probably take up most of your day and age you ten years. Forget the swerving Honda scooters and the meandering waterways that force your bus to take indirect routes. Your biggest problem will be dealing with tour companies that stretch the truth about what services they can offer you, all in the name of making a quick buck.
Take Delta Adventure Tours. We wanted to buy a simple, one-way air-conditioned bus ticket to the town of Can Tho.
“It take four hours,” the agent at the office said. “You leave 7.30am.”
“Is the bus air conditioned? Can we put our bags under the bus, rather than stack them on the roof ? Will we have to share with fifty-six reeking gap year students with posh voices and fungal toenails? Will we get there by lunchtime?”
Yes, yes, no and yes, apparently. We paid our seven dollars apiece, assuming we’d have a busload full of people bound for Can Tho, possibly picked up from some of the many agencies operating in the area.
We got there early, missing the hotel breakfast. Gradually, the group of people in front of the tour office swelled to zoo-like proportions. Seemed like every tour on the planet departed from here. There were people on three-day Mekong Delta tours, armed with backpacks that resembled inefficient Swiss Army knives; their cups, inflatable mattresses and shoes tied desperately onto them. Other French people on a day trip, tentatively clutching Routard guides. Australian girls on overnight trips with festering mosquito bites on their arms and ankles.
“ONE DAY TOUR HERE,” a woman shrieked, as we all crossed the small road and waited for a slick of snail-paced buses to creep their way up the road. “THREE DAY THAT BUS!” Tourists scurried this way and that, huffing and puffing. Where the hell was our bus, then?
Turned out we had to share ours with the one-day Delta Adventure tour group. The thirty-year-old tour guide immediately let everyone know she was single and giggled coquettishly when she discovered that there was one single guy on the bus, then launched into some vaguely interesting facts about Vietnam life. Soon after, she told people what they were going to expect on their tour today. But what about us? We just bought a one way ticket to Can Tho and were along for the ride. We didn’t want a three hour boat trip or a stop at the local village to try fruit. We wanted to go direct to Can Tho. We paid seven dollars apiece for an air conditioned, safe bus without hanging around for any tour group.
“When does this arrive at Can Tho?” we asked the tour guide.
“Maybe you wait for tour group to finish boat trip at Cai Be. You walk around village. Maybe 1pm we leave and take you Can Tho.”
Excuse me? The tour group was due to arrive at Cai Be at 10am. We’d have to walk around the village for three hours?
“But your office said we’d go straight to Can Tho by 1pm. No waiting. Cai Be is still a couple of hours from Can Tho.”
“If you no wait, then maybe you take local bus from Vinh Long. It easy to get ticket.”
Local bus? We didn’t pay an agency for any dilapidated local bus. We could have done that ourselves. We decided to play it by ear. After a short time, the bus pulled over at a rest stop where people could go to the toilet (the tour guide said it was where you could “go sing a song to the river”), use hammocks and buy drinks.
“You all change bus now,” the guide told the group. We all had to switch buses and go to a slightly smaller one. “I sorry. My boss say we all change bus now.”
She giggled at the confused passengers, including a couple like us who were only going halfway, to Vinh Long. They were also screwed around. “We didn’t want to join some tour group,” the male half of the couple grumbled. “It’s so hard to travel independently here.”

Snakes and dragons

The guide then resumed her commentary. “You know, I used to have boyfriend. But I born in 1977. I’m a snake according to Chinese horoscope. Very strong. Also, seven lucky number so I double lucky. If you born in 1976, you a dragon, very good.”
I mentioned that I was also born in the ‘lucky’ year 1977. But I wasn’t bothered to explain that I was also a dragon rather than a snake, because I was born before the start of the Chinese New Year.
The guide continued. “I was compatible with boyfriend, but his mother was a Tiger. Snake no get along with Tiger. When I want to marry boyfriend, I have to live with mother too because he only son. So I no marry boyfriend. He upset, he follow me. But by then I with another boyfriend.” She giggled again.
We then had to sit through more of this sob story and a few more questionable facts such as how superstitious and pure the Buddhists were compared to Catholics, of which she was one.
Eventually, the bus pulled up at Cai Be and the tour group tumbled out of the bus. The guide told us and the other couple to wait; Vinh Long was half an hour away.
Rob went out of the bus and followed the Snake to the tour group. The driver of our bus was about to pull away but we explained we still had to wait for Rob to clarify matters. I could see Rob and the Snake arguing as he tried to explain that we bought a ticket to get us to Can Tho, not to go on some local bus we could have organised ourselves.
We all looked out of the window as Rob argued fervently with the woman who appeared to be standing her ground. (”I want a refund,” Rob told the woman. “What, we take you all the way here for nothing?” the Snake protested. “Yes. What a waste of time it was.”) After about five minutes Rob came in and proclaimed victory, and that the driver would take us to the ferry crossing near Can Tho. But we didn’t see him answer the phone or speak to anyone so how would he know what to do?
Eventually, we got to Vinh Long. The other couple wished us luck and the driver motioned for us to get out. Hang on, we wanted to go to Can Tho. It was just 40 minutes away. He couldn’t speak English so I minded the bags while Rob and the driver went across the road to an unaffiliated tour desk. Luckily Rob had the business card of Delta Adventure tours and managed to call the head office. After speaking to three people, a manager finally relented and the driver was given instructions to take the two of us to Can Tho.

Once there, we had to take a ferry (free) the ten minutes or so across the river to Can Tho itself, as the bus was unable to cross it. We were accosted by various ‘guides’ and many motorcycle drivers who wanted to take us to Can Tho, but we were going to go on the ferry on foot. The frenzy of motorcycles that were crammed into the ferry was entertaining to behold.
Can Tho itself was a small town by Western standards. Once we got to the hotel, a man who’d been talking to the receptionist explained how he could organise an eight hour tour of the Mekong Delta. We talked him down from $30 to $24 for two people. It would involve seeing two floating markets, a rice noodle factory and lunch at an “orchard” (extra cost for food). It sounded OK, so we paid and got a receipt. Later we decided it might be a good idea to get a mini bus to Chau Doc, the main Vietnamese border town that receives travellers going to and from Cambodia. We said we wanted to leave at 3.30pm and he made a phone call and told us to be in front of the hotel then. We paid $5 apiece and got a receipt.
The Mekong tour was great; we had to be ready by 5.30am but we were able to see the authentic market sellers with their rambutan, soursop, carrot, bananas, pineapples, taro… even slabs of ice. Travelling along the river you see the tin shacks and people washing clothes (and themselves) in the muddy water — even brushing their teeth. The river was their lifeline. The mother and teenage son on our small motorised rowboat stopped in the canals to cut fruit from trees including water coconut and some mystery fruit. But we will talk more about that in a later post. We got back by lunchtime and after that, we waited for our mini bus. A small taxi seating about 6 other people pulled up. We tried to clarify if this was going to Chau Doc. Turns out that the taxi was only going to Can Tho bus depot. The hotel staff couldn’t really understand us when we explained that we paid for a mini bus to Chau Doc. Our ‘agent’ proved elusive. Eventually the hotel said that the taxi would take us to the depot and the agent would meet us there, and from then we could go to Chau Doc. It was then that we realised he was only ever going to book us a seat on local mini bus - again, we could have done that ourselves. Oh well.
When we got there, the agent was nowhere to be seen. We had about ten people offer to take us to Chau Doc but then they wanted us to pay. We tried to explain that we had paid and it was all very frustrating. Eventually we told a girl about what had happened and I think she just let us on the mini bus because she felt sorry for us. If we’d gone to the depot ourselves we would have paid $2.50 each, not $5, we discovered. The cowardly agent was nowhere to be found but luckily we didn’t have to pay any extra.

The moral of all this palaver is that if you want to travel independently, don’t do it through a middleman or make sure you aren’t going with some tour group.
And now? Well, we’re trying to get to Cambodia and unfortunately we had little choice but to go with the Delta crowd again. We were told we aren’t going to be with a tour group that does some three hour detour but I’ll believe it when I see it!

Vietnam has been so heavily scarred by war (it was essentially at war from 1860-1980) that you can not go a day without reminders, and no more so than on the tourist trail.

We spent a sapping afternoon at the War Remnants Museum. It is the most popular tourist site in Vietnam. The photographs of agent orange victims, of tortured villagers, of destroyed schools in and after the Vietnam war make you feel sick to your core. The most disturbing are those of the kids born with agent orange deformities .These kids fathers were farm workers in the period that the US dropped agent orange defoliant to clear the jungle. There are grotesque grisly photographs of trophy corpses, shredded bodies, and even jars of pickled fetuses. (No pictures, sorry!). There were hundreds of tourists in the museum but it was the quietest museum I’ve ever been in. Outside, enormous unexploded bombs stand as horrible sculptures. All visitors appeared to be very moved by the experience.

Next day to the Cu Chi tunnels. We’ve already written about the Vinh Moc tunnels near the DMZ where villagers hid from the war. The Cu Chi tunnels are completely different. These tunnels lie just 60km from Saigon and were a vital part of the Viet Cong war effort. At 260km long, they were a cunning method to sabotage nearby US bases, to facilitate guerilla warfare, to meet and plan, and to provide supplies. Incredibly the tunnels are only 1.3m high and 60cm wide.

It’s not particularly easy to travel independently in Vietnam. As the place is overrun with tourists it is far easier to tag along with a cheap tour group than do it on your own. $7 will get you a 7 hour tour. The price is being forced to listen to a tour guide’s spiel. This time the guide was mildly interesting, at least at first. Vietnamese born, he left Saigon in 1968 aged 19 to join the US army in the US. Shipped back to commence his tour of duty in 1970, his mission was to rescue MIA soldiers on the Mekong river. After the war he stayed put in Saigon, was sent to “reunification camp” and these days is a tour guide. Some of his tale seemed a bit fanciful, especially as he has had 17 years to hone the story, but it kept out interest for most of the time. The crowd seemed to like that his name was Mister Binh (Mister Bean). I find it difficult to believe that after recounting his tale every day for 17 years he uncontrollably sheds a tear at 9.27am as he recounts his personal chronology, and yet more difficult to believe he was the one who took down the last US flag in Saigon. Nevertheless, he’s lived an action packed life.

As with all these tours you make a stop to buy souvenirs so that the guide can collect a commision. This time at the “Handicapped Handicrafts Shop”. Next time you get dressed or wash your clothes you should look at the label as chances are the clothes were made in Vietnam by workers earning a pittance. Workers at the HHS looked happy enough, maybe because the money goes more directly to them. It’s hard to establish the truth but Vietnam is said to look after its war wounded and agent orange children. All over the cities you see amputees in specially made mobile road-ready wheelchairs that look like railroad pushcars from a cartoon. But there are also hundreds of billboards over Vietnam that have apparently propaganda messages about how good the government is, with soldiers hugging children and the like (I have pictures of these, I hope to be able to post when I’m in a more modern place).

 With one thousand visitors a day, the tunnels themselves are a major attraction. You are shuffled around in minibus sized groups of 20 so the place does not actually feel crowded as or even busy. First you watch a really poor video that shows the heroic vietnamese girls fighting in trenches, the video is so bad that I’d recommend sitting outside and resting for 10 minutes. Then you walk through a series of spots in the forest that show aspects of the tunnel. There is a trap to catch sniffer dogs. There is a display of the various booby traps laid inside the tunnels to inflict pain on fat american invaders, but best of all there is a reconstructed tunnel entrance to show how well hidden they were. You can try out the entrance for yourself but even skinny me would have trouble getting inside.

Next on to the shooting range where you can try out AK-47s, M16s, and so on for $1.30 a bullet. As Mr Binh noted before we arrived, it is “particularly popular with British tourists”. The 19 year old gap year kids each blew away 30-40 dollars on bullets. Everyone else waited just 10 metres away while they got their testosterone fix. Even this was educational as we got to smell and hear what the scene must have been like as 19 year old soldiers killed each other decades ago.

Finally to the tunnels themselves. It’s left to last as some may find them disappointing. If you are above average size there is no way you could fit and several of our group opted out. Kim and I managed to go only the first 40 metres of 100 before escaping. I was too tall to walk bent over and had to shuffle forward on my haunches in 40C heat. Many of those who shot guns felt they had to go the full distance and emerged at the recreated hospital covered in dirt. Humourously a posh English kid who had no troubles shooting an M16 was too scared to go into the tunnels (”I don’t like confined spaces”). A fun day with interesting sites that only just beat the nuisance value of a bus tour and Mister Binh.

We’re currently at the border of Vietnam and Cambodia after a few days of unbelievably beautiful experiences and unbelievably awful bureaucracy. Like all border towns, Chau Doc has an otherwordly frontier feel about it. If all goes to plan we’ll be in Phnom Penh in 24 hours. Tonight is another night in a $10 hotel on the Mekong River hiding from 30 bazillion mosquitoes huddled under a mosquito net.

- rob

This is My Son. No not my son, but My Son, Vietnam which Kim has already written about.

Kim has already written about our time in Hoi An. Here are a few pictures to go along with the story. 1) Kim in one of the tiny alleys that run through the town, 2) A stream of “cyclos” down the main street, 3) A typical fruit and vege seller wearing a typical “non la” hat and sitting in a typical squat position.

If I thought the roads in Hanoi were tricky, the wider boulevards of Saigon are something else. Luckily there was some sort of traffic light system at this intersection that appeased the flow for a few brief seconds, but don’t assume the world will stop for you. They’ll only swerve behind you, so never walk backwards. Once your foot moves in front of the other, you have to keep walking ahead.

To you this may look like an average couch in any waiting lounge but for us, after 250 hours of train travel through Asia, it was luxury. This is onboard the 5-Star Express train, “The most luxurious train in Vietnam”. It runs between Nha Trang and Saigon, a trip of 8-9 hours.

We’ve caught 14 trains from London to Saigon, the only non-train stretch being a short hop over the China-Vietnam border by bus. I’ve lost count but we must have travelled around 20,000km. From here on in, we won’t see much in the way of trains. They are virtually non exisitent in Cambodia. Since we started the trip in style on the Eurostar we thought we’d reach Saigon in style.

The 5-Star express is a private train that is priced out of reach of most locals and as it isn’t in the guide books it doesn’t see too many foreigners either. Most of the foreigners were aboard as part of a resort package. The locals looked “monied”, the woman across from us was weighed down with various diamonds and so on. Since there is almost no information online about this train I thought I’d fill in the gaps for anyone stumbling across this page. We sat in the Club section, seats here cost 450,000 Dong ($30). We were aboard “Train #3″ in Coach C1. The carriage only has 30 seats, but they are comfortable leather couches and each has a wood table. Unfortunately they don’t recline. You get a couple of cushions. Since the carriage was only half full, most people decided to spread out on to the double seats for a nap. Four english speaking staff look after you so there are plenty of blankets and beverages available throughout the trip. There is a power socket per seat, if that matters to you. A reasonable dinner appears to be served but since we are vegetarian we asked for a “no meat” meal when we booked the tickets. Of course this meant we got fish! There is a “multi-purpose area” that shows films in another carriage but in the seating carriage cartoons are played endlessly over hanging TVs.

While it was all very comfortable and stylish, it was also boring and sterile. I felt like I was napping in Starbucks. If you want to relax and sleep this is the train for you. If this is your only chance to catch a train in Vietnam the regular services are definitely more interesting. On two occasions a regular service pulled up next to us at stations. It was as if the passengers on the other train had seen a spaceship with everyone waving and pointing at us. And several passengers in our carriage, who obviously hadn’t enjoyed normal asian travel travel, were startled by the conditions in the other train. At risk of sound like a Recreational Slummer [*], the regular train service would be my choice next time.

[*] Recreational Slumming: The practice of participating in recreational activities of a class one perceives lower than one’s own: “Karen! Donald! Let’s go bowling tonight! And don’t worry about shoes…apparently you can rent them.” - Douglas Coupland, Generation X

In just a few short years, the amount of gadgetry I’ve seen people carry during their travels appears to have increased tenfold. When I did a bit of travelling through Europe seven years ago, I had my CD Walkman, a few novels  and an email address I used when visiting an internet cafe.

Now, we see people with portable DVD players watching films on trains, people with slimline laptops wirelessly accessing the net from the hundreds of wi-fi connected cafes scattered around even the smallest of towns, iPods, digital cameras and mini-camcorders galore, furious texts being sent using cameraphones, language translation gadgets on the go, PDAs, twenty-something travellers accessing their Facebook profiles online and goodness knows what else.

I’ve found the mobile phone expensive but useful at times, particularly if I’m in an area where there’s internet coverage. When we were on the overnight train to Guilin in the south of China, Rob was able to check whether we had to get off at Guilin North or if the train stopped at Guilin proper, as no one on the train could speak English. We even checked the train timetable on the go.

Of course, I’ve been uploading photos to Flickr and updating our journal too (I tried using mobile Flickr but it cost me two pounds to send over a picture of a vegetable stir-fry). I also have my Nintendo DS to pass the time (I didn’t bring the DS browser, Sean!) However, as I mentioned, I’m using a film camera when taking non-spontaneous shots, so the whirr of the film each time I take a shot must seem positively prehistoric to people around me: in the middle of a Chinese village on top of a hill, I had the auto-timer on and an old lady peered behind the camera to see the shot we’d taken, not realising that it was film! We’re also both keeping written journals.

I don’t think all this connectivity necessarily takes away from the travel experience; it helps to pass the long journeys and helps to instantaneously convey your adventure to others. But sometimes I just want everyone (including me) to switch all their electronics off and not have to worry about them! What do other people think….?

PS: On another unrelated note, I detest Harry Potter and it was good to notice they are already peddling photocopied versions of the book on the streets of Saigon two days after its release.

-kim

Spent three relaxing days visiting the appealing town of Hoi An, a few kilometres from the central Vietnam coast. The whole place is a world heritage site with much to explore within a small, almost completely walkable area. The colourful walls, Chinese influenced architecture, alleyways, bouganvillea and rich blue skies are very pretty, although the midday heat really does make you want to go inside after about ten minutes! Luckily every street corner has people selling bottled water.

During rainy times, the streets flood with river water so that the whole place resembles Venetian canals. For this reason you won’t see any carpet on the ground levels in summer, and the floors remain as dull, unappealing concrete apart from in the hotels. Above some doorways you’ll see circles that represent ‘eyes’ that protect houses from evil spirits.

The residents’ sense of style extends from architecture to clothes: Hoi An is famous for its many cheap express tailoring shops, although we didn’t stop to get any clothes done. Outside each shop you’ll see flip-chart pages stuck next to the mannequins with customer testimonals scrawled on them in felt pen. ‘THANKS FOR A WHOLE NEW WARDROBE!” and “WE CAME IN FOR ONE SUIT AND LEFT WITH NINE!” they invariably squeal. We saw an extremely rotund American man dump his clothes at the hotel reception for washing. Rob observed that he’s probably in Hoi An to be kitted up in new clothes.

Hoi An has attracted half a million visitors so far this year, and we keep bumping into the same people we saw further up this skinny country. We saw the loudmouth Australian guy from the DMZ tour who wouldn’t stop talking about Australian inflation rates, house prices and all the great places he’s been to (he was too full of himself to recognise us). We also saw the American couple on our Halong Bay shuttle bus in our hotel lobby — we also saw them in the lobby of our hotel in Hué. “It’s the Tripadvisor effect!” I said to the wife, referring to the popular website where people rate the hotels they’ve stayed at. They nodded knowingly. (Both of the hotels we’d stayed at had received favourable reviews for the price range we’d chosen.)

Our hotel had a small pool with an inflatable dolphin. I had a hard time trying to get up on it (I think it was designed for ten year olds). For just $16 a night we found a really good, friendly hotel with free internet and great hospitality.

When visiting the old centre, you can buy a ticket that lets you visit five attractions. Perhaps a temple/assembly hall, a museum or the famous Japanese covered bridge. Our favourite attraction was the Tan Ky house — seven generations of the same family have lived there for the past 200 years, and the house is filled with enjoyable clutter. We were given a cup of tea and a brief rundown of the place before exploring its ground floor at our leisure.

We also had a peaceful meal at the vegeratian restaurant Karma Waters at Cua Dai beach, just a few kilometres from Hoi An. There, we could gaze up at the stars (after spending weeks seeing starless skies in China, this was a welcome thing).

On our last full day we got up at 5am to take a tour to My Son, the ancient Champa Kingdom relic site an hour away. This was bombed heavily by US B52s in the late 1960s after the Viet Cong based themselves there. Sadly, there isn’t much left, but what there is left is very interesting and you can imagine what it did look like in its full glory. We got there as it opened at 6.30am, but unfortunately things were taking so long to get going (which is why Rob hates organised tours) thanks to some lovesick couple. We’d already missed sunrise before we’d even set off. Luckily we wandered off as the camp tour guide went on an on for half an hour without letting anyone move around to take photos (”You know, ladies, you may notice some Italian archaeologists at work here. Let me tell you, they are single. If you are interested, let me know and I’ll try and sort something out,” and “We’ll stop here for a minute if anyone wants to visit the ‘Happy House’, know what I mean?”).

We then bought some souvenirs and gifts. Bargaining is hard, boring work - there’s a phrase in Asia that the sellers say: “Same, same… but different.” Basically if you buy something, they’ll give you something else that looks similar and if you protest they’ll say, “Same, same… but different.”)  Later, at a restaurant we drank tall cool glasses of nuoc mia, also known as sugar cane juice. You’ll see street stalls cranking the sugar canes up and squeezing the juice out of them. Drinking the juice seems an OK way to get energy levels up quickly during the hot weather. Another refreshing speciality is coffee and ice (make sure the ice is filtered) and we’ve had plenty of lemon juice, too.

Then we went across the river in a small boat with an old barefoot man (which took about two minutes) to the other side where there was a lot of construction and quite a few resort hotels sprouting up.

 

We’re now in Nha Trang, Vietnam after a fun filled journey from Hoi An. Before arriving, I only knew of Nha Trang from the scene in Apocolypse Now where Martin Sheen receives his beachside mission orders to hunt down Marlon Brando. And that now it is filled with red shouldered sun seekers on holiday from Birmingham.

[Interruption as a fat American in Hawaiian shirt and panama hat refuses to pay US$0.37 for using the Internet for 45 mins. He shoves down $0.18 and walks off in a huff]. We have an hour until our train to Saigon so are using it here at the internet.

We probably haven’t made it clear that we’re doing the Vietnam portion of our trip from north to south. Vietnam is such a skinny country - 1800km long but only 50km wide in places - that you can’t help but do the regular trail in one of two directions. It is a long stretch from Hanoi to Saigon so the regular stopping points are Hue (12 hours by train from Hanoi), Hoi An (3 hours further on), Nha Trang (11 hours further) and then Saigon (9 more hours). This convenient position is about the only good reason to visit Nha Trang.

There is no train station at Hoi An, the nearest is Da Nang 45 minutes drive away. Transport costs about $6 by private air conditioned taxi.On the way you go past China Beach which was once a bad TV show about a vietnam war evacuation hospital.

In China, it poses a difficulty that train tickets go on sale only 4 days before departure. In Vietnam, it poses a difficulty that locals buy all the train tickets weeks in advance. We managed to buy soft seat tickets on the slow train (TN3) only. $12 for 11 hours on the train. The only thing soft is the cushioning, the rest can be hard going even after the 250 hours of travel we’ve done to get here from London. The hard seats, as we saw in the next carriage, are basically row upon row of wooden park benches. People travel the entire 35-40 hours from Hanoi to Saigon on these benches.

Our seats were already occupied by two Vietnamese octogenarians who barked and motioned that they were not going to move and we should use the seats opposite. There is a lot of chopping and changing of seat positions in these trains and spare seats are auctioned off en route (ie, the train guard resells empty seat upgrades to hard-sitters and pockets the money). 

As there are 60 seats in the train carr

iage this usually means 58 Vietnamese and the two of us. Half the seats face forward and half back so for the first 10 or 15 minutes of the trip you can watch the whispers flow that there are foreigners and spot some craning necks to get a view of the white people. Half the vietnamese put their feet up on the top of the seat in front. It is all good natured, though. On the previous trip, a man wanted to give me several cans of beer (even though it was 10am) and some dried fish to munch on, just because thats what they do here. On this trip a young girl came over to practise her Spanish with us. She was disappointed we only spoke English. It all settled down quickly, one of the octogenerians opposite fell asleep on the filthy floor of the aisle and the 6 year old boy in front bounced up and down for the next 11 hours.

Not much to speak of for the rest of the trip other than thirty minutes of violent puking four rows down. Some young woman must have emptied half her body weight into plastic bags. I know, because they kept taking the used bags past my face. The illness was no surprise, as the train also operates as the most unsanitary kitchen I could imagine. Barbequed pieces of mystery meat are put on skewers and thrown into a giant bucket that is pushed along the floor of the train. People finger and inspect the food before deciding the pieces that they’d like to buy to eat with their mystery vegetables (free). A stench trails the bucket down the aisle. I’ll never complain about airline food again. When we come to a station stop, everyone hops out and buys a cob of corn each to inoculate themselves against disease. 10 minutes later they each have a toothpick to the mouth. Another 5 minutes and out come the face washcloths that everyone carries with them. Other passengers also operate as pantries of goodwill. One man had a gigantic jar of pickled eggs that was passed around the carriage for people to take one each.

Our usual strategy is to eat a big meal just before getting on the train, and one soon after arrival. This time, we arrived in Nha Trang at closing time. We had a bowl of French Fries next to an empty lot full of rats the size of cats. Kim has a photo of one of the rats staring at us.

The hotels here are also a bit on the dodgy side. Double the price of the excellent hotel we had in Hoi An, but not even half the quality. Our door to the balcony, which is accessible from the corridoor, does not lock. The hot water doesn’t work. The shower leaks everywhere. There is no where to lock your valuables. Welcome to Nha Trang.

Despite all this, we didn’t mind the town so much. It’s just like a scrappy and down at heel version of Brighton with some sand and almost as many Brits. It was a good place to recouperate for 36 hours before heading to Saigon. But for any Northeners who have stumbled on this journal and are thinking of visited Nha Trang, do yourself a favour and spend the time in Hoi An instead!

- rob

Funny photo of the day. Can you tell I’ve been wearing sandals for three weeks after an English winter?