Vietnamese trains

Anita and I like train travel and the web site The Man in Seat Sixty-One had some very good things to say about Vietnamese trains. Our plan was to take the train from Saigon to Hanoi with intermediate stops.

The web site said you needed to book early, it was certainly right. I tried to book a soft sleeper from Saigon the Da Nang four days in advance and they were all booked. There were two top bunks available in a hard sleeper, I decided that we would take soft seats for this stretch of the journey.

We boarded the train about 23:00 and headed into the night, I soon learned that soft seat is not an accurate name, they are not soft and they are very short. I'm six feet tall and these seats are made from someone about 4 and a half feet tall. If I pushed back in the seat my head was a foot above the headrest. The other end was also a bit of a problem; my knees were in the back to the seat in front of me.

This was not a problem for the lady in the seat ahead of me, she gave her seat to her son and she curled up on the floor. I gave that a lot of thought but I decided against it.

It was a long night, the lights stayed on until about 04:00. I have been known to sleep in all conditions; this was a real challenge even for me.

There was an advantage on the train over the buses in Cambodia, the TV screen volume was not very loud.

During the morning part of the journey I walked around and looked at the soft sleepers. Another misnomer, hard rack would be more like it. The base of the bunk was metal with a 1/2 inch mattress on it.

There were other things that The Man In Seat 61 said that were not true on the trains we traveled on, leading me to believe that he has never been on a Vietnamese train.