The Train to Hue

Doing their utmost not to lose a moment of valuable English learning time, Van and Hien accompanied me to the railway station. I didn't feel up to the task of playing teacher as I'd just finished a grueling day going over the Vietnamese Phrasemaker with Mr. Quang. He is both an English language teacher and a linguist, two assets that made him the perfect person for the job. It was intensely interesting but after the fifth hour of constant listening and directing, my mental faculties were worn out. I sat with Van and Hien listening to their badly mangled English, making corrections as necessary and wishing the time would pass a little quicker. They resolutely hung on till the very last moment then we loaded my luggage on to Hien's moped to ride the last 200 metres across the compound to the railway station's main entrance. I had suggested we just walk there but since the mass introduction of mopeds into Vietnam going anywhere by foot has become an aberration.

With the exception of one lithe middle-aged woman, all my companions in the six-bunk, air-con cabin were pensioners. The oldest, a tiny, fedora wearing man with few remaining granite colored teeth, beamed with joy when realized he'd be sharing the space with a genuine foreigner. No one spoke English but through a rapid succession of signs I was shown where to stow my bag and then asked to exchange my middle bunk for a top one so one of the old ladies wouldn't have to make the dangerous assent.

At exactly 7pm the train pulled out.

The first person I fell into conversation with was Mr. Doan, a former high school teacher. He is now retired and, like everyone I met on the train, was going to visit relatives. When we got to the subject of age he asked me to try and guess his. If my recent experiences are anything to go by, this parlor game has become something of a national obsession. Despite the fact that age plays an important part in which honorific you apply to someone, the Vietnamese are highly desirous of appearing younger than their years. While doing the preparation for this journey I learned I should always use the youth invoking pronoun "cª", when addressing a woman of a certain age as it makes them sound more maidenly. Now I was about to learn that it's more polite to guess that someone looks younger than they actually are. I'd taken Mr. Doan's wrinkles and retirement into account and pronounced him 65 or 66. His features momentarily sagged. He was only 61. In retaliation he added five years to my age when I asked him to guess mine.

I hadn't brought any food for the journey. Providence came to the rescue in the form of a wood paneled dining car at the far end of the train. Supper was a thin soup of noodles and beef, known as pho (sounds like "fur"), in a translucent, plastic bowl that gave it the uncanny appearance of having gone off. Like all train food everywhere, it was barely palatable and I did wonder if I'd be up half the night getting rid of it. Along with supper came the now familiar linguistic interaction; first the staff is almost surly, then I eject a few words of Vietnamese. A smile breaks across the interlocutor's face and my comestibles are delivered with further grins and words of encouragement. Eventually I end up telling them that I've been learning to speak Vietnamese for x amount of days and eyes become wide in wonder. It's a real ego-stroker until they discover just how little I really can understand.

I was exhausted and clambered up to my bunk with the idea of doing a little writing then going straight to sleep. Quy, the lithe middle-aged woman in the opposite bunk, had other ideas. She was intrigued at having a foreigner in such close proximity and couldn't resist assuaging her curiosity. When I began writing, she poked her head across the gap and indicated she'd like to have a look. I surrendered. Using my Phrasemaker and a very poor dictionary we made conversation. My Vietnamese must have sounded very stllted and at times idiotic but her mountain of patience saw us through. Whenever I gave up and started babbling away in English, she'd smile back and say the one word she knew in my language, "no" and shake her head vigorously. It became a running joke especially when I started using it in defense against her sudden flurries of hardcore Vietnamese. Quy told me she loved music and was both a singer and musician in a five piece, traditional orchestra. In return I told her that I used to play in a seven man, gamelan band but had to leave because I was too busy with other projects. I shook my head sadly at the end of my soliloquy to let her know that I regretted my decision. We traded addresses but I doubt I'll ever see her again. In the middle of the night she and her aging mother, the woman occupying my original bunk, got off in the seaside, resort town of Nha Trang.
At seven in the morning Mr. Doan decided I'd slept long enough and poked me in the ass as a wake up call. To make up for it he bought me breakfast; sticky rice in a plastic box, to which he added a dried peanut condiment he'd brought with him. It was actually quite good. The old man and his wife then insisted on adding to the feast by buying me a polystyrene packaged ready-meal of noodles and beef. My real desire was for a hot cup of coffee. At that moment, one of the ubiquitous, blue shirted staff came by pushing an ancient trolley with drinks on it. To my great relief they had coffee. Mr. Doan wrinkled up his nose when he tasted his. "Not good!" he spat out. My taste buds must be less educated or my addiction stronger; it tasted fine to me.

Outside the window the bottom half of Central Vietnam was rolling by the window in a symphony of green. The rice growing season was in full tilt and the shoots were so high and plentiful that each paddy field gave the impression of being an oversized lawn. Across the landscape hunched figures in conical straw hats diligently attended to the crop. The train slipped in and out of the lush countryside to chug noisily through farming towns and hamlets. Each one supplied a vision of the country's backyards, an impression that always reminds me of seeing someone in their underwear. As if bent on proving my point, one man nonchalantly pulled his pants down and squatting there, in full view of the train, did his morning evacuation. He seemed completely unembarrassed by it.

After taking a nap I woke to a different landscape. A little further north the first cycle of the rice harvesting was over. The fields sat brown, stubbly and unmanaged. I was surprised as I'd expected to see a repetition of green paddies all the way through Vietnam and into China. It prompted me to ask Mr. Doan how long the country was from end to end.
"About 2500km. Vietnam is very long and skinny", he added, as if making up for its length.
I asked him what the northern region was like.
"There a four seasons up there," he said in his best schoolmasterly manner. "In the south there only two: the wet season and the dry season."
We looked over the map of Vietnam together and he pointed out the northern town of Sapa which he proclaimed to be the most beautiful place in all of Vietnam. It was close to the border with China's Yunnan Province. If I decided to go to Sapa, it would probably mean continuing on to Kunming, a lengthy detour from the nebulous route I'd initially planned.

While having a cigarette in the noisy, designated smoking area between the carriages, I got to talking with another older gentleman. Using the rattling of the train as a cover, he told me of his distaste for all things relating to the Vietnamese
government and social system. He had reason to be upset. After the American Army left the Vietnam in 1975 he was accused of being a collaborator and served five years in prison. He told of horrific conditions with barely enough to eat, grueling hours of hard labor and dozens of fellow prisoners succumbing to disease and beatings. When he was let out he was unable to get a job and lived in constant fear of being arrested again by the police. At that moment a couple of men slowly walked into the corridor. He whispered to me that they might be police and quickly disappeared. I ran into him a little while later and he continued his tale. He'd finally created his own job as a watch repairer but the pay had been bad and for years he had lived from hand to mouth. Now he was sixty-two and retired. The state was providing him no pension so he was living out his waning years on the largesse of his two daughters. "Sixty dollars a month," he grumbled. As we conversed in hushed tones, a young man came over and stood suspiciously close, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. The old man threw me a knowing look and disappeared once again. Politics is a dodgy topic in Vietnam. I'd learned the day before that speaking ill of the country and its leaders can be a criminal offense but, to a man, everyone has been critical of the government, particularly in regard to the mass corruption inflicting the country. Most people see it as the biggest problem hampering the countries leap into the First World of technology and opulence. One day I hope to meet a corrupt official to see how he translates the issue.
At lunchtime we were each issued a tray with four plastic containers and a pair of chopsticks. The largest of the containers was predictably filled with rice. Peeling back the lids of the other three I discovered a meal designed to repel the taste buds: tasteless mushrooms in brine, questionable lumps of greying sausage and vile greens with slivers of gristle and meat. I was hungry and did my best to soldier through but eventually gave up in disgust. The three older people all finished theirs. When times have been exceptionally tough you learn to eat whatever is set before you.

The train was now wending its way through a series of coastal hills. I quickly looked up the word for "beautiful" - "dep" and added the Vietnamese equivalent of "very" to it. We were passing a small peninsula replete with a hook of sandy beach. Set back from it rural houses peeped out from beneath palm trees that quickly gave way to a mosaic of crafted paddy fields. The next carriage down had corridor windows facing the sea. I excused myself from the cabin, found a window, yanked it open and settled in for the remainder of the journey. The spectacular viewing continued broken only by occasional tunnels through the mountains. Tunnels have always held a special delight for me; I know that when I emerge at the far end I'll be entering a entirely different realm of landscape. The shifting terrain brought us endlessly toward the sea. Below, waves crashed against forbidding rocks hemmed in by a thick cover of jungle green then around the next bend a sharp valley would slowly reveal its interior contours before finishing off with a graceful sweep of unmolested beach.

From my vantage I could make out both ends of the train when it navigated around a tight curve. We had an engine at both ends now, the rear one helping push us up and over the hills. Then I noticed a hunched figure gripping on to the outside of the train. Then another. Two other people suddenly sprang up from a space between the carriages and to sit on the roof. Stowaways! Perhaps it is not the most fetching simile but the way they clung on to the enormous body of the train reminded me of parasites. The train slowly came to a halt at siding to let a south bound express come through. The stowaways let go of their host and with bags in hand walked the length of the train holding up shards of dried fish for sale.

The old man with the fedora appeared. I bade him come over to the window and join me. For the length of a cigarette he stayed there gazing out and nodding to me once in awhile to assure me that, yes, it certainly was "dep".

Before arriving at major destinations along the line, a tannoy distorted voice would burst into action announcing not only our arrival but also to give us a short lecture on why the city was worth visiting. This included a short history that tried its best to be objective and failed miserably. I was eager to hear what they would say about Hue, especially considering its successful take over and subsequent loss by the Viet Cong and the wholescale devastation visited upon it as a result, but the excited chatter of the arriving passengers and the hub-bub of departure drowned it all out.