Getting around in Vietnam

Taking the sleeper train from Saigon to Nha Trang was a much nicer affair than my previous sleeper train experience in a 3rd class berth in Russia.  MUCH nicer. Maybe because it’s winter now, and before it was hot, sticky summer.  Maybe because we were in soft sleeper (equiv. of first class).  Maybe because we didn’t arrive dripping sweat, and tired from arguing with babushkas to let us ON the train.

At any rate, it wasn’t exactly comfortable – the fan? ac? blasted cold air noisily when we stopped at stations, and seemed to instead distribute heat while we were moving.  The 4 bed berth was shared with a mother+ toddler, and an older woman who, beyond looking surprised to find two foreigners in her cabin, said nothing and went straight to sleep.  The mother was way too popular for her own good.  I’m talking four hours of continuous conversation, punctuated only by the breep breep of arriving texts.  I don’t know how her kid ever gets sleep, or lives with that every day.  The bed itself was barely long enough to fit my 5’7″ self in without cramping my toes.  Happily or not-so-happily, I was awake both times when we pulled into our 5am stops in Nha Trang and Da Nang.  

Taxi drivers will screw you over if you blink twice.  You know the seagulls in Finding Nemo?  That’s what they were like.  Since the last thing I want to do at 5am, post-sleeper-train is negotiate with jerks, I just kept walking, more out of annoyance than any knowledge about where I was going or how far I was from anywhere I might want to be. The one taxi that we rode without help from a “trusted” source like a hotel, made a 5 minute ride into 10 minutes – and that was only because I started grumbling.

Your average motorcycling fellow is free for hire, and probably the way to go, unless you have massive luggage.  They tend to suffer from seagull syndrome too, though, and all seem to get kickbacks from hotels, because they always want to take you to one.  Probably the most fun way to get around, unless you’re worried about head injuries.  Vietnam instituted a helmet law in the past two years, and while everyone now wears helmets, I noticed they’re either really crappy, mostly  open-faced (your jaw is toast in an accident), and that half the drivers don’t even bother to buckle them.  

Me?  After arriving in a place, I got around mostly on foot.  In Hoi An, there was a half day on a rented scooter, but other than that, walking got me where I wanted to be.