There’s no karaoke to wake us up this morning, just Joe returning from his walk with a little bit of breakfast, and a couple of dough balls that we’ve been avoiding trying this entire time. Turns out they are hard boiled quail eggs, wrapped in spiced meat, wrapped in sweet donut dough, and deep fried. Tasty, but I’m quite ok with only having them once, they would get heavy if we had them every day. We manage to finish off the sandwich bread, the butter, but are leaving half a jar of jam. We just couldn’t finish it all!
It’s Saturday and departure day, but unlike most of our departure days, we’re leaving late. I’m not used to this! The AirBnb is rented until tomorrow, so we don’t have a check out time, just a full day to do whatever we want, I’m so lost. I’m more of a “get up at the crack of dawn and board your transportation before you’d otherwise have breakfast” type of traveller. However, today, we leave the house looking like this, and head for lunch:
It’s time for lunch, and we want to play it safe today. We taxi to a new to us mall, and get dropped off here:
We enter the mall, and… where are all the shops? There’s nothing in this mall! Ground floor is a grocery store, second floor is a kids play area, third floor is the entertainment floor with rollerskating rink, and fourth floor is a Jollibee’s fast food place. This mall is not the right mall for us. We decide on a restaurant 15 minute walk away, but decide we need a snack before we get to the lunch place, so we grab a treat from the grocery store.
We finally get to our restaurant for lunch, and browse the menu. I did not order this:
We each ordered a steamed bao burger, but with four different fillings. Each burger was partially split in two, for easy sharing. Here’s what we chose:
Maybe it was all the pickles I ate (nobody else liked them), or maybe it was the tamarind soda, but I don’t feel great. We pay our bill and leave the bao restaurant, and book our taxi to take us back. We still have packing to do!
While we wait for our car at the curb, this ice cream vendor is biking along. He sees us and starts chanting “ice cream, ice cream”, then hops off his bike to offer up his wares closer to us. When he realizes we’re not shopping for dessert, he crosses the street as there are more tourists over there. All of this while smoking his cigarette with his left hand.
Back at the AirBnb, we finish packing and hang out, waiting for time to tick by. There’s no point going to the beach, everything is packed, we can’t dirty it all up again before the train trip. Joe and Téa head downstairs to buy some dinner, even though we’re not really all that hungry. Téa and I share a pizza, Joe and Maylin have buns.
When it’s finally time for us to leave, we double check all rooms one more time, and then head downstairs to call a taxi. It takes a larger taxi than normal to fit all four of us and our many bags! We have to drag everything to the nearby hotel, as some of the streets are still closed.
7pm, all aboard! The train car is a tighter squeeze today than last time. Our large suitcases haven’t changed in size, but none of the three slide easily under the lower bunks this time, and they did last time. So we end up with more luggage in the middle.
I lay down and rest right away. I feel horrible, but better when resting. The others stay up and chat for a bit, but we’re all in bed by 9pm. Maylin and I have the lower beds, Joe and Téa are up top.
It’s a restless sleep. Every hour or two, we stop at a new station, and there’s a loud announcement in Vietnamese, English and Mandarin about what the next stop is, and don’t forget your belongings, all night long. There are also vents under the beds into the neighbouring rooms, as well as into the hallway, and people are smoking everywhere.
I have vivid dreams of trains going uphill like a rollercoaster and barely making it to the top. At 2.30am, Maylin decides it’s too scary on the train, so her and I share my narrow bunk for the rest of the night. My Fitbit shows zero sleep this night.