The slow trains are not half as nice as the expresses it turns out, but still fine. I shared my cabin with a German bloke and a 137 year old Vietnamese gentleman. I felt so guilty when he was trying to climb up the pegs they give you to get to the top bunk that I ever so generously let him sleep on mine. But it was good in a way as I didn’t have to look at the German bloke all night from the top 🙂 Just along from the door of our cabin which we kept firmly closed was the so called hard seat car, which is pretty much exactly what the name suggests. This was just a sea of Vietnamese people all piled up sleeping anyway that they could. Not pretty..
I’ve ended up in the backpacker zone of Saigon, can’t remember for the life of me what the road’s called but’s it’s the Khao San Road of Saigon. Not the prettiest of cities I don’t think on the whole so not too much point to hang around too long. I went to the palace today which is actually fairly modern, built in the 60’s or so, and is the root of much more Vietnam/American history of course with a rabbit warren of basement tunnels where the top brass could hide from bombs. It’s rather reminiscent of the Cabinet War Rooms in London for anyone that’s seen them.
Tomorrow I’m going to take it easy and lie in I think, and find ways to circumvent the problem of my bank card that expires in 2 days (how the hell did I not notice this before I came away!?) then I might take a day trip to the Chu Chi tunnels a little way out of town the day after. Then I’m considering a 3 day boat trip up the Mekong Delta, home of many floating markets and all that stuff which will end me up in Phnom Peng, capital of Cambodia. Then it’s a case of juggling dates to see if I can still fit in Angkor Wat, Laos and North Thailand or whether I need to bin Laos and North Thailand, or extend the trip. Too many decisions to make, *** sigh ***…