Steph, Fred and Jason in our little room on the hard bunksFrom Hanoi, Jason and I, along with two new friends, a French couple, Fred and Steph, took the train to the small mountain town of Sapa. Most tourists book the train through a tour agency and travel in the special tourist cars. No, we decided, we weren't going to do that. We'd book our own tickets and ride with the locals for less than half the price. There are many different classes of tickets and we wanted the soft sleeper- the best- for our 9 hour overnight journey. Unfortunately all the soft sleepers were already sold, so we had to settle for the hard sleeper- the second best.
I thought it would be okay. In China we had taken the soft sleeper, which was clean, comfortable, and quiet. We heard the hard sleeper was basically the same thing there, just as comfortable. We found out the hard way that that is not the case in Vietnam.
At the train station we made our way to our dirty old train car and found our little compartment which the four of us would share with two more locals. It was not clean. It was not comfortable. And it was definitely not quiet. To sleep on, we had rock solid linolium bunks covered by a thin bamboo mat. All night long people shouted in the hallways, which didn't really matter because the roar of the train through the open window was already loud enough.
And I'm not even going to talk about the condition of the bathroom.
The four of us stayed up for a while sitting on the bottom bunks playing cards so that we would hopefully be so tired we would just crash. And it worked, except for the fact that we all woke up everytime the train made a stop- about every 10 km.
Thanks, but we're taking the tourist train on the way back.
I thought it would be okay. In China we had taken the soft sleeper, which was clean, comfortable, and quiet. We heard the hard sleeper was basically the same thing there, just as comfortable. We found out the hard way that that is not the case in Vietnam.
At the train station we made our way to our dirty old train car and found our little compartment which the four of us would share with two more locals. It was not clean. It was not comfortable. And it was definitely not quiet. To sleep on, we had rock solid linolium bunks covered by a thin bamboo mat. All night long people shouted in the hallways, which didn't really matter because the roar of the train through the open window was already loud enough.
And I'm not even going to talk about the condition of the bathroom.
The four of us stayed up for a while sitting on the bottom bunks playing cards so that we would hopefully be so tired we would just crash. And it worked, except for the fact that we all woke up everytime the train made a stop- about every 10 km.
Thanks, but we're taking the tourist train on the way back.
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