Our second longest train journey, which took us from the city of Nha Trang to Danang, actually was shaping up to be the longest journey in a vehicle of any kind both of us had experienced. Our train from Nha Trang was scheduled to leave around 10:12pm Sunday night and while we got to the station at around 9pm, it was looking like this scheduled time of departure was a bit optimistic. The train station was packed, keep in mind that its a pretty small station as there is only one main line serving both north and south Vietnam. After waiting a blisteringly hot 50 minutes in the sauna of a station (due to the amount of people in their and only little fans circulating the air) our train was finally ready to board. As we walked out of the station onto the platform, the change in temperature was so extreme you just about started to shiver as you entered the 25 degree night time air. As we made our way to our cabin, we were once again blessed with both bottom bunks as opposed to the awkward top bunks or one of each. We noticed we had a Vietnamese couple above us this time instead of Chinese tourists and like last time they didn't make a sound. However about 20 minutes into the journey the man came down and sat next to me and we started talking. He knew pretty good broken English that he had learnt from various jobs in various places such as Bangkok, Tokyo, Cambodia and Saigon. He was actually quite a funny man, he had a real nasally chuckling laugh that made both of us laugh every-time he did. But he was very fascinated with learning more about the English language and what both of us did for a living and more about Australia. He was actually quite blown away by the differences in prices between the two countries with both the extreme highs in general goods and extreme lows in car and automobile prices. He was particularly interested in the University degree I was studying, because he had never come across such a word or profession such as psychology he was absolutely mesmerized. However I waited until the morning to tell him the other field I am studying as I expected it would be a bit of a tongue tie for him, and I was completely right. Psychophysiology is not an easy word to remember let alone pronounce if your not familiar with the English language and boy was he funny in the attempts he made in order to pronounce it. Then there was the task of explaining what it meant, as his vocabulary wasn't what you would expect of a native english speaker, it proved quite difficult and there was a lot of pointing going on. We ended up talking for a solid 4-5 hours that night ranging from drivers licenses and identification cards (in Vietnam these two are completely different cards unlike our unified approach to a one-card system), with an interesting thing being that every Vietnamese has their own identification number associated with their name and identity unlike our simple name system, to his family and how hard it was for him and the Vietnamese people alike to understand American English as opposed to Australian English which he mentioned was much much easier to understand.
Part or most of the reason our train was late drew down to prioritizing the train lines for locomotives and cargo carriers. There were so many instances during the night when you would wake up and find that we had stopped, not at a station, just idle. The longest wait was around 9am that morning, we were scheduled to arrive half an hour earlier at around 8:30am however there must have been many trains using the one line as we had to sit for over an hour and a half. The guy we were talking with, I never caught his name though, asked the conductor and he said we had to stop for safety reasons due to the amount of traffic on and around the lines we were on. When we finally arrived at Danang railway station we immediately sought out the nearest taxi to get straight to the hotel for a long awaited rest. However as the station was actually quite close to our hotel and a common tourist would normally disembark the train and head straight for the hour drive to Hoi An, the drivers were reluctant to pick us up in fear of missing the large fair down to Hoi An. Everyone we asked would point over to the motorbike taxi's, however with two massive bags and a backpack this was not going to happen. After finally getting a taxi that would take us the 4km to the hotel, we checked in to what seemed to be a nice looking hotel on the internet, however as the saying goes 'you can never judge a book by its cover' and this was quite appropriate. Although you must keep in mind that like the other popular saying 'you get what you pay for' applied ever so much. Considering we paid around $25 for one night, it was more than suitable for the one night we were staying there.
That one thing that did make me laugh (and Lauren will upload the photo soon after this post) was that we booked a delude river view room and while it did have a balcony and a river view, it wasn't exactly what we had expected. As Danang was purely a stopover destination and we were completely aware that there was little tourism industry, if any at all, we had very low expectations of the city itself. While we did go on a little walk throughout the city I came to the conclusion that Danang is very much associated with limbo, it is just a place of waiting were nothing much really happens and you find yourself waiting to go onto a better place (eg Hoi An). It is the place people come to looking for a quick rest after an exhaustion train ride before hitting the tourist infested charming streets of Hoi An. In its defense, it isnt a grubby place, it has a particular business sense about it with majority of the buildings in the city devoted to office blocks. It appears to be the only working park of Vietnam were people are actually wearing suits and not just making them, it is potentially the economic backbone of south Vietnam. In our non-event 1 night stay in Danang there is only 3 things to talk about. The first being the restaurant we ate at on the night we were in limbo. It was adequately named bread of life, and while the initial address was wrong that we had referred to to find the location, we eventually found its relocated address. We found out about this place long before we had left to come to Vietnam and was basically the only draw card for coming to Danang (apart from the much needed night of peaceful rest). So as its name suggests, bread of life is a bakery/restaurant that is owned by an American couple that employ only hearing impaired Vietnamese people. As Vietnam is an up-and-coming but still poor country, handicapable individuals find it increasingly hard to find work due to their particular condition. However this restaurant admirably hires only hearing impaired individuals and gives them the support they ever so much need but could not find in a developing country and struggling economy. There must be something about handicapable skills that with a deficit in one area boosting a skill in another (ie cooking skills) because they were one of the best burgers we had ever eaten.
The second mentionable thing about Danang was the lights are night time, while I cant stress enough that this isn't a tourist city and we were literally the only westerners walking the streets, the lights in and around Danang were quite spectacluar.I'm hoping Lauren has taken a few photo's because it was quite a cool looking place at night. Especially this bar just up from our hotel that was modelled on the hexagon formation found in a bee hive with alternating sections lighting up sequentially. However while the tourism industry is non existent, there are signs that in the next couple of years you could be seeing an add in local travel guide showcasing the up-and-coming developments and world class facilities that are just currently in development. However whether they can fill all the rooms in this ever growing montage of high rise addictions that posses these small cities with high tourism hopes (especially when you have something so unique as Hoi An just 45 minutes down the road, you start you question whether they know what they are doing). Onto the last of the 3 things that stood out in Danang was this little shopping centre food court, the reason for venturing into the abandoned food court was because our hotel buffet consisted of one bowl of stone cold fried rice in which I couldnt even swallow a mouthful. SO what made this foodcourt so unique was that when you had to pay for anything, you could not pay cash. You had to go up to this counter and load your money onto a debit card. It was a cool thing to do but completely unessesary. However the only reason I can think of why they would implement such a system is the possibility of night time break in's, by putting all the cash in one unified (and I imagine immensly locked) location, they would limit break-in losses.
So after all this it brings us to the lovely and massively picturesque sleepy town of Hoi An. The good thing about this place is the restriction the council and the world heritage council place on building hotels and other tourist driven eyesores. There are no high rise buildings nor anything else apart from markets that can be linked to the increase in tourism, it is almost completely unspoiled. It really is as nice as everyone says, especially at night, and we were extremely lucky because today is the 14th which means it is the full moon and condequently the night of nights were they sail the tea light candles down the river that is meant to be one of the prettiest things you can see in southest asia. So as you can imagine Lauren is quite looking forward to that. As there is not so much to say about Hoi An until we do the old town houses and My Son Ruins I will let you get the feel of the place through pictures that Lauren is posting and I will post another blog sometime tomorrow telling you all about what we've done in the 3 days we've been here. However if I am to mention one quick thing it would be that, as you might have gathered from the title because I havn't mentioned it thus far, 4,000 VND which roughly translates into about 19c AUD is actually the price of the local beer here. I was first blown away when I first arrived in this country when you could pick up a tiger beer for $1.30, but then as we starting going north and up the coastline it began to get cheaper and cheaper. However after arriving in Hoi An, this place is by far the cheapest place we have been to yet. Which is completely contrary to my own and everyone elses expectations. MY logic was that because this is the most popular tourist destination in Vietnam everything would be much more expensive due to the tourist inflation. However this is not the case, with a local beer costing 19c and a big tiger (640ml) ranging from 95c to 1.10c, it is actually quite absurd. Even the food here is much cheaper (and a tonne nicer than anywhere we have been, but thats not saying other places havent been nice). A typical vietnamese specialty lunch with some other western food included ends up costing us around $3-4 with drinks included. It is marvelous. So until we do the old houses and My Son ruins (which ill post the ld houses tomorrow and the My Son Ruins the next day), we will speak to you all then and I hope everybody's still well and having fun.
Until then,
Kristian & Lauren.
