Just a few days to go…

It’s all flown by far too quickly.  I now only have two full days left in Vietnam before I begin flying home on Thursday (I won’t actually arrive till Friday morning).  Not much has happened since I last wrote.  We survived our last night train experience largely by being too tired to be concerned about dirt and rodents.  Everyone has been doing their last minute shopping and we’ve had quite a few good byes already.  After about 8pm tonight, I’ll be on my own in Hanoi.  I wouldn’t mind but our hotel is not in a touristy area which means it’s severely lacking in dinner opportunities.  I’m trying to decide if I want to eat at the dodgy place next door which offers local specialties like fried turtle (and more usual things like fried rice) or venture further afield. 

Tomorrow I’ve booked a day tour to another province just to the south of Hanoi.  I’ll get to see some local villages and a few pagodas and caves of varying importance.  Hanoi is not as busy as Saigon, so although I enjoy being able to cross the street most of the time, I do miss their better markets and abundance of restaurants close to the hotel.  I’ll shop for last minute things and wander around again on Wednesday, then it’s nearly home time.

Vietnamese rice wine is lethal

Today we completed our trek in Sapa.  Considering last night’s efforts on the rice wine, today’s shorter trek was actually seemed harder.  Yesterday we walked about twelve kilometres up and down mountain sides.  I’ve got lots of pictures of terraced rice paddies, one of which I actually managed to stick one of my feet in this morning when I overbalanced.  Who says altitude, a cold and the after effects of serious drinking don’t mix?  The homestay was lovely but between ten or eleven of us we managed to polish off over two litres of the local home brew.  Much merriment followed (as did pictures). 

It’s quite cold up here in the mountains and almost all my warm clothing now has mud on it.  It’s also not a relaxing experience trekking in northern Vietnam due to the fact that each group usually ends up with nearly double the amount of people trekking when the local ethnic women decide to tag along and occasionally try and sell you stuff.  They can be quite persistant.  Tonight we catch the night train back to Hanoi and a number of the group leave over the next two days as the tour ends.  I’ve got a few more days in Hanoi so will have to decide if I’m going to be lazy and stay in the city, or think about doing a day trip somewhere.

And the score is….

Creatures of the overnight train – 1, travellers -1.  So we’ve arrived in Hanoi, in fact, although it’s only 10am we’ve already been here five and half hours.  There are currently only day rooms available which means that presently four of us are trying to sleep and shower in one room.  The room I’m going to be in eventually won’t be ready for at least another hour.  The overnight train was not so much of an ordeal as last time.  The train we had last night was immediately, obviously cleaner without signs that someone had been sleeping in our beds five minutes previously.  So we were off to a good start.  This time everyone stocked up on vodka, mixes and snacks.  We had the ipod on and some very competitive games of Uno and Snap! were underway.  It was all good, noisy fun – for us at least.  During a stop at one station, our tour leader was dispatched to quickly buy more alcohol because we were running dry fast.  Today will indicate how good Vietnamese rice based vodka is for someone.  We’ve got free time today, so a few of us will go out wandering soon.  Tomorrow we get a city tour of all the highlights (but we won’t get to see Ho Chi Minh up close and personal because he’s on his yearly trip to Russia for touch ups).

Bracing myself for the overnight train

Today was our second day in Hue.  We took a boat trip up the Perfume river to see the Thien Mu pagoda and Tu Duc’s tomb.  It was a good trip and the pagoda and tomb were interesting, but it really is getting cold here.  It drizzled a bit today which combined with the temperature made us start thinking about buying winter gear.  No one brought much with them because we all assumed it would be relatively warm all through Vietnam.  But it’s not, and apparently the North is colder still.

Tonight we head back onto the overnight train.  Wishes are for rodent, reptile and bug free travel.  Our guide says mice on the trains are quite rare – we must have just been lucky .  This trip to Hanoi is longer than the the last one we took.  It’s about twelve hours long assuming we run on time.  I’ll keep you posted on rodent watch.

Lizards and mice and bugs…Oh My!

We’ve now completed our first stint on the overnight trains here in Vietnam.  It was certainly an interesting experience and we have three more night trains before we’re done.  In our cabin of four we stocked up on snacks, vodka and a pack of cards to pass the time.  We boarded the train in Nha Trang for the nine hour journey to Da Nang.  As we entered our cabin we realised that the previous passengers we had just seen disembark had also felt the need to sleep in what were to be our beds for the night.  Discarding the sheets and blankets already there we managed to get a hold of some clean ones to cover our mattresses.  

After we had settled in the vodka, snacks and cards made an appearance, as did an iPod player full of dubious pop tunes.  I’m sure our travelling companions in the cabins either side of ours will agree that we are truly awesome at sing alongs.  We were also engaged in a pretty serious game of Snap!  Fingers could have been lost.  Our merriment was unfortunately interrupted by the appearance of a small mouse that decided to jump on me and crawl in my hair.  The other three occupants of the cabin screamed bloody murder and ran into the hallway.  Of course everyone still thought we were playing silly buggers (or Snap!) and didn’t come out to see what was happening.  This morning it turned out that one of the guys had found a small lizard in his bed and some of the others may have encountered bed bugs (eeeeew).  So, all in all I got about four and half hours sleep before we disembarked but I’d rather deal with a mouse than bed bugs.  After the train arrived in Da Nang we hopped on a bus and rather groggily made our way to Hoi An where we will stay today and tomorrow.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

Finally we went on our boat trip today.  It rained the whole way out to the island, which shouldn’t have been a surprise.  Once there it cleared for a while and some of us jumped in for a swim.  No snorkeling because the weather’s been rotten and there wouldn’t have been anything to see.  It was a good trip though and we were served a delicious lunch on board. 

Tonight we board our first overnight train.  Four to a small cabin it travels through the night, taking us further north.  It leaves just after 8pm and arrives in Da Nang about 5/6am.  From Da Nang we take a bus for another hour or so to reach our final destination Hoi An.  We’ve got two days in Hoi An and apparently the weather is rubbish there too.  Hopefully it will clear but we just have to wait and see.