Adventures on a train.

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We spent most of the Eighth day on a train. Before embarking I took a wander to get some coffee and a couple of little baguettes for the trip. Buying the baguettes was successful but my first coffee purchase ended up an iced coffee so I also bought a couple of hot coffees on the way back, I figured you can't have too much caffeine before a long day!

We were very lucky not to miss our train, by the time we had worked out the bill at the hotel and grabbed a taxi we had five minutes until scheduled departure time, definitely not enough time to navigate the traffic. Our taxi driver was a careful driver, not what we needed when we were in such a rush! With our urging he got us there five minutes after our train should have left, we ran in and to our immense relief they told us our train was running late and would be another fifteen minutes. It was a close call though!

The train itself was huge, we had booked soft sleepers in a 4 person cabin. Although our ticket said we had the bottom bunks, there were already two people settled in down there so we scrambled (with some difficulty!) onto the top. They were both very friendly women so I had no problem switching spots. It was lovely and air conditioned with lots of space to sit or lie down, though I had to hang my head half off the side of the bed to see properly out of the window but it was well worth it for the view.

As I always do on transport I had a sleep, waking up to the women on the bottom bunks leaving so we quickly scrambled down to take up their spots - much easier to enjoy the view of the beautiful countryside. The food trolleys were not appealing (or vegetarian) so I borrowed a metal mug off a friendly English man and had cup a soup and bread which was actually very satisfying.

At some point there was a commotion down the corridor, I jokingly suggested someone had brought a bird into the train. Taking a wander I stumbled across a man chasing an escaped duckling, so yes there was a bird on the train after all. I scooped the poor little thing up and gave it back to him (after he asked if I wanted it, I would have said yes had I not been pretty sure ducklings aren't allowed on planes). He put it back in a cardboard box presumably filled with other ducklings and thanked me profusely.

The views from the train slowly changed from green mountains to aloe vera farms to rock strewn mountains, farms, villages of tin houses and then we started to see scooters and eventually high rises. And then we were in Ho Chi Minh in a taxi and arriving at our next hotel.

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Photos

Our train
I was glad to have soft sleeper tickets!

Beautiful countryside
This was about an hour out of Nha Trang.