Night Train to Hoi An

Night train to Hoi An

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to see any more time in South Vietnam so we hopped on a 17-hour night train all the way up the coast to Hoi An. The train was a cool experience! We shared a little scruffy cabin with a funny little Vietnamese couple who were very smiley and tried to talk to us all the time despite the fact that it was established within about 2 minutes of meeting each other that they didn’t speak a word of English and we don’t speak a word of Vietnamese. This in no way deterred them though, and they continued to speak to us, using a multitude of crazy hand gestures like some sort of deranged baseball coach to supplement their chatting, which still made absolutely no sense to us whatsoever. We would try and mime back at them to try to figure out what they were saying but this just invariably drove them into fits of giggles, and I swear just spurred them on. I’d love to know what they were trying to say.

We have slight getting-our-camera out paranoia at the moment, so no photos. Here's a picture of a train instead.

I swear someone was having a practical joke at our expense-The husband had an insanely annoying Trigger-Happy TV-esque ring tone on his phone which would go off about twice every hour, and would be followed by one of them gabbling down the phone in such a high pitch I was surprised bats weren’t flying through the window to have a chinwag.

Probably their most shining  moment though was at 6am when the first light hit the sky, they both sat bolt upright, threw open the curtains AND the door, and the wife felt this would be the perfect time to play music…yes MUSIC on her phone. As loud as it would go. As it happens I quite like Jessie J, but I don’t much enjoy being woken up by her at ridiculous o’clock when I should be fast asleep. I thought Brodie was going to explode, but he restrained himself to just a finger-on-lips shhhh and thankfully this was one hand-gesture she understood, but by that time we were both wide-away too. Ah the joys of travel! J

I also don't have any pictures of them, so here's a funny picture of some funny happy old Vietnamese people I found on the internet