Return to the mystery of the reunification express.

Mad Irene, the raving one eye was gone, and so where her accomplices. We rebounded the reunification express through the thronging masses of Hue, picking our way through the carrion of plastic bottles and moulding fruit that blocked our way, a sea of detritus in an ocean of filth.

The train brought back eerie memories of a long lost life, a de ja vu striking at the brainstem. I swear it was the same cabin, I had the same bed on the same wall with the same impossibly hard "'mattress" but that would be kind to call it such a thing.

Below me slept father time, his ancient features crafted through years of smiling. with more wrinkles than face he looked like a giant ball of skin sprinkling grey hairs. A gap toothed grin adorned his face leaving him with a slight whistle when he breathed as all the air was sucked through the tiny space.

He travelled with his wife, I never really saw her but the sound of her voice will haunt my dreams. It must have been the source of father times wrinkles it's extreme pitch and volume literally blowing the skin from his face. She droaned on and on and one an endless siren of torment and anguish. Was anyone listening she didn't care. I put in my earplugs and reduced her to the buzzing of a fly a slight annoyance but one you can live with and then flooded her out with Russell Watson. In the business we are taught there is nothing that a good bit of Nessuma Dorma can't block out, it was either this or I would need to end her life quickly, not an arduous task but I had to sleep in the cabin after all. A lucky escape for her.....

As the music crescendoed I gave into the welcome embrace of sleep. A ghost free sleep, a much needed sleep, the deep sleep found on a train.

9 hours later...
"coffee please" (mark still sleepy)
"beer?" (train attendant)
"Coffee hot!" (mark more insistent)
"ah copé" (attendant meets revelation)
"yes copé HOT" (mark resigned now)... Our morning ritual continues.

As usual despite my best attempts a Vietnam railways plastic cup appears 2minutes later with 4blocks of ice a good helping of condensed milk and strong black premade coffee from an old water bottle. Fail again!

I dutifully drink the 10hour old liquid sludge from the night before the gobulets of caffeine laced poison running down my fingers like syrup coating them in a brown stickiness. Headaches averted for another few hours.

The wooden pews of the restaurant car are a stark reminder of the reality of my situation. I find my coffee again through the smoke screen infront of me. Four conductors our local gustapo covering their sweaty body odour with the tar of malbourgh light. I am at a loss to choose the lesser of two evils painfully aware that I smell like a dirty old traveller myself, the great unwashed so to speak adding to the cacophony of rancid fumes. A three week young beard coats my face a stark indication of my racial and facial abnormality in a sea of clean faced Asians... I wonder if they are jealous of my mighty chin of hair so genetical lost to them?

I swear the itch is intense now. Is it the heat? Is it a micro system growing on my face ( likely caught from too many sleeper trains) or just my chin fighting back for supremacy trying to reclaim prominence over the brownish gingery hair.

I sit stroking my well defined chin a gift from God and an expensive Edinburgh orthodontist. Is it habit or a ritual I develop when bearded like an aged urchin, the father time of the west sitting in the centre of the Eastern Orient.

I looked into the bloodshot and slightly glazed eyes of my silent companion mid gulp through his second can of Bia Há Nôi the local brew. We all have our morning rituals I suppose. I make an effort, my best neutral accented "morning?". With a flick of the head I get weary response from the sweat stained face... "you speaker the deutche?"

An inexplicable deep routed disdainful prejudice grows within the bowels of me... Maybe the Cambodians are not so bad after all....