November 19, 2008 - What a freaking day! What was supposed to be a low-key day of waking up late, strolling through the market and then making our way to the station to catch our train to Hué turned out to be anything but low-key. It turned out to be the longest damn day of the trip and we didn't even really do anything.
We woke up a little late that morning, had some breakfast and then went over to the Ben Thanh Market, where we had bought our hats and Lisa's áo dài the day before. We went back to the same hat stand as the day before so Lisa could get a summer hat this time, finally convinced she needed one after the previous day of walking around in the sun of Ho Chi Minh City. She found one with just the right cuteness factor for her taste and we were on our way.
Our next stop was back to the railway ticket office in the backpacker area. I hadn't taken enough money with me the day before so I only bought the tickets for the first leg of our trip north, the overnight train from Saigon to Hué. We still needed to get the tickets for the daytime train we were going to take to Hanoi after spending a night in Hué. This is where we hit our first glitch of the day.
The morning train from Hué we wanted to be on was sold out. We had to pick a different train and the next one with available space left in the late afternoon instead, which meant we had to buy sleeper spaces instead of seats since this one would get into Hanoi the next morning rather than the same evening. OK, a little setback, no big deal. Costs us a little more money and some time in Hanoi, but we get a bit more of Hué as a trade off. The real downside was that now both trains we were going to take through Vietnam would have the majority of travel time during the night, so we wouldn't see as much of the country as we planned.
We stopped at one of the Internet places in the backpacker area and Lisa emailed the hotel in Hanoi to tell them of our later arrival so they would hold our room. Then we headed back to the hotel to get our bags, stopping along the way to buy bread and jam to go with the peanut butter we bought at the market. We weren't sure what kind of food options the train would have and we would be a couple of very hungry vegetarians by the end of the ride if they only had meat options.
We checked out of the hotel and grabbed a cab outside. This time we asked the price before getting in, learning from our mistake the night before, and the guy told us 40,000d (about $2.50). We gave him 60,000d when we got to the station.
Our train was scheduled to depart at 1:00pm and we were at the station pretty early, probably a little before noon. We spent the time looking around for a place to buy some bananas and water, with little luck. I did eventually find a cafe a short walk from the station doors that had water.
We sat and waited.
Being the big train geek that I am, I was really looking forward to this part of the trip ever since we started planning it. A trip up the entire coast of Vietnam and adding to my ever-expanding collection of pictures of me standing dorkily on a train platform, standing on front of a subway car or lying on a sleeper compartment bunk. This would end up being the only picture we got:
(click photos for larger image)It was getting really close to 1:00 but no one was starting to make their way to the platform. I kept looking to see if there was a train outside, there was not, and the doors to get to the tracks were locked shut. There were no announcements being made in English, but ours was the only train leaving anytime soon so we just waited for the crowd to start moving. Ten minutes until departure time and still nothing. Finally Lisa prodded me to go up to the window to ask. I had read in the guide book that there was always an English-speaking line at the station but I didn't know which one it was since there were no signs in English. I just went to an open window and tried to ask the lady when our train would be boarding. After a minute or two of trying to communicate with each other she was able to find the English word "canceled."
"AW CRAP!"
She pointed down to the window at the end and said "English." So I went down to the end and waited in line. I yelled over to Lisa that the the train was canceled and she brought our bags over by me so we could try to make a decision on what to do once I spoke with the woman at window #1. She confirmed the cancellation and then told me that the next train we could get on would be the 11:00pm, ten freaking hours later! That train wouldn't even get into Hué until 5:00pm the next day, which would give us less than 24 hours there.
We're standing there trying to figure out what to do and suddenly I (the guy who hates flying and loves trains more than anything) say, "Let's look into flying."
Lisa tells me that there is no way it will be affordable trying to buy tickets the same day but I argue for at least checking it out. Everything else in this country is cheap, so what the hell?
I leave Lisa with our stuff and go out to try to find an Internet cafe. The station in Saigon is not in the middle of town like it should be so I wasn't sure if I would find an Internet place. After a little walking I came upon one. I went online and googled Vietnam Airlines. There was no way to book flights or check fares on their site, so that was no help. One of the other sites that popped up was advertising tickets for $67 but it looked suspicious. I decided to just go to Expedia and try it there. $287 for two tickets from Ho Chi Minh City to Hué taking off at 6:30pm. OK, a little steep but not really bad for last minute.
I head back to the station and tell Lisa. She goes to find a public phone so she can call the hotel in Hué to see if they would have a room for us a day early since we had originally planned to sleep on a train that night. After she checked that out I then went to use the phone, a public phone with an attendant you paid instead of putting money in, and called one of the reputable tourist cafes listed in the guidebook to see if we could get the tickets cheaper.
Bingo! I talked to a woman that could sell us tickets for $66 each. But we had to go down to the cafe to buy them. So off we went again. First we stopped by the ticket counter and got a refund on our Saigon-Hué tickets. We went out to the line of cabs and asked how much to go to the backpacker area and a cabbie told us $5, or about double what it cost us to get there. I was in no mood to haggle so I said fine and we jumped in.
On the way to the tourist cafe it finally dawned on me that our train trip from Hué to Hanoi would be almost all at night so there didn't seem to be much of a point of riding the rails up the coast. I told Lisa we should ask how much it would cost to get a flight for that leg when we got to the tourist cafe. I still can't believe these flights were my idea. I mean, I hate planes.
We made a feeble attempt to still be tourists along the way and managed to take a single picture of some kids we saw exercising in a park. Our exciting sight of the day.
We got to the tourist cafe and arranged for both sets of tickets after getting a quote of $65 each for the second flight. We left our bags there while they got our tickets ready and went to the railway ticket office to get a refund on our second set of train tickets, minus 10% since that train wasn't canceled.
Then we stopped at an Internet cafe again to email the hotel in Hanoi for a second time to let them know that we won't be arriving late as we wrote just a couple hours earlier, but in fact will be arriving even earlier than our original time we told them when we booked. At this point we were wondering if they even wanted these two flaky Americans staying at their hotel.
FINALLY got all this shit taken care of and we went to find some food. We found the Little Buddha Vegetarian restaurant in mini-hotel row. I never wanted a beer so bad in my life. I had two of those big-ass bottles of Tiger beer that I was drinking all through Southeast Asia. Lisa snapped our last picture in Ho Chi Minh City:
I was spent, and this day was only about half over.
Next - A surprising voice on the plane and some damn sexy robes
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