Train stories and a day trip to Hoi An

First, let's take a short look back at Mui Ne and how we got the train tickets. We wanted to book the tickets online, which should have been possible, but all attempts to pay with a credit card (we have 5) failed. After about 3 hours and multiple email contacts with a ticket service and friendly hints, including a link to pay for the tickets, she sent us the tickets by email. During the 'security check' to make sure we have the right tickets, we noticed that she booked 2 tickets in the same cabin but in two different wagons - Päch gha!

Here are some experiences during the train ride: we thought we were well-prepared with water and snacks.... Vietnamese people are well stocked and travel with crates or bags full of fruits, chips, sweet rolls, etc. Food is also sold on the train. A woman was selling grapes. We wanted to buy some. To show us the price, she put the amount in banknotes in our hand and put a whole crate in front of us. But we only wanted half of the grapes and tried to explain this to her using gestures... She thought we were bargaining and sold us the whole crate for half the price... That's not what we meant!

In general, the train ride in the 6-person cabin was more pleasant than feared. We had a woman with three little boys in the cabin who mostly communicated with us shyly smiling. We even took a selfie together. The youngest one almost never cried, which was very pleasant. And the oldest one was somehow the only one in the cabin who knew how to open that darn door from the inside, which allowed Seraina to go to the toilet at night :)

Now let's talk about our day trip to Hoi An. We arrived exhausted from the long train ride at the hostel in Hue at around 6 a.m. We took a taxi at the train station, tired as we were, we agreed to the price of VND 200,000. At the hotel, the receptionist laughed at us a little and said it would cost at most 40,000. We gave her the rest of our grapes and she gave us breakfast twice. She then arranged a driver with a car for us to go to Hoi An, took care of our laundry, and booked two tickets for the next overnight train to Hanoi.

We left for Hoi An around 8 a.m. Our driver was overly cautious and it felt like it took 5 hours instead of 4 for the drive. He showed us LangCo Beach, a lagoon mainly used for fishing, the Hai Van Pass (Cloud Pass), and unintentionally a bit of Hoi An (he got lost while looking for a parking lot).

Hoi An is a beautiful little town. It was once a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the title was revoked because all buildings are now used for commercial purposes. However, it still has a lot of charm with the river and the fishing boats, the streets with many lanterns, and the overgrown houses, especially in radiant sunshine (it was scorching hot).

When we were even more exhausted back at the hostel, we went out to look for a cool restaurant where we could stay a bit longer to write in our diary or do something else... We didn't find it and we ended up eating in a restaurant full of Chinese and Vietnamese people. It was loud and Britney Spears sang one hit after another from the speakers.

We took the Schlumis in the Taboo Bar. It was really cozy in the VW van, which was basically the balcony on the first floor of the bar, from where you could overlook the street nicely.