Due to the delays, it was dark when our train finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (still commonly referred to as Saigon) on Monday 30 July. We managed to mostly avoid the throng of tuk-tuk/taxi drivers on our way out the station before stopping to get our bearings. After a bit of a walk, we hailed a taxi and got dropped at the backpacker area where we managed to find a nice little place down a quiet alley (but not too far from the action.) We grabbed a quick sh...

We arrived in Nha Trang late on the morning of Friday 27 July after a pretty rough night on the train. The sleeper cabins were all sold out, so we were in the "soft seats", padded seats that recline slightly. The train was really run down and we got on to find the couple in front of us were asleep and had reclined their seats as far back as possible. We actually couldn't get into our seats as the crusty tray-table was broken and just hung down giving us even less...

Our train pulled into Da Nang station at midday on Tuesday, 24 July. We had decided to take the bus through to Hoi An so we headed off in search of the bus station. It was scorching hot so the walking was not fun, but we soon realized that the busses actually drove past the road we were walking down so we just waited and flagged one down. Once on the bus we learnt that the system is quite dodgy: the drivers drive like crazy people - picking up passangers witho...

We arrived in Hue (pronounced 'whey') at around lunch time on Sunday 22 July. We learned our lesson from last time and immidiately bought our train tickets for the next two legs. The map in our guide book wasn't very clear, but it looked like it wasn't too far into town, so we decided to walk. Unfortunately, we went a bit of course and in the end we walked for over an hour with our heavy packs on :-/ After finding a place to stay, we had a shower and then went ...

This time our carriage had seats with cushions, which made the return journey from Haiphong to Hanoi a good deal more comfortable than before. We arrived at the main station at around 19:00 on Thursday 19 July, with the plan to buy tickets for the 23:00 sleeper train to Hue. The train station was manic (it seems the Vietnamese have no concept of queing - you just need to push your way to the front) but eventually we managed to speak to a ticket lady. She inform...