The Midnight Express to Hue

Everyone has told us that train travel in Vietnam is quite an experience so we had to try it. I’ve heard though that theft can be a problem in some of the lower class cabins so we booked the best seats you can buy (that I know of) – AC, soft sleeper on the Livitran carriage. The bathrooms are also nicer and you're only supposed to have 4 people in a cabin.

All was good until a family of 4 walked in – but at first it seemed like the dad was just dropping off his wife and kids. I was thinking that it sucked to have a screaming baby overnight in your room but what can you do. It wasn’t until another person arrived in our cabin, that we realized the woman and her two kids only booked one ticket. So we now had 6 people in our 4-person cabin....this is when I got upset. I felt really bad for the woman but we had paid extra for the first class seats so I tried to raise my concerns (but still tried to be nice) with the train conductor. Really this was useless as he tried to explain that in Vietnam a mother can bring her kids (all her kids) and only book one bed. We went back and forth for a few minutes and then he finally said he would have her switched if we paid him an extra 1,000,000 dong (about $60). We tried to explain that we'd be paying double but he just wasn't getting it. Honestly it wasn’t the money it was just the principle so we decided to drop it….plus I felt horrible since the poor mother was in the room as we were discussing the issue. Talk about awkward….ugh.

Anyway we were pissed but decided to move on when about 30 minutes later we hear a guy negotiating a bed switch as he’s checking out our cabin. It turns out he and his wife were in a similar situation - only they were stuck with a family of 5…..so 8 people total in their cabin. Crazy! He ended up paying the train conductor and the family in our cabin switched with them. Soooo in the end there were 4 of us in our cabin which is what it was supposed to be in the first place. The couple were really cute and friendly, Casper and Maia from Denmark - we totally lucked out! This was their 3^rd train and it seems like this kind of thing happens a lot. What a bummer – I really hate to think that the train conductors would try to take advantage of tourists. But we learned that you can bribe anyone for anything. And it's probably a safe bet that 50% of tourists would pay to get out of sleeping with a family (even if they’ve already paid for the first class cabin.)

Other than that drama the train experience was fine. It was clean, bathrooms were fine, and we could actually sleep. However we have decided to fly to our next destinations in Vietnam….there really wasn’t too much of a price difference and it was worth the convenience!

We got to Hue at about 9am. Luckily our room was ready and it was pretty nice. Hue is pretty small and easily walkable. We stayed at the Orchid Hotel which was really close to the river, restaurants, and nightlife. The only downside was that there were rolling blackouts and the power was out for a few hours each day. Really there was nothing you can do about that but it really did get HOT!

Hue was a nice change of pace from Hanoi. We took the first day to re-energize, chill, upload pics, and just relax. The second day we did take a city/sight tour in which we saw the Citadel, Tu Duc Tomb, Minh Mang Tomb, Khai Dinh Tomb, and the Thien Mu Pagoda. I’m going to be honest – it was so hot outside and I was feeling sight-overloaded that I was just going through the motions. That said, the Citadel and Khai Dinh tomb were pretty cool.

We had a nice little stop in Hue. It was good to be able to chill a bit.