Last night, we boarded an overnight train from Hanoi to Hue. We'd been warned that there were two types of trains: new ones, with clean sheets and TV, and old ones, with filthy sheets, possibly lice, and no TV. Guess which kind we ended up on?
Think that lice and dirty sheets are as bad as it gets? Think again. My cabin (which I shared with three of my tourmates), was next door to the party cabin: 4 strapping Australian boys who invited every girl under 25 with an urge to drink to come on over. Naturally, there was not enough room in their tiny cabin for them to shut the door, so they spilled out into the corridor into the wee hours of the morning, being progressively louder, more obnoxious, and unabashedly racist. Examples include one girl telling a boy that he looked a little "woggy" (if you don't know what that means, look it up, but my understanding is that it's a bit like telling someone that they look kind of black and using the N word), and several of them doing "impressions" of Vietnamese people, i.e., speaking gibberish. Needless to say, sleep did not come easily. And when it came, it was nightmares.
I won't recount them all (dreams always suffer in the retelling), but here's a snapshot of one: I get into a cab to visit a friend who lives in the French countryside, am let out of the cab in the middle of nowhere, promptly discover that the driver has taken all of my money, ID and my phone, and stumble upon an accident scene in which many people that I know have been severely injured (blindness, loss of limbs, etc.) I blame this entirely on the rowdy Australians, as I have not had a nightmare in years.
Worst overnight train ever!
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