If there was one thing on this trip that we were NOT looking forward to....it was our upcoming 12-hour overnight train ride from Hue to Hanoi. It seems these overnight train rides are popular down here in the southeastern Asian countries....and our travel agent just happened to throw this "experience" into our itinerary! So what's the big deal, right? Well, these trains are as old as Jesus! And, we received a few tips from other travelers that made us question this overnight trip:
1. Don't plan on getting any sleep!
2. Prepare to put something over the beds....they are filthy!
3. Lock your cabin doors...thefts occur during the night!
4. Bathrooms are 1 star (at best!)
5. Pack some snacks....or be willing to eat the crap they serve onboard!
6. Cross your fingers and hope for good roommates!
If all that doesn't sound bad enough.....we had quite a fiasco with the train tickets. Supposedly, our travel agent had pre-booked us tickets and all we had to do was pick them up at the train station when we arrived to Hue. No problem! Unfortunately, it turned out to be a huge problem!
Our travel documents said the train tickets would be available for pickup "Upon Request" when we showed up in Hue. Unbeknownst to us....that's not how it works at the Hue train station. The place is a dump! No one speaks English. All tickets can be bought with cash only! I don't even think they know what a computer looks like! And, it's important to book overnight train tickets at least 2-3 days in advance! At this point it seemed we needed to buy new tickets....and it could be a bit difficult to get them on such short notice before our scheduled departure tomorrow. Uh oh!
Thankfully, our local tour guide took the time (in the middle of our Royal Tombs tour) to drive us to the train station and helped us book new tickets. We luckily got 2 tickets for the same train that we were originally supposed to board....phew!....and we would still arrive in Hanoi at 5am tomorrow morning.
Our travel documents said the train tickets would be available for pickup "Upon Request" when we showed up in Hue. Unbeknownst to us....that's not how it works at the Hue train station. The place is a dump! No one speaks English. All tickets can be bought with cash only! I don't even think they know what a computer looks like! And, it's important to book overnight train tickets at least 2-3 days in advance! At this point it seemed we needed to buy new tickets....and it could be a bit difficult to get them on such short notice before our scheduled departure tomorrow. Uh oh!
Thankfully, our local tour guide took the time (in the middle of our Royal Tombs tour) to drive us to the train station and helped us book new tickets. We luckily got 2 tickets for the same train that we were originally supposed to board....phew!....and we would still arrive in Hanoi at 5am tomorrow morning.
See the picture above? It's basically a 4-bed prison cell with dirty sheets, dirty pillows, and whatever crazy Vietnam bugs are hiding under the bed. We spent a few hours trying to entertain ourselves....and then spent the rest of the night lying on our beds trying to sleep with one eye shut.....and the other wide open! We had the bottom bunks....and luckily our roommates were nice and quiet....sleeping throughout the night above us. It could have been worse.....but an experience we'll never forget.
***Guess what? Here's the REEEEEEAL kicker.....As we were lounging poolside at the hotel before leaving Hue (3 hours prior to our train ride), the hotel concierge walks out to us and presents us with an envelope containing the two PRE-BOOKED train tickets that our travel agent booked months ago!!! It seems they just arrived at the hotel through snail mail. What? Talk about last minute! So now we had 4 train tickets....which was good (we could choose our roommates) and bad (it cost us an extra $100).
