After finishing a few days of sun on the island of Cat Ba and exploring Ha Long Bay it was time to travel to our next destination down the coast – Hue. Having had no issues on the previous overnight train to Lao Cai we booked again for a reasonable price – about £14 – and waited with a friendly German couple. This should have been a warning because an hour prior to this I had broken my sunglasses, and then distracted by my own excitement over conversation with someone that wasn’t Fraser, I left my god damn wonder bra in the train station. Any boob-havers who have experienced great heat before will know that bras can be the enemy. I’d taken mine off for some clammy comfort and in that abandoned all hopes of having perky breasts for the next few weeks – bras don’t look great here fyi.
We got on the train at around 10:30pm to find ourselves bunking with another European couple, but they had an early rise so the lights were dimmed pretty quickly.
Then it began.
bsh
A huge cockroach crawled out from a gap in the ceiling above my bed. God it was massive, but then another on Fraser’s side and another and another and another. THEY KEPT FUCKING COMING. It was relentless and the only force I had to rid myself of them was my trusty thick copy of Great Expectations. I imagine this whole hour in which we killed 15 live roaches like a scene from a war film. My eyes darting from wall to wall, sat in the very centre of the bed in the dimly lit cabin holding Dickens like my life depended on it. Intermittent bomb sounds, but it was just the sound of my book slapping against various walls, gaining new legs and antennae.
Roach no. 16 crawled over my leg on my bloody cabin bed.
Narrator: “And it was then that Katie knew, that she was in for a long long night.”
I grabbed my bag and headed out of the cabin to a plastic child’s chair that the train workers sat on and settled myself for the night. The next 7 hours would be long and arduous.
Netflix downloads were a god send, and from time to time the guys working on the train would pass by for some casual broken chat via google translate, or to hit on me. I became so tired I couldn’t really differentiate.
For the rest of the night and morning I was kept awake by the horror of roaches crawling on the corridor walls around me and when this failed and I started to drop off the chair I would strike up Spotify and dance alone down the aisle of the train. This part sounds completely nuts I’m aware but I just couldn’t sleep on that train and no-one was around to question it.
By 6am the roaches started to subside but people were starting to wake up so I had to feign sanity. I looked like shit greeting those who had slept through my equivalent of the Vietnam War.
Vietnam has been so fun but I beg you, never get an overnight train here. Never, unless Fraser’s philosophy of “if its dark, I can’t see them”, works for you.
The nights after this that I spent flinching at the sight of any small dark thing I tell ya.
Fu***ing off; a personal tale of travels, triumphs and travesties. 