Sleeper Express trains may not be the fastest method of travel in Vietnam, but my camera argues for using them.
This post has been heavily delayed due to work stress and laziness – as it turns out, I’m only human after all. For Chinese New Year at the start of February (known as Tet in Vietnam), and the mandatory week off that it afforded, I made a slightly last-minute choice to travel to Da Nang and stay for just over 4 days in the coastal city.
The reasons I wanted to travel by plane were: my general hatred of airport security, wanting to see more of Vietnam’s landscape, and having no particular hurry to arrive in Da Nang. The journey by plane is around 2 hours in total; the journey by train for me was at least 17 hours. Comparing prices from online booking, a ticket for the SE5 train south was 846,000VND (around 38USD) and the SE14 north to Hanoi was 998,000VND which works out at around 45USD; a return plane ticket was around the 2,000,000VND mark, although some friends had managed to book tickets for a cheaper price with early booking. There were several travel options available for trains, with the main choice being between sleeper cabins or standard seating. Being the snob that I am, I opted for a soft-sleeper cabin which could house 4 people, rather than a standard coach seat. If you do travel with 3 other friends, I cannot recommend highly enough sharing your own cabin; as a solo traveller choosing to share a cabin, your entire journey experience may come down to sheer pot-luck. In retrospect, a plane journey should have been my first choice for going solo, but now at least I have crossed an extra item off of my Vietnam-to-do-list and attained some degree of bragging rights in the process.
I left Hanoi from the Central Train Station at 9:00am on a Saturday morning – it was a simple case of flagging down a motorbike taxi (xe om) from near my apartment and making sure I had plenty of time to settle into my cabin and prepare for the journey ahead. The cabins were cosy, yet comfortable enough given the conditions that could be expected. I brought a sleeping bag to use as a blanket, but small pillows and blankets were provided, however, I cannot attest to their hygiene and did not see much bedding being regularly replaced with fresh sheets. Each carriage had its own washroom with sinks and Western-style toilets, but the good ol’ long drop could still be found in a carriage, or two. Each cabin had a central window, table, and power sockets on the far wall flanked by bunk beds. There was a limited ventilation system and small reading lights for each bed as well. The SE5 was seemingly an older train that creaked and grated like a great big, insatiable, blue worm of Meccano undulating its way through the countryside. The regular jolts and shudders didn’t make for the easiest of trips into dreamland.
As for the inhabitants of my cabin, there was one inmate that made the experience more like being trapped in a cell and less of being in the lap of relaxation. I wouldn’t say that I am the type of adult to despise children, but my job as a teacher means that I am regularly interacting with loud children and being paid to do so, in the process. To have to spend my free time listening to screaming, shouting and kicking from an uncontrolled delinquent, in the accompaniment of their parent, is not something I gladly partake in. For most of my 17 hours, or so on the SE5, I had the pleasure of a 4-6 year-old boy screaming out loud for no apparent reason, crying, kicking the door to the cabin and running around the corridor. The only time that silence was heard (ignoring the groan of the train) was when the demonic being lost his will to be infuriating and fell asleep (after which he woke his father up and demanded attention). Never have my travel notes from a trip seemed so full of murderous intent.
When not in my cell, I wandered the train looking for things to photograph, listened to music, slept what little I could, and grabbed a small plastic red chair from a storage area and sat near the exit doors to read my Kindle. It is rare that I have so much free reflective time to myself, but such a magnitude of hours in one sitting is more testing than it is refreshing.
Exhausted and world-weary, I happily set foot in Da Nang by 1:30am and headed straight for my hotel to embrace a pillowy peacefulness of silence.
Train Journey 2: The Trackening
Filled with an apprehension of what may lie ahead, I waited at the train station seemingly in another dimension of consciousness; the one that only exists before 5am on a weekday. The SE14 had a surprisingly welcome wooden-themed interior and was definitely a bit smaller than its SE5 brethren, but also decidedly quieter in its movement along the tracks. As if to grace me with forgiveness for my previous journey, fate had it so that I was the only soul in the cabin for a great portion of my 21 hours back to Hanoi. Never before have I had so much sleep in a 24-hour period. Despite missing the sunshine that graced the world outside the cabin, I could relax, read, and listen to music in my own world away from lesson-planning and deadlines.
Just so that life didn’t make things too perfect an experience, my small Nirvana was regularly interrupted by food and snack carts, with shuffling creatures that would bang on doors and often open them to offer you food, only to leave the door open in their wake. Pretty much leaving unwelcome light and sound greedily flooding in.
Once back in Hanoi, it was an emotional reunion with my apartment and a bed that had probably been stationary longer than I had been an adult for.
Overall?
Nothing does sleep deprivation quite so well, like a holiday of travel in a foreign country; sleep is the currency we pay for adventure with. Quite frankly, this trip is definitely a waste of hours that could be spent at a destination city, but it does offer something different to the more cold-cut efficiency of air travel. Watching the paddy fields and mountains roll away past your window is akin to a painted canvas moving through a frame on an art gallery wall.
Was it stressful? Yes. Was I extremely drained? Yes. Would I do it again? Probably not.
Am I glad that I did it just the once?
You’re damn right.
Accidentally Wayfaring 