Single track travel

One of the greatest benefits of traveling by train in Vietnam is that it provides an excellent opportunity to take pictures of the beautiful landscape. You can also take good pictures of cattle and birds and can even capture the expressions on the faces of cyclists waiting at railway crossings or of workers in the field. 

With a better lens, I might even be able to capture a cluster of dragonflies in flight ('cluster; strikes me a very dull collective noun for such ethereal flashes of iridescence - but hey). 

This advantage is not afforded by British trains, nor French nor any others I have, so far, had the pleasure of riding. Why? Because they are not trundling through the countryside at an average 23 miles per hour - that's why.

This aspect of Vietnam Railways didn't really occur to me until I looked at my photos a few days later when I was surprised to find not a single blur of passing trees. As a result, I can take you for a 400 mile, 17 hour journey through South Vietnam.

Unfortunately our journey started at 23:00 in the darkness of Saigon's Station - Ga Sai Gon and we traveled through the night northward toward our first station stop ay the popular seaside resort of Nha Trang where arrived just after dawn.

Nha Trang station - track side

Shortly after we set off again, the breakfast trolley came down the corridor offering two types of hot egg; regular brown chicken eggs and white, foetal duck eggs.

The duck eggs contain foetal ducklings at various stages of maturity - not for the faint- hearted.

Eggs are served with a little handmade paper sachet of salt and black pepper for dipping your egg. My sachet was made from an old bus timetable as you can see!

Here's Pandy on her top bunk cracking her first of two fresh, hot, hard boiled eggs.







Our cabin mates were a couple of businessmen from Loa Cai up in the far North West of Vietnam. They were making the 31 hour, 700 mile journey up to Hanoi.




 As you can see, they are setting themselves up with a good breakfast of four eggs each. 

A peaceful pagoda compound by a river

The lush countryside rolls by our window. There are workers in the fields making an early start in the cool of the morning.





















A woman is gathering her hay into neat piles before building a haystack like the one in the background here.

Rice paddies and fields of root vegetables, maize and corn.

modern irrigation systems criss-cross the rice paddies of Central Vietnam

A headland by a busy port

Getting into mountainous country now

A quiet road in the Highlands

This landscape reminds me of the Scottish Highlands

Typical Vietnamese family houses

Ah, 11am and it's meal time again for the boys on the bunks below.  they return form the kitchen carriage with two chicken joints and the raw ingredients for a piquant sauce; salt, pepper, lime and chilli. With a handy pocket knife, the younger mad sets about chopping and slicing to prepare the sauce.

A table cover of newspaper is spread out and the old guy breaks out the moonshine that he had kindly shared with us the night before. It was OK. Ot tasted like good grappa but was made from wheat or barley. Here you see the finished meal and two plastic cups ( left over from our morning coffees) of the hooch!

Proud of their efforts, many photos were taken and you can see the elegant hooch flagon on the floor beside them!

A duck farm

My word, is it that time again? 12.30 and it's time for meat and rice with some morning glory and some more hooch. Got to keep your strength up boys!

In the picture below you can see some graves scattered amongst the trees. There are more and more graves and grave yards the closer we got to Da Nang; a legacy of the war I suspect.






The photo above is remarkable because it shows a second railway track. We stopped and waited a little while here until another train passed by in the opposite direction.  The track soon went back down to a single line.


So, that's my whistlestop tour of the beautiful journey from Nha Trang to Da Nang

What? ..... No Seagulls?

A few days away from the bustle and heat of Saigon. I took a brown train from Ho Chi Minh City station for the one hundred mile, four hour journey to Binh Thuan. This little rail stop is about six miles from Mui Ne where I am going to spend 5 days alone with Graham Greene and my sketch pad. 

I am travelling with Viets who have a different view of personal space. What's theirs is theirs and what's yours is theirs as well. The train travels through an impossibly narrow single track corridor of dwellings,shops, barbers, wokshops, coffee shops, kitchens, bicycle repair, engine shops, bedrooms, chickens and dogs. 

After a while opening to suburbs, more space, warehouses, allotments, small holdings, a massive, massive river, factories, little local stations, graves,acres of rusting corrugated tin, brightly coloured houses, sidings, litter and rubbish everywhere, farms and plantations.




Sometimes we stop but there aren't any names on the stations. people get on but no-one gets off yet. Now rice paddies. The TV in out railway carriage is blaring ( are Viets deaf?) a selection of entertainment that is a good imitation of a Saturday night on the BBC circa 1976. Sleeping children. An old man puts in his eye drops, teenage boy picks his nose. Father nurses toddler, granny asleep with the baby, her feet on a plastic laundry basket full of food and provisions. An American veteran sits beside his Viet wife still so beautiful gazing out of the window at her homeland.

Food trolley selling hard boiled eggs, unrecognisable fruit, plastic bags of sugar cane to suck on. The lady next to me buys three eggs and a little dish of chilli salt which she offers to share with me. The Viets are so generous with their food. free bottles of water for everyone on the next trolley.

The landscape changes.Plantations of saplings growing amid raggy corn. Nick Cage in a very violent movie on the TV - Vietnamese subtitles. Hills look like slag heaps strewn with rocks and scattered with skinny trees.. Bigger hills overcast. Water buffalo in meadows each with a companion heron, cows tethered under tress, fields of dragon fruit. Nick Cage is covered in blood hurls abuse at a dolly blond in denim hot pants as the camper van they were pursuing speeds off into the distance. My fellow travellers gaze emotionless. Fruit orchards banana palms.

Arrive, A small halt straight out of a 1960's French movie. We climb down from the train all luggage being passed hand to hand. Walk across two railways lines that disappear off into an unknown distance. A girl checks my ticket and the two local taxi drivers vie for my business. No-one can tell me how far or how much it will cost we just set sail!

Wow - very swanky hotel! All the guests appear to Russian....... great.

Huge, unrippled blue pool, the sun loungers all have my name on them. Lizards on the lawn, Frangipani, Bouganvilia, dragonflies, tiny white crabs scuttle on the sand in the dusk,  shells crostle in the crannies of the breakwater rocks. Gekko chatters in the bedroom, cows trundle along the beach to wallow in lush watery meadows between the beach bars. Blue and green coracles on the beach come and go each night and dawn. Fruit seller girl with two paniers dressed, seemingly, only her smiling eyes show between her mask and the shade of her coolie hat. Luscious mangoes and spiney crimson lychees by the bunch.

NO SEAGULLS! No seabirds at all! Not a sound.  Humph.

I sit and draw the little boats.  The Russian tourists creep up behind me a peer over my shoulder, silently stealing a glance at my drawings. The fruit seller and a straggly straw hatted pearl vendor, the gardeners and the fishermen all come up to me at the front and squat down beside me just to enjoy the company for ten minutes or so, watch what I am doing and exchange a few words. they talk about me as if I am not there.......but quietly.. as if they know I am concentrating hard. Open and curious, smiling and complimentary in their simple English. Nosey like children. Uncomplicated companions with beautiful hearts.














I take a trip to the local fishing port about 3 miles away. Phan Thiet is the home of nuoc mam, the ubiquitous fish sauce that flavours the Vietnamese cuisine.  Nuoc mam is to the Viets what balsamic vinegar is to the French, butter to the English, cinnamon to Americans and sauerkraut to Germans. It is the ever present condiment of choice. It is made by fermenting anchovy-like fishes in vats for months and months and months. They catch them between August and October and the fishing fleet is vast. 

Phan Thiet estuary reminds me of old paintings of Whitby from the 1900s when sailing ships jammed together along the banks of the Esk. There are acres and acres of dark brown boats all with turquoise or peppermint green superstructures. There are no eyes on these boats. I wonder why not.  I thought all Viet boats had eyes on the bows. Humph...... no seagulls and no eyes. What's going on?