After spending a couple days exploring Ho Chi Minh I decided it was time to get out of the city and find some smaller destinations in southern Vietnam. The train seamed to be the most logical route, so I made it to the train station and booked a ticket for Nha Trang, a city about 800 km north. At the train station I purchased a burger at the fast food joint Lotteria and waited around a bit for the boarding call. While I waited I determined that either all the train stations clocks were an hour behind, or all my devices clocks were an hour ahead. As it turned out, Vietnam is in a different time zone then Beijing, leaving me with another hour to wait around for the train to leave after the boarding call.
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| Lotteria burger |
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| strange stuff written on the wall of Lotteria |
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| waiting for the boarding call |
I fell asleep in the train waiting for that hour to go by, but eventually it began moving and commenced the 8 hour journey. It took about 30 or 40 minutes for the city-scape to turn into countryside, and pretty soon we were surrounded by green countryside all around and the occasional farm or shack.
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| waiting for other people to board |
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| countryside |
We stopped every 45 minutes or hour to let some people on or off, and sometimes for no apparent reason at all. At one of the stops I could hear 3 girls yelling something outside the train, then one lady jumped up to the window, grabbed on and stuck her arm through into the train holding a large white bag. She yelled, 'Babboo Babbo' with kind-of a shrieking voice while her head peered around through the window, I figured maybe this was Vietnamese for bomb or robbery. Then after the initial shock passed, a couple people started handing the lady money and she reached into her bag and pulled out several pieces of hand picked corn in return. A train attendant walked by to see what the commotion was, and after going through the initial shock all the passengers had already had, shod the lady out of the window.
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| corn lady |
As the ride went on the daylight dimmed and a dvd was put on to keep us entertained. My favorite program involved taking English speaking foreigners and trying to get them to say things in Vietnamese, while making fun of their every mistake.
On the 6th hour of the train ride I decided to eat from the food cart, which would go by every couple hours or so. The food looked less then appetizing, but my starving stomach didn't seam to care at this point so I got some chicken, salad and soup.
Finally after something closer to 9 hours, we pulled into Nha Trang. Where I was able to catch a cab into town and find my hotel I'd booked earlier in the day.
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| streets of Nha Trang |
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| Beach @ Nha Trang |
