The train last night was dodgy. Since the hotel and taxi driver had royally scammed us, I think we were both a bit sensitive to dodgyness so at first we wondered if we were even at the right place. There wasn’t really anything written in English at the train station but as I spotted what appeared to be Station B, the one we needed, a kind young man appeared and offered to help us find our way. Or more like just started helping us. We were wary but he ended up being completely legit, helpful, and nice, like most of the people we’ve encountered besides the last few I described.
We followed him down to the sleeper car where it’s four soft beds to an air-conditioned room. We shared a room with two other travelers, who occupied the second-level beds. One guy originally from New York who’s taught English in South Korea and Kyoto, Japan for the past 8 years. We didn’t talk to the other guy but he looked like maybe a tourist from Japan. The train provided a bottle of water and a long jelly-”filled” piece of bread (ban, which is similar to a hoagie roll but larger). A lady came around knocking on the doors saying, “Hello, would you like cold beer?” Sounds nice. But actually the train is filthy and overall pretty gross. Since the trains are notorious for having stuff stolen they made us store all of our packs in the compartments below the first-level beds. Then they showed us how to close and lock the door and as a final security measure they gave us this sturdy rope to wrap around the door handle and the metal step for climbing up to one of the second-level beds. Nothing compares to the bathroom though, absolutely horrible. It appeared to simply be a hole with a pipe leading directly to the side of the car and going outside. Since it’s a squatter hole in the floor, there was overshot urine and water floating around all over. An emptied Fanta bottle sat in the sink refilled with what I’m pretty sure was urine. In one of my trips to the loo I was slipping and sliding the whole time and came very close to falling in the muck. Sick.
Before I fell asleep, I wrote the following in my notebook:
“The sound of Danica’s new mp3 player somehow cuts through the loud screeching, crunching sound of rusty metal as the train lurches forward and once again I’m jerked backwards. The military-like voice of a woman blares through an intercom outside the sleeper door and a minute later we come to a jerky halt. The voice outside the door stops but seems to transfer to an intercom outside the train at whatever station we have pulled up to. I just returned from the WC where someone pee’d in a cup and left it in the sink. I wonder what inspires us to leave clean homes and muck around in places where simple communication is a challenge. But you know it was worth it once you get there.”
We arrived in Lao Cai early this morning after a pretty solid sleep despite being on a screechy creaky train and caught our pre-scheduled minibus to Sa Pa. Fifteen minutes later I know it was worth it because the 38 km drive up the 10% grade to Sa Pa reveals amazing terraced rice fields, jungle, and misty mountains, all fresh and green.