Today has not been a lucky day for me...

I paid too much for a new helmet, got stuck in choking peak-hour traffic, almost had an accident, couldn't find the police station to get back my motorbike registration card, and to top it all off, missed the train out of the city to Danang to start my road trip.

I find that the longer I stay here, the lazier and grumpier I get. But really, even a bad day here is far more interesting than a good day back home, so I can't really complain. But hey, I'm quite the optimist. The more you try to fight things like the heat, insane traffic, sporadic torrential rain and sometimes EXTREMELY frustrating Vietnamese, the more you wear yourself out. Sometimes you've just gotta roll with it.

The plan was that tonight at eleven we (me, my housemate, Shannon, and her best friend, Laura) were to catch the train from Saigon to Da Nang with our motorbikes, arriving tomorrow night at around eight to begin our 'Half Way Down' road trip. We're all nuts about the TV series with Ewan McGregor and his mate Charlie Boorman (Long Way Down/Long Way Round), who motorbiked their way from London to New York and then from Scotland to the bottom South Africa.

Right, so we roll up to Saigon train station ten minutes before the train leaves (bad idea) and try to drive onto the platform, but the security guys had already locked the gates. We asked to put our motorbikes on the train and they're just like 'no, no, can not, can not' with annoying grins on their faces that had 'har har har, stupid foreigner, SUFFER!!!' written all over them.

So Shannon, extremely pissed off, storms in to the station to find out just what the hell is going on. Five minutes later (with about five minutes until our train leaves), she comes running out 'guys guys, get on your bikes, we gotta go right now!'. Apparently the station staff agreed to let us on, after we paid them a small 'fine' (read: bribe). But of course they misunderstood, thinking we just wanted to park our bikes at the station.

I was totally at a loss. Just three weeks previously we had done exactly the same thing and put our bikes on a train. Now they were just saying 'no, no'. No explanation as to why, just 'no', 'sorry'. Vietnamese can be extremely frustrating like that. It's all about asking the right questions.

So after about half an hour they finally agreed the give us most of the money back from our tickets, telling us to come back tomorrow morning for the next train, which we should be able to put our bikes on as luggage. And now here I sit at home, quite annoyed, when I should be on a train now heading to Da Nang. Instead we have to take the local train, not even knowing if it has sleeper cars.

Tomorrow could be a very, very long and uncomfortable day.

I'm off to bed.