The Night Ferry and The Night Train - A Tale of Two Sh*ttys (aka Descent Into Madness II)

Author's Note (Prologue): With the 50-year storm wrecking havoc on Hanoi, where havoc-wrecking is usually reserved to motorbike-riding hooker gangs, we decided to head out to Sapa, Vietnam's storied mountain region. With respect to our time (we have little) and money (we have none), we opted to take the 9-hour Night Train, which - like the Night Ferry - did have its drawbacks, most of which I will now itemize. For even thought I actually had my own bed this time, and I reached some sort of spiritual awakening at around 4am (see psychosomatic side effects of Mefloquine anti-malarial drug), I've learned one thing from the great leaders of my tribe, men like Woody Allen, Jackie Mason and Jerry Seinfeld. We're funnier when we're complaining.

Drawback #1 - The Roomates. While the Night Ferry bunked us cheek-to-cheek with 170+ other sweaty, under-deoderized backpackers, they atleast kept their clothes on. Our 4-person room was rounded out by Bert and Donny, two Belgians who instantly stripped down to their tightie-whities (which were actually tightie-blackies), and remained that way for the next 10 hours.

Drawback #2 - The Torture Light. Our excitement over the fact that we could actually close our door and turn off the lights to sleep was soon quelled by what could only be described as a Torture Light, a bulb in the center of the ceiling that flashed brightly in alternating patterns of every 4 to 12 seconds for the duration of the trip. I do not find it at all strange that I memorized this pattern.

Drawback #3 - The Bathroom. While the Night Ferry blessed us with a "squatter," a type of waste disposal unit I'll address in a later post (or more likely, never ever again), the Night Train had a standard toilet in a room that was, for some unknown reason, 20 times more turbulent than the rest of the train. The result was an experience similar to the carnival game where you shoot water into a clown's mouth to make a balloon pop, except in this case the only thing exploding into oblivion is your sense of human dignity.

Drawback #4 - The AirCon. In a truly evil genius move, they cranked up the A/C full blast for the first hour, soothing the majority to sleep, and then cut it dead for the next 7 hours before cryogenically freezing us again in the last 30 minutes. The result is a feeling best described as: "I'm pretty sure I have pneumonia."

Drawback #5 - The Stopping. For some ridiculous reason I thought that the "King Express" was an express train. It wasn't. So while the other 3 roomates slept soundly, I sat awake and was sent into a panic when the train grinded to a sudden halt around Hour 2. Naturally, I assumed that either the engine had broken down leaving us stranded in the Vietnam wilderness; or we were being hijacked. And not the good kind of hijacked like in Busty Cops 2 (hot!), but the bad kind like in The Great Train Robbery that ends with a mustachioed man shooting you in the FACE.

I managed to make it through after parting with 16% of my sanity, which brings the total trip loss to a whopping 42% (irreplaceable!), but I have decided that after Friday's trip back to Hanoi, I will refuse all things "Night," including Night Ferries, Night Trains, the music of Three Dog Night, Mischeif Night, and the collective filmographies of Wayne Knight and M. Night Shamalyan.

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Author's Note (Epilogue): The above blog was written two days ago, long before we were told our 7:30pm "soft sleeper" train back to Hanoi did not, in fact, exist; and we were tossed on the 9pm "hard sleeper" train, which meant that our roomates increased by 2 and the space between my head and the ceiling (3rd bunk) decreased by about 600%. However, the hard sleeper had something that our other two "night" vehicles did not - cheap beer. Six or fifteen warm cans of Bia Ha Noi later we were packed into the hallway with a Frenchman and 7 WILD Israelis who were blasting house music and officially certified my "Israel Beard" (as it is called by Vietnamese women whose opinions on whether or not I should shave it range from "yes" to "definitely.") The party raged for a solid hour before an angry woman told us to quiet down as "this is not Spain," so we made some awesome videos and I actually ended up getting some sleep. Viva la Night Train!