The Vietnamese Sleeper Train Service

We are no longer strangers to the concept of sleeper trains. They have become our friends, turning an intolerable journey into a fun night's camping with mildly alarming food thrown into to spice up the night. Since our first sleeper out of Singapore and into Malaysia, we have become accustomed to the 2nd class refinement of this survivor from a nostalgic age. The typical arrangement is that we will have a bottom and top bed bunk, with the beds running in the same direction as the carriage, meaning that the aisle runs down the middle separating four sleeper's whose head's in turn are separated from the next person's feet by a robust partition. Each carriage probably holding about 50 beds or so. Food is delivered to you based on you choice from the lamenated menu given to you by the jolly carriage attendant who also looks after beer orders, carriage arrangements and cleaning the toilet. The food tends to be served before the toilets demand her attention which is probably just as well and yet also somehow linked. The food is generally not bad, and adequate in its proportions.

The beds have little curtains which once pulled over afford as much privacy as you require, though for those on the top bunk, it's not quite enough to keep out the light from the fluorescent tube just outside. The lights get turned off at a reasonable hour but get turned back on at a ridiculously early hour sometimes accompanied by music to make sure no-one misses breakfast or the view for the next 5 hours of trip still ahead. If you're on the bottom bed, once awake you can turn your bed into two facing chairs with a table in the middle and wait for your slumbering partner upstairs to climb down and join you. The chairs are nice and wide, and a bit square meaning you can find a range of comfortable positions to sprawl across them in, with only the window to one side of you and the aisle to the other, it feels like a 1970's business class seat ripped out of an old plane. If you are in the top bunk and wake up first, you have a bit of a rough deal because you can't get a seat to sit on and you have no window to look out of. The general arrangement is that Nic gets the top bunk because I tend to wake up earlier while she sleeps on through the Thai Top 40 and other classic hits.

Our Vietnamese sleeper was not quite up to spec. The pictures used in all the advertising, and on our ticket, depicted a super streamlined futuristic shiny train, full of very satisfied customers who wanted for nothing. Ours was about as streamlined as a box. We had booked ourselves on the best class available (we had applied the Vietnam filter to the pictures) which was called 'soft class', the next being 'hard class'. This meant we had the luxury of a wipe down mattress with a dirty sheet hanging half off it. We had a berth this time too, so the beds went across the carriage, resulting in the people on the top bunk clinging for dear life every time the train made a change in speed. We had a little table that we could have used except it was covered in stuck on egg shell and the half emptied plastic bottle probably belonged to one of the people who had clearly had our cabin before us. There were four beds in the berth and we shared the room with two Danes who had just come from China. There was no curtains this time so we all had to sleep in our clothes which was just as well because the people on the top bunk narrowly avoided hypothermia due to an overactive AC vent. We also had a blaring Tannoy above our heads which every time the guard spoke, sounded as though we had Davros leader of the Daleks for a driver. Food was in the form of a pot noodle thrown at us, and just as we were starting to think you had to eat the thing dry, a grumpy trolley pusher came along with warm water.

We didn't have the worst deal by a long run though. I took a little wander and found the hard sleeper carriages which stack 'em 3 beds high a with a rattan mat to lie on, beyond that was the seated carriages which looked like some form of torture. Back in our happy little back packer freezer though things were quite amiable, everybody trying to avoid going to the toilet until absolutely necessary, for reason that don't need to be described in detail. I did have to get up once during the night though and had the obstacle course of a dozen people sleeping flat on their backs in our aisle to deal with before reaching the door at the end. The next challenge was to open this door, back in towards myself, with one foot between a man's groin, the other hovering in the air, one hand for support against the wall and my other hand clutching the door handle. Upon opening the door, I could only open it as far as the head of the same man allowed, though he had done me a favour by sleeping with his neck contorted at a most alarming angle which allowed the door an extra couple of inches ajar, and just enough to bend my hovering foot around before hop scotching through and towards relief.

The following day we arrived in Ho-Chi-Min city, a little mal-nourished but not too much the worse for ware, ready to face the touts and find our hotel.