FIRST CLASS OVERNIGHT TRAIN (20 hours Saigon to Danang, Vietnam)

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We recently listened to our new favorite audiobook. It's about this guy who rode his bike from Oregon to Patagonia.

So if you stick around till the end of this video, we'll tell you the name of the book as well as how you can listen to it for free with Audible.

I thought it's time to go to sleep.

So did I. Do you think so?

I just lost a tower there for just a second.

Today we are leaving our big beautiful Airbnb here in Ho Chi Minh City. And we are traveling almost a thousand kilometers north to the city of Da Nang. And we're doing it via an overnight train that is scheduled to take 16 hours.

All right, first we have to catch a taxi over to the train station.

Taxis in Vietnam are so cheap. We are driving 20 minutes across town and this ride costs less than $2.50. We even paid for Grab plus, which guarantees air conditioning.

Totally worth it.

Feels very empty for a train station. I feel like we're the only ones here.

Maybe we'll have the train ourselves.

Yes, now the gates open, but you should printing the tick. Print the tickets first. Yeah. Okay. T8.

Alright, we got our tickets and we have a full 30 minutes before our train leaves. We don't know what the food situation is on this train, so we're gonna use the next 30 minutes to find some food.

And because snacks are fun and because.

I don't want to be trapped in a tiny space with her if she hasn't eaten. Fair enough.

The dessert menu consists of potatoes, chicken balls, cheese sticks, wood rings. I think they might have their translation a little off.

We're not proud of this decision. It's the only restaurant in the train station.

All right, we got food, we got snacks, and our train leaves in four minutes.

What a gentleman. I guess I go in here.

Ah.

I don't know where to go.

All right, I'm looking for seats 23 and 24. Oh, right here.

Hello. So we booked a first class ticket, but no matter how much you pay, you can't get a room to yourself. So we're going to show you what you want to be. They don't mind the smell of our fast food. I feel kind of bad about that.

We're on the top bunks too. Thankfully, our new friends travel lightly, so there's plenty of room for our stuff. Trying to figure out how to get on the top without stepping on the.

They don't speak English.

Seriously.

You Think I was a cheerleader.

All right, maybe I'll just stay up here. I guess this is home for the next 16 hours. This air conditioning is beautiful. I'm semi impressed. The beds aren't the softest. Yeah, pretty much. No padding on the beds, but everything seems nice and clean and silky. Very thin pill. A nice heavy blanket that I can't imagine needing at the moment because I'm so hot that I'm sure it'll come in handy. Oh, yeah, look at that. There's a tiny pad. Tiny pad with sheet over it from the top bunk. I see no outlets. We've got a LED light space to store your stuff, which I should take advantage of.

Towel rack. Ah, there's some roses in here. That's a nice touch. Oh, there's an outlet. I was sitting here touching it. Yay. So one outlet to share for the next 16 hours. Oh, we're moving.

Are you serious? We've been on this train for, like, five minutes. If we would have been late like we usually are, we would have missed this train.

Punctual. I'm hoping that means that we're gonna get to Da Nang on time. Take a.

Mom. My new friend just got mad at me for having my shoes on the bed.

Now that I've investigated a little more, give it like, a six on cleanliness, lack of stain, clothes. Yes, it's settled on my side.

Okay, don't judge. We subscribe to the theory that calories on travel days don't count. I got a spicy chicken sandwich.

Wow.

A box of French fries, two Cokes. And for later, Nate picked us up some waters, Pringles, some fruit.

I threw in the banana because I was feeling guilty.

And, of course.

Snickers. This girl's not getting hangry.

I think you can buy food on the train, but just in case we are going to weigh five extra pounds when we get off this train.

We are about an hour into the ride, and there is a lady pushing a cart of snacks and drinks down the aisle. And it looks like most of the locals are ordering a Vietnamese iced coffee. And basically, she takes a cup, and then she takes this water bottle full of really strong Vietnamese coffee, puts a little bit of that, and then fills, like, this much up with sweet milk, and then just takes all this ice and fills the rest of the cup up with ice and mixes it all together. It looks really good. And I'm really tempted to get one, but I'm a little nervous about the ice. You're not supposed to eat like you're not supposed to have the water here, so I don't know if I'll get one, but it looks so good.

All right, I'm gonna do a quick bathroom tour while we're stopped because when we're moving, the train is very loud.

Impressions.

It's very hot in here, but it doesn't smell too bad. There's toilet, there's toilet paper. There's this little bar of soap.

Running water.

Let's see if it flushes.

Yeah, not bad.

And we're moving again.

Okay, so I just found this little area that has a sink and a hand dryer. It's not like a bathroom. It's just here. Here are the rooms. Here's the second I'm back.

So I prefer the top bunks that we're in right now because it feels a lot more private when you're up top. But the biggest drawback is that when you're up in the bed, you actually can't see out of the window. So been finding myself spending a lot of time just standing out here in the hallway and watching the world go by. That is the fun thing about riding on trains, that you get to see parts of the country that you'd never see otherwise.

The other bum is that they lock the doors.

They put a padlock on it so you can't open it and hang out. What's my favorite part about India?

We're stopped again. Another bathroom tour.

If you like Squatty Putties, they have one of too.

We are a little over four hours into the trip right now, and according to Google Maps, we are right outside the town of Fan Tet, which looks like about a quarter of a way to Da Nang. We lost one of our roommates about 30 minutes ago. She got off somewhere. So now it's just three of us. So far, so good.

Okay, we now have five people in the room, and I'm questioning the cleanliness of everything. One of our roommates got off the train about an hour ago, and when she did, the train attendant came, folded up her blanket, put her pillow on top of it very nicely, so it all looked like it was fresh. And then the new people came into the room and they're using that exact same pillow and blanket. So who knows how many people have slept in this bed before me.

So the dinner cart just came by.

And it looked like our options were some kind of sliced fish soup that came in this little cooler looking thing.

Hot dogs on a stick.

And instant noodles, which we don't know where the water comes from, so that's a little risky for our western bellies, so we went with whatever these are. We've already finished all of our Pringles and both of our Snickers and we're so hungry.

Yum.

They're like.

Fried.

Maybe fried corn, nuts.

This is one of the most unhealthy days I've had in a very long time. It's sad because it's the unhealthy things that are like the safe things to eat. As far as not getting sick.

Well yes, we do still have our business class jammies.

Makes this train ride feel a lot fancier. It is 8pm we have to stand cleaning our room. Catch you up at 5:30. Considering calling in the night even though this is much earlier than we normally go to sleep. Not a lot left to do here.

Also, we're not exactly sure what train etiquette is for turning out the lights. We have roommates. One of our roommates is sleeping. The other one is on the phone.

He's like half on the phone, half sleeping.

We are closest to the light so I feel like it's our responsibility about.

To make the executive decision.

I was having trouble going to sleep last night. Nate was over sleeping like a baby. But I knew my backpack was up here and somebody could like reach in and take it. And I was just so torn on if I should take it and like hold it while I slept. I was so much more comfortable without it and so I ended up just grabbing my hard drive that has all of our blogs on it, all the ones I haven't edited yet. And I just slept with that.

That was the one thing she couldn't bear to lose was her hard drive.

All right, it is about 7am we were supp to arrive at 6:30 but it looks like we're getting close. Biggest issue with this train is that I don't think there's any temperature control. So they either have the AC on full blast and it's absolutely freezing or they just completely turn it off. So all night I either woke up like in a puddle of sweat or I woke up freezing.

It was rough.

Also, I waited till this morning to tell you this, but you see what happens every time I get in a birthday.

Yes.

I didn't know if you noticed and I wasn't going to tell you.

I just blocked it out of my mind. I was the first one on that bed.

Just pretend like you're not sleeping in a bed that 10 other people have slept in before you all right? We're close. Also, I was wrong on the time of this train, it was actually scheduled to be 18 and a half hours. So I think at this point we're 19 hours in this train ride.

So close. So close.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

All right, 20 hours and six minutes later, we have finally arrived in Da Nang. It was the day of our life on that train. We made it here so we can do another 20 something hour travel day tomorrow. Talks good.

We just got to our hotel and finally got a big strong glass of iced Vietnamese coffee and I am so much happier now. Cheers. And as promised, we are going to share with you our favorite audiobook we have ever listened to. It is called To Shake the Sleeping Self by a fellow Tennessean, Jedediah Jenkins.

This book chronicles his journey of riding a bike from Oregon to patagonia over a 16 month period. It's an incredible journey in itself, but I think what we enjoyed most about the book was just how real and raw it was.

He focuses a lot on the internal journey and we thought it was a great example of how travel changes you as a person, which is not something that we talk about on our videos very often. But he is a fantastic writer and we thought he did a great job putting it into words.

If you want to listen to this book or any other book in Audible's huge library, all you have to do is go to audible.com karandnate to start your free trial. Or just text kareandnate to 500500 all.

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So one more time, if you want to start your free trial today, just use the link in the description below and that's audible.com karennate or you can text Karen Nate to 500. 500.

Say what?

Cue.

Stop. Let me out.

I don't know where to go.

This way.

A lot of buttons.

I'll have to blur that out.

My face keeps hitting the window.

He's gone.

Would you like a ride? Yeah, I thought it'd be faster if we just circled around and found you.

I got through the middle. I came back anywhere here. And I was like, oh, that was fine. I was a little nervous. I was pretty sure it was fine.