29 hours on the 'hard sleeper'

The train journey to the north was as we had hoped - the scenery rolled by, there was actual Vietnamese people in the carriages rather than westerners and there was a food trolley packed with yummy food.

It might seem a strange itinerary to travel the entire length of a country just to make your way back down again but somewhere along the line we'd booked our slight out of Saigon as well as entering the Vietnam from Cambodia there.So, the plan was to get the sleeper train (29 hours over 2 nights) to Hanoi before using the bus to travel back and stop off along the way.The only ticket not sold out was a 'hard sleeper' (very thin mattress) in a 6-berth cabin (3 level bunk beds) so we squeezed into our very high top bunks above a mum and young daughter and 2 friends (nice and quiet and very polite!).Despite the small space it was very comphy and we had 2 good nights sleep with a day of reading and generally hanging out of the window looking at the view.Every couple of hours the trolley came by with spring rolls, skewers, rice, corn….and beer to watch the sunset with.The good thing about being in a cabin with locals was that we could tell when we were being charged 'foreigner prices' so this was one time when we didn't pay over the odds for our snacks.

Admittedly it's not easy using a squat toilet on a moving vehicle and we had to climb a couple of meters to reach our beds but the train was fun and we reached Hanoi pretty rested from sitting with our feet up.

Liz