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Welcome to Hard Seat Overnight Train from Nha Trang to Da Nang, duration 14 hours. This I can truly say was one of the worst trips I've ever done in my life. Some would say character building, I would say just a pain in the arse in more ways than one...
With Jazza and my motorbikes put on the train the day before all we had was our backpacks and tickets ready for the big train adventure. Getting to the train station 30mins before departing Anna, Jazza and I stocked up on baguettes and beers to have on the train. Before getting on the train I thought to myself this was going to be an experience. The carriages looked like they were built before the war and meant to house animals with with mesh covering the windows and shutters on top of that. Getting into our carriage Anna's face was priceless with a look of absolute horror, I pretty sure this was pushing her comfort zone levels. Looking around our carriage, it was full, having to already squeeze and jump over people to find our seats. It was so strange because we where pretty much the only westerners
on the whole train let alone in the hard seat section which meant everyone in view of us were just staring without blinking for hours it seemed. Bags between our legs, under our seats and pretty much where ever we could find room we set ourselves in to get as comfy as we could. For me this was putting my neck pillow under my bum, these were deferentially
HARD seats. I will never complain about a sore bum from a seat for the rest of my life after this.
With a couple of beers down we decided on trying to find a game to play to pass the time. I introduced the guys to a word game I knew, not the best game for me to play against others being completely dyslexic but thinking it could be fun. The game worked with everyone having a piece of paper with 1 to 8 or so on it, each number representing a questions “Boy's name” “Fruit?” “Country?” etc. Each of us taking turns with picking a letter of the alphabet and at the end seeing who had the most names, etc. that no one else had. With a time
limit set of 60 seconds and having my stopwatch on it was pretty entertaining and passed the time well. I got destroyed in this game by Anna and Jazza which seemed to have some telepathic connection always picking the same words of some strange places and names. What didn't help was Anna always questioning my answers and demanding I'd prove they were proper names and even when proving it using my phone she still didn't believe me, sometimes sucking the fun out of a friendly game.
All the letters of the alphabet finished which killed a few hours it was time to try and get some sleep. Most Vietnamese people had already got into position and already asleep. One girl I remember was lying underneath Jazza's seat cuddling her giant stuffed crocodile toy, so cute to see. Jazza straight away claimed the alley way floor pretty much taking up the whole passage way. Anna after a few hours of trying to get comfy on the seat joined him with half her body under my seat. Myself, I tried at least half a dozen positions and the most comfortable one was squeezing my head between underneath the table to rest my head on my backpack, then having my torso in an L shape on the base of my seat and crossing the passage way with me legs, one going on the base of the opposite seat and the offer going on the top of the backrest. Got a good picture of that? This position didn't last long though, as the first person to walk down and the carriage very quickly smacked my legs to move them out of the way, so it was back to seating there with my head against the rattling wall.
Morning coming and arriving at Da Nang train station we were all drained of energy and sleep deprived. We then found out our motorbikes hadn't arrived yet and needed to wait a couple of hours before they arrived, so a coffee was needed to pass the time. When the motorbikes did arrive only Jazza's was there with mine missing the train and arriving later in the day. So it was decided Jazza and Anna would go together on his motorbike to find the others in Hoi An. I believe this was the first time Jazza had ridden a motorbike with a pillion let along with 2 bag backpacks on it aswell. They took off down the road nearly hitting 3 other motorbikes going the other way, this is when I made a little pray for their safety and waved goodbye.
My motorbike finally arrived a few hours later and I made my own way to Hoi An and meet up with the crew to have some much needed down time..
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