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 informed us that all the sleeper berths were sold out, and after talking a bit more, that all the seats were also sold out. Oh, and everything is also sold out for the next day too :-/ Great.

We decided to find somewhere to sleep and come up with a new plan in the morning, so walked around for about an hour looking for a place to stay, but everything was either full or too expensive. By now we had walked halfway accross the old city and were pretty sore and tired, so opted for a taxi to just take us back to the place we had stayed in before. Fortunately they had a room for us :-) Unfortunately there was no running water :-( We waited for almost two hours, desparate to have a shower, but eventually fell asleep at about 01:30.

Friday we woke up feeling so much better. We decided to just stay put, enjoy the day and leave for Hue tomorrow evening. The water was working again, so we grabbed a quick shower and then took a walk back to the train station to make sure we got tickets. Afterwards, we found a great little restaurant that sold some really good Western food (the street food in Vietnam is nowhere near as good as in Thailand, so unless you're into some pretty funky seafood, there aren't too many options.) The iced-coffee's in Vietnam are amazing! The coffee is quite chocolatey and they are made with condensed milk instead of real milk - perfect cure for the rough past few days. We hung around after lunch to do some admin, and then headed back to the hotel for a short nap before visiting the night market that evening.

Saturday we got to sleep in a bit. We checked out at around lunch time and then went in search of something to eat. Our train was only leaving at around 19:00, so we had a chance to do a bit more shopping. We caught a taxi to the station and after a short wait, boarded the train. We were quite cramped in our seats (the big bag didn't fit in the overhead rack) but after a short while a man offered us an open sleeping berth for the night some extra money (500 000 VND each.) Even though it was dirty and half falling to pieces, we were grateful to be able to sleep for a few hours, although afterwards we realized it was some scam and totally not worth it - should have known :-/ We returned to our seats in the morning for that last bit of the trip, wondering what awaited us in Hue...