I’m losing track of dates here a little bit so an over-all recap from Hanoi (take 2) to Hoi An where we are now, in a cafe, watching the rain piss down…
We took the night train from Hanoi to Hue and picked up a couple of very nice Americans friends on the way. Steve was a 60-something, retired owner of an insurance company who sounds like Hank Hill from King Of The Hill and who had decided to sell his company the day he lost $8,000,000 on the stock market and decided he didn’t need the stress any more. Good decision…
He was a very quiet nice fella and while you’d think from the above that he might, he didn’t bang on about money at all, just delivering insights of his life in a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact sort of way. No concept of money whatsoever, asking questions like: “How much did you pay for your taxi to get to the station? I paid $80, I don’t know if it’s too much”. Basically, he just smells of money and he’s in the wrong place, bless him. Back home, he’s living his happy quiet life and playing at being a cow-boy back on his ranch, throwing in a bit of travelling every year. Nice guy.
The second guy we met who we’ve been travelling with for the last 4 days is Jed who looked me in the eye after introducing myself and said: “God, you’re a Jonathan aren’t you. Me too, it’s awful, you can always tell another…”
Denise, Jed and I shared a four berth cabin with a Vietnamese guy who was very helpful and chatty but was the most extreme snorer any of had ever heard. It wasn’t just the loudness, it was the orchestra of different toots, wheezes, half-choked screams and rasps which accompanied the standard snore.
But before bed, the four of us had made our way to the beer coach where we were turned away and told to go to bed despite the place being full of Vietnamese drinkers. Now imagine Hank Hill saying: “It’s just racism, pure and simple…” as we walked back in a quiet sincere voice and you have Steve.
Well we arrived in Hue at 8.30am – unfortunately for Steve, we got split up from him on the way out and the last we saw as our taxi pulled away towards the Old Town was a 20 strong mob of touts surrounding him like jackals. Denise got out to try and help him and offer him a share of the taxi but she got the evil-eye from the touts and had to just leave him with the details of an evening meet-up.
On the journey to the hotel area, we kept imagining him saying things like: “I’d like a clean, comfortable room for the night but I won’t pay more than $200….”
Later it was drinks all round at the DMZ bar followed by an extremely sound nights sleep after the sleeper train.
