We arrived at Ho Chi Min station at 10:30 to catch the 11:00 overnight train to Nha Trang which was waiting at the platform when we wearily arrived. The room was basic and contained 4 bunk beds on metal frames, with a single step on the base of each to hoist yourself on to the top bunk if required, which I did with the grace and poise expected of me by now on this trip. Still, no bones broken.
There's a lesson to be learned about using the toilets on these things, and that is get in early for as the journey lingers on, so does the stench that builds from the misuse of the facilities. Even with the window open wide enough to air a small chlorine fumed leisure complex, later visits become excercises in purple faced breath holding.
The train started rolling on time with our carriage consisting of a mental french lady, a vietnamese traveller with smelly feet, rachel and myself. Mental french lady sparked up a conversation with Rachel about how it was her dream to travel on the overnight train all the way to hanoi and that afterwards she was travelling to a very important festival in Thailand. I think the marijuana sellers must have found a buyer.
The journey started fresh, I put on a pair of jeans and a jumper and looked forward to a night of being snug in relative cool conditions, by the time the train rocked in at 5.40, I was back in shorts and damp t shirt, desperate for a shower and a proper clean up.
From the train station we got a taxi into town. Rachel, dead on her feet had got the name of a hotel from the lady in the place we had stayed in Ho Chi Min. I was wide awake and with it due to a sugar low requirement of a packet of sweets on the train upon waking. So using the last of the battery on my phone I located the hotel and tried to get Rachel to her destination before she tumbled, and from there I had the name of a couple of hostels to try to find after. By the time we reached the hotel, my battery was about to die, I wasn't going to be locating anything until that had recharged.
The lady on reception showed me a room, it was small but it was clean and tidy with a double bed, aircon, tv, a fridge for my insulin and powerful shower. 10 dollars a night or 12 with breakfast, I booked five nights with breakfast and set about cleaning up, by 7 am I was walking barefoot with waves licking my toes along the shore of one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever encountered, pipping even weston super mud during the rainy season. I walked for a while taking in the view and breaths of cool air.
"I could stay here" I mused.
Those feelings lasted nearly a whole day before wandering back to where I go to next, by what means and for ha long (titter)
After a late breakfast, I went back to the hotel, grabbed a book and headed for the loungers in the beach, picked a shadey one, read 2 pages then crashed. Everything had finally caught up it seemed and the sea air was only too keen to deliver the knockout punch. I woke, dosed and read the next few hours away, whilst watching the small wild birds combing the beach and burying themselves up to their heads in the sand, bathing in the shade. I returned to the hotel, showered, ate then slept soundly until morning.
After breakfast I wandered along the beach again for a couple of hours before returning back the hotel for more sleep until early afternoon when I rose again, stuck a book in one pocket and a bottle of water in the other and ambled along the road that ran concurrent with the beach, visiting shopping areas, cafes and, as the evening fell the vietnamese life that was now present. Small huddles of men betting on something, families out walking and groups playing all manner of sports on the beach, I used my new photobombing skills effectively before sitting down to read some more from the wethered pages of my slowly digested paperback.
When I walked along the beach on the first morning here, a young american lady approached me thinking I was someone else. I knew she was american, who else would use "doppleganger" comfortably in open conversation. "He was a brit too" she said.
Walking the beach today a german chap started speaking to me, again thinking I was someone else with whom he had been speaking at the day before. I wasn't him.
Tomorrow I hit the big 4 oh and whilst I wanted to use this time away as a period to reflect and maybe find myself, I really hope that I actually don't. Another me? That would just be far too disturbing.
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