The night train and oreo's

I simply cannot sleep in a sitting position. On most night buses, I have to lay on the floor in the aisle in order to be comfortable enough to sleep. It is a bit awkward but usually works, although I was once awoken by the stench of a passengers feet.

The night train from Hanoi to Sapa in NW Vietnam is inexpensive and convenient. I was thrilled to not have to ride the night bus. When we went to buy train tickets, we opted for the "hard-sleeper". In China, which is were Carmen had learned much about trains, a "hard-sleeper" is a padded bed with six people in a cabin while a "soft-sleeper" is more blush and only holds four people. For half the price, we figured we could tolerate two more people.

Boy, were we wrong about the "hard-sleeper".

They really mean "hard". The "bed" is a plank of board with an 1/8th of an inch bamboo mat. The cabin was a six foot by six foot cage holding six individuals. When we arrived to our cabin, both our beds were occupied by strangers. With no a/c, the window remained open but a steel grate remained in place to keep objects from being thrown in. Accompanied by the burglar bars surrounding the door to the cabin, I had the distinct feeling of being in a low security, third-world prison. The beds were so close together that I could not fully sit up. As I crouched over, staring at a stranger yelling at me in Vietnamese, I calculated that we were allotted six square feet per person in the cabin and that my mother's closet was bigger than my current inhabitation.

The squat toilet, which is ubiquitous in Asia, is usually a challenge. A hole in the floor, surrounded by porcelain, one must squat fully in order to aim correctly. On a moving train, however, the act of using the toilet becomes an exercise of acrobatic accuracy--and a true trial of maintaining bodily excrement off of one's shoes. I succeeded, barely.

The cage was so hot that I immediately took off my shirt. "Carmen, I'm already half-naked. It sure is going to be awkward when I'm only wearing my passport pouch". "Philip Storey! What have you done!", rebuked Carm as she rolled to the side of her bunk to look at me. She was relieved to see me dressed from the bottom down. Fortunately, the volume of sound produced by the train was roughly equivalent to that of a tornado and Carmen's yelling barely reached me.

I was touched when one of our fellow passengers woke me up in order to have me instruct Carmen to not lay on her stomach. When Carmen asked why, with a series of hand signals, it became clear he was afraid of her suffocating. She was touched, but laughed as no one had put her to sleep on her back since she was an infant. At least they try, right?

After two Benidryl, I slept for most of the night. Though my bum is still sore, we survived.

We just bought our return tickets today. All the soft-sleepers were sold out. I almost cried. My plan is to eat enough Oreo's in the next four days so that I have more padding on my rear side.