We had time for a quick breakfast, then hired bikes to ride to the free WIFI cafe to check for an email from the hotel booking people, but there was no joy. We made it back to the hotel in time to pack up our room, and were paying the bill when our driver arrived to take us to Da Nang train station. I took some randome photos out the window for the mini bus.
Ahead is the “Marble Mountains”, made of, yup, you guessed, marble. Apparently it’s an interesting place to visit, but we didn’t have time to stop.
Most train stations we have seen have marvelous examples of revolutionary art out the front. It’s brutal, and course, but rather stirring. Da Nang has a train instead.
Our tickets. We are “foreigners”, in case you hadn’t noticed.
The train “platform”. Quite likely, the lack of an actual platform is an excellent reason for not allowing people out of the locked waiting room until the train has arrived on the platform.
The journey was uneventful – barring an unfortunate culinary incident. I had seen someone buying boiled eggs, which were served with herbs and an interesting looking salt, and resolved to try them the next time the egg man cometh. When the egg man came, I ordered some eggs, and he looked very surprised. I should have known then that I was treading dangerous waters. He cracked open the eggs with a very large cleaver, peeled them, and presented them on a little tray. They looked… funny. I proceeded to poke about with it, and found a tiny avian fetus, boiled alive. Somehow, I think that is crossing the line between vegetarian and omnivore. We declined to eat it, culinary adventure or no.
There was no-one to meet us at the other end, so we caught a cab to the hotel, and were in our room within 15 minutes of the train arriving. Exhausted, we went straight to bed with a small Cointreau, and then slept very well.
Disco Knitter 