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Several trains a day run between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (most people still call it Saigon) - all under the generic title of 'The Reunification Express'. We are on the fastest which leaves Hanoi at 11 o'clock at night and takes 30 hours to travel the 1,800 km to HCMC, unceremoniously dumping us there at the unearthly hour of 5.00 in the morning. So 'express' is something of a misnomer. But there remains no better way to see a country than by train. And unlike places like Australia and Peru where long-distance trains only survive as tourist attractions, this is a proper, scheduled service and most passengers are Vietnamese.
The poster in the travel agents advertising the train shows a sleek, modern, white Japanese bullet style train, speeding through the countryside. That train is apparently having a day off, as all trains occasionally deserve (ask Thomas) . Ours has old Russian carriages of a dirty shade of blue with windows opaque with dirt and hauled by an elderly diesel engine that is clearly not going to speed anywhere. But inside it is clean enough and, most importantly, has functioning air conditioning, clean toilets and toilet paper. The air conditioning is so important that our porter, who has accompanied us from the hotel to make sure we get on the right train (not a difficult job as there is only one), will not let us get on until it has cooled our cabin down sufficiently. I lack the Vietnamese to point out that it is as hot and airless outside as in, so we dutifully wait on the platform until the air inside is deemed sufficiently glacial to allow us on board.
We have 2 beds in a 4 bedded compartment. As we are putting our bags in a man comes along and stuffs 2 mysterious packages - a box and a sack - under the lower bunks, then disappears. All done under the watchful eye of the sleeping car attendant. So there they sit all the way to Saigon. What is in them? And why our compartment? At least they're not moving. Just before we set off we're joined by a Vietnamese man so triggering consideration of that most thorny of problems when travelling by sleeper in the company of strangers: how to get undressed and into one's pyjamas? Does one do it discreetly under the duvet, trying to pretend that all that wriggling and grunting is perfectly normal behaviour? Or brazenly in the open proving one is absolutely not ashamed of one's body? Or perhaps scuttle along to the toilet and hope the floors not too wet. In the end Vietnamese Man solves the problem for us by going to sit with his friends in the next compartment.
The train sets off exactly at 11 o'clock wending its way slowly through the Hanoi suburbs then picking up speed - relatively speaking - as we travel through the countryside. A noisy group of women further down the carriage falls silent and we climb into bed. For Kate that is easy enough as she is on the bottom bunk. But I am on the top and there is no ladder, only a small metal step halfway up the compartment wall. Getting into and out of bed involves a degree of gymnastics coupled with some rock climbing. It is especially tricky at 3 o'clock in the morning in the dark. The anticipation of this difficulty means that I delay going to the toilet until I am absolutely desperate which only increases the pressure on my bladder as I abseil down, risking a very embarrassing diplomatic incident.
The train is quiet and the ride comfortable so we're soon asleep. The only excitement during the night comes when I get back from the toilet and check under my pillow to find my passport that I carefully placed there, is missing. Surely no one could have come in whilst I was away and stolen it? The Vietnamese man looks sound asleep. Anyway he would be the prime suspect but maybe he passed it to someone else. Putting my head torch on I look all over - it must have slipped down the side of the mattress. No sign of it there. What happens if you lose your passport abroad? Is it straight back home? Don't pass Go, don't collect $200? Could we still go to Cambodia? By now I've woken Kate up with my searching. She points out my passport lying on the floor where it has fallen out of my bunk. So under the pillow is not such a safe place then.
Dawn in the tropics comes early and quickly. By 6 o'clock it is light. All day we amble through green and fertile countryside, a patchwork of rice paddies, fruit plantations and vegetable patches. Vietnam looks an incredibly green and productive country and every spare inch of land is cultivated. Indeed I'm almost surprised they don't grow crops between the railway tracks! (In Peru I saw a bookstall that someone had set up on the line itself. When a train came bookseller and customers would simply move to one side and resume their shopping once the train had passed over the 'shelves'.) All the work is done by hand. From preparing the ground, sometimes with the aid of water buffalo, through planting to harvesting. The only evidence I see of mechanisation is the motorbikes people use to get to and from the fields.
Dotting the fields are what I assume are Buddhist graves. Some are in large cemeteries which, with their little pagodas, remind me of cemeteries in Andean villages. Others are in small groups, or even singly, right in the middle of the fields. Presumably helping to fertilise the soil. Every so often we pass a war cemetery with rows of carefully tended graves or a revolutionary monument replete with a Socialist Realist statue of workers and peasants uniting to fight American Imperialism (would that more would do the same now). Otherwise there are few signs of war, the odd concrete bunker and, at one point, what looks like old bomb craters. The 30th of April is the anniversary of the liberation of Saigon and a public holiday. There are a few banners marking the occasion but most Vietnamese will be too young to have lived through the war - I suspect it's of more interest to Western tourists.
Back on the train trollies regularly pass up and down the carriage selling fizzy drinks and snacks, hard boiled eggs and something wrapped in bamboo leaves. We never find out what because by the time we ask for one they've sold out. Twice during the day a man sells us a ticket for a meal. Chicken and rice on both occasions served in a polystyrene tray. Not exactly haute cuisine but better than airline food and for less than £1 we can hardly complain. There is hot water at the end of the carriage but unlike in China there is no endless supply of tea, which is a shame. At one point the line hugs the coast climbing high above pristine sandy beaches and the clear, blue waters of the South China Sea. This is what the Mediterranean must have looked like before it was developed. How long, I wonder, before this goes the same way?
The day passes peacefully. Night falls early - by 6pm it is dark. The train continues it's slow progress stopping at towns and cities whose names mean nothing to us. Apart from an older Vietnamese couple in the next cabin we seem to be the only people travelling right through to Saigon. He has a long wispy grey beard just like Ho Chi Minh and stands in the corridor in his vest while his wife only ever emerges to go to the toilet. What changes will he have seen in his life? Even if he's the same age as us he will have been born when the French ruled the whole of Indochina. He will have experienced their defeat and the subsequent civil war -probably fought in it - and the victory. Experienced the euphoria if he lived in the north, the trepidation in the south. Then for everyone the hard years of reconstruction in the face of international isolation. Among the many inexplicable things about this part of the world was the USA and China's continued support for the Khmer Rouge after the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and the world could no longer ignore what had happened there. Since the mid-1990s he will have seen Vietnam increasingly adopt capitalist ways and with that has come greater prosperity and freedom but also growing inequality and insecurity (sound familiar?) In the west we easily forget that our life of relative calm and freedom from war is probably unusual.
Suddenly at about midnight, after we've gone to bed, things start to hot up. The train gets noticeably busier and three women enter our compartment. At first it looks as if they're all going to stay, even though there are only two beds left. They have numerous suitcases and bags which soon cover what is left of the floor space making going to the toilet an even more hazardous activity. They make few concessions to us being, to all appearances, asleep apart from not putting the light on, chattering away, making calls on their mobile phones, leaving the door open. But somehow it doesn't matter, as if we've absorbed the evidently different conventions of train travel here and I even manage to get back to sleep with them chattering away. Waking in the middle of the night there is only one of the women sleeping in our compartment. The night drifts by. The train is running over an hour late which is good as it means we will get to Saigon at a more reasonable time. At dawn the other women reappear. An attempt at conversation ensues using pictures on our mobile phones to talk about families. One of the women has black teeth. Perfectly healthy they are lacquered using a paste made out of betel juice, a tradition amongst some of the hill tribes in Vietnam. Finally we reach Ho Chi Mihn City at 7 o'clock and get a taxi to our hotel for a well deserved shower.
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