Danang, two unwelcome guests, and the sleeper train.

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11th/12th



Danang is most definitely a city, though much smaller than any we've been in so far. Our hotel is located on the tourist side, i.e, hotels, long coastline, restaurants. Next time I think I'd prefer to stay in the city proper - not quite as mental as Saigon, and definitely prettier - but for now we'll just make do with taking a taxi over one of the three bridges in order to get there. Two of the bridges are highly ornamental, one looking like the San Francisco icon, and the other with a large yellow design like a dragon. After dropping off some laundry, we took the boring one (which actually gave us a great view of the other two) and experienced the horror of Big C, the supermarket, at rush hour. We decided to get some food for the 15 hour train to Hanoi, knowing they don't serve very much during the journey, and immediately regretted our decision.



Packed. And absolute chaos! Turns out they shop like they drive, which means get to the front without a single regard for anyone else, and don't be afraid to use your wheels as a weapon. There is a serious regard for 'face' here in Asia - nobody loses their cool, or starts shouting when things go wrong. It seems all that aggression, usually vented with a couple of choice swear words or putting up a finger or two, comes out in their use of elbows, baskets, trollies and shoulder barges... All with a smiling face, of course. It's an experience if nothing else, and has taught us much about our different temperaments - I want to smack people, Chris follows their lead and equips his pointiest elbows and bargiest shoulders.



Unfortunately, the whole experience was worsened by a constant downpour of rain making everybody smell kind of damp and the whole supermarket to reek of condensation. After grabbing a couple of Banh mi op la from a street vendor (fried egg in baguette with all the Asian trimmings) we took a taxi back in the pouring rain and prepared everything for the next day's journey. This is when IT happened.



Now, 1000 tiny ants I can deal with. Lizards in the bathroom, flies, mosquitoes, no problem. But sharing a room with a cockroach is a different story! A great big dirty shiny cockroach sat under Chris' hat, so when I lifted it up to get my tablets it scuttled into the curtain and as far as I'm concerned infected everything with its cockroach-y grossness. I'm not afraid to admit that I squealed, but once again Chris came to the rescue - he grabbed one of the rubber shower shoes the hotel provided, waited for the disgusting thing to creep out and BAM. One squished cockroach. My hero!



The hotel wasn't great, and was definitely budget, but ain't nobody paid to have one of those nasties up on the 5th floor with you - says a lot about the hygiene of the hotel that a cockroach can live all the way up there!



This morning we picked up our laundry (which was most definitely not cleaned with soap, and not dried properly so now smells worse than it did), found the post office to send off our tailor-made stuff, had a questionable breakfast (they gave me noodles with what can only be described as beef offal in the soup. NOPE.) and eventually got on this bloody train. All over the internet people have said the train is better than the sleeper bus, but to be honest we're not having a great time. Yes, there's more room, but there's also regular very loud radio announcements about where we are/the driver talking in Vietnamese, meaning no sleep is allowed. The toilets, although flushing, are wet and smell of week-old urine, and the thing that caps it all? A bloody mouse in our compartment - and we've got the bottom bunks. Is that squeaking the berth or the furry resident? Who knows? It's better than a cockroach I suppose!



UPDATE. I've just had the pleasure of watching a man piss with the door open. And then not wash his hands. And then I had the pleasure of standing in his piss whilst I cleaned more of it from the seat with the toilet paper I'm very glad I brought along. I'm sure he has his reasons for weeing all over the toilet as opposed to in it, but right now I hope he slips on his own urine and has to become as intimate with it as I just have.

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