My travelling companion Tom's old travelling blog was the funniest travelog ever written. He agreed to write about our Vietnamese train experience (Nha Trang to Da Nang). Well, this is it:
South Korea to South and East Asia.
Nha Trang – Da Nang. 10hr Train Ride. 19/07/2012
There was a request on cyber space to restart my infamous, misspelt and hurriedly naff travel blog. It hasn’t been fiddled with since 2009. That was the great ‘Asia and back again’ journey, the first time out of Europe and the first time travelling on my own. Like anything I write, when revisited it makes me cringe. I find a great deal of embarrassment in my former self, just as I surely will if I ever have the displeasure to re-read this. Regardless, the old blog was apparently missed by the 2-3 hardcore sympathisers that took a skeg and stole a giggle way back when.
For one train only she’s back.
You can’t say no to a Sharma.
-
Since the first 70s masterpiece that I rode from Ulan Bator to Moscow, all steel and Communist zeal, the big train journeys have followed a similar pattern. Right down to the light fittings and the lack of loo roll in the gents'. Most the trains in Asia are Chinese built. Copied from a Russian model. 10-15 carriages, ranging from plush ‘Soft Sleeper’ at the top to chicken cage ‘Hard Seat’ at the bottom.
(As I type a small, slightly overweight and shaven-headed boy, a set of strong earring away from being a happy Buddha, is grinning and indulging me and Cisco with his company)
Usually on trains like this you’re in one of the sleeping options. Soft Sleeper contains four bunk beds arranged perpendicular to the train in a sort of Hogwarts Express style side room. Hard sleeping being the same, just with 6 beds of a slightly inferior quality. Soft Seat does what you imagine, a normal seat on a normal train.
Today, because we’re badass’, and short on funds and adequate preparation, we’re enjoying the varnished delights of the Hard Seat. Sets of slatted benches are arranged back to back and accompanied by tiny tables, perfect for a laptop. Although the benches are a dark mahogany, well varnished and labelled they still appear to have been conceived and built by a team of rogue Communist chiropractors. The back is ultra-straight, more correctional than comfortable –not that stops Asians sleeping their hearts out on ‘em – and the slats are just wide enough to get that part of your arse through that results in an epic oblong shaped pile developing from cheek to crack to cheek. The slats seems to have dropped down from the ceiling, like the shutters of an old dirty shop on your local road that have leaked down from the ceiling leaving just enough space to sleep a family of ten underneath.
(We’re now playing the little Buddha ‘Jungle Boogie by Kool & The Gang’ and trying to get him to dance up a storm. He’s got the rhythm and clicking his fingers bit at least.)
It must be conceded that I have had far far worse than these seats. Plus the views have been exceptional. Not a place to ever fight a war.
Vietnam is really how you imagine it. Just richer and with more motorbikes. There are the obligatory Hollywood rice fields. People of all ages indulging the practical use of the Asian bamboo hat. Tall mountains covered in temples. Pristine beaches that Charlie wont surf on. The lot.
Here in the cheap seats we’re celebrities. I’m used to this by now. It’s all curious mostly, it’s a bit intense at times, especially from official types but in general it’s lovely. Walking up and down the carriages to get the obligatory couple of beers or packet of chewy sweets is an event in itself. Most people in the carriages down from us are sleeping across the gangway on straw mats, or playing cards in the doorways – money in between toes and cheap 60% rice wine disguising itself as water in an old bottle of Evian or the like. At one point, to climb over a sleeping man with his feet suspended across the carriage, I kicked a Vietnamese soldier in the arm. That won’t be the last time I grin my way out of something, I’m sure. We parted as friends.
(Cisco just had the little Buddha doing some train actions to a country song. Cisco loves Country. And Westerns. And truckin’. And beating his future wife (Presumably). The serious looking man opposite looks so unimpressed with us it’s mental. Maybe we’re a bad influence on his own little skinny Buddha he has sat next to him. Or maybe we’re just misbehaving. Who knows.)
There’s a fat baby across from us. This is important for a number of reasons. 1. It comes with an entourage. 2. Me and Cisco are implicated in maintaining its general state of serenity. 3. As a fatty boom batty, it tells us a lot about the future of Asians and of the human waistline.
First off it has a good five people tending to it. 2-3 asleep on the floor at any one time. They’ve developed quite the military machine for feeding, changing and appeasing it.
Second off, every time it won’t eat or is in tears the mother points to one of us and says something in Vietnamese. Initially we found this fun and pulled faces, did the ‘big eyes’ thing and, in my case, wiggled my eyebrows to put the kid straight. Eventually we realised that the mother was literally using us to get more food into the abyss of its mouth. Physically we appear to have become human stun grenades, facilitating in the ‘strengthening’ of this poor unfortunate with anything from Mentos to rice porridge.
Which brings me onto the final point, young Asian are getting fat. As fat as ours but in a different way. Western kids eat bad food, maybe their parents are lazy, or thick, or simply too poor to afford ‘out decent except whatever delights Heron has to offer. In Asia it’s sadly a more calculated effort. I’m taking this from my experience in China but more and more Asians, once poor , now of reasonable means, associate fatness with strength and prosperity. A fat boy is not overweight, he’s strong. Let this be a warning to us all.
At one point Cisco vanished for beers. Not to return for at least half an hour. I had visions of him sat red faced, his wide mouth with uproarious laughter whilst soldiers and cabin crew fed him beer and peanuts over a game of Chinese poker. When he came back it was revealed that he just sat there, on his bill, mainly being ignored. Well…as much as you can ignore a man with hair like a swarthy Mediterranean pirate from a harlequin romance novel in a Hawaiian shirt anyway.
Apart from karaoke we’ve enjoyed the film Evan Almighty (a film that seems to promote the noble virtues of blind faith, such as they are, whilst completely glossing over the fact that God has just killed thousands by sending a tidal wave through central Washington D.C. What a giggle) as well as half of the Arnie ‘classic’ Commando.
My back’s finally giving in now. But we should only be a couple of hours away from our destination. Usually if it says 10 hours you can add at least two. So we’ll be there at midnight I should expect. By ‘there’ I mean the wrong town, with no hostel/hotel booked but that’s just par for the course now, ain’t it? I’ll talk my way out of it. Just like always.
Hopefully you enjoyed this slight reprieve to the global titting about of a bloke and his continental sidekick. I’d say that more is too come.
That’d be a lie. There isn’t
-Tom
