Do you know this town??

48 days until I come home, and I’m realizing that I’ve been committing a major faux-pas by “counting the days” rather than “making the days count” (a cheesy saying, but a helpful mantra to live by, no less). Yes, I’m terribly excited to come home, and yes, I’m excited for the difficult aspects of this experience to come to an end, but no, I don’t want 48 days of my life to fly, virtually wasted, simply because I am too stubborn to try to enjoy them.

Today, I “made the day count.” Per my usual weekend-in-Hanoi schedule, I woke up early, grabbed some delicious banh muot breakfast, hopped on the bus to Vinh, took a motorbike taxi from the bus-stop to the train station, and then boarded the train in Vinh. Sounds like the start to a typical Friday morning.

I fell asleep shortly into the train ride and woke up a few hours later when I felt the train stop at Thanh Hoa Station (a small town about equidistant between Vinh and Hanoi). Hoping to go back to sleep, I picked up my book and read. And read. And read. And continued to read. Still, the train wasn’t moving. So I continued to read. The train usually gets into Thanh Hoa around 12:15 in the afternoon (assuming that the train leaves on time from Vinh, around 9:30, which it almost NEVER does). By 1:51 when MJ texted me to ask about the status of my train ride, I was getting nervous. Why hadn’t the train started yet?

By 2:51 (one half-hour before the original arrival time in Hanoi), I had been drifting in and out of sleep but remarked to myself (and the three quite attractive vacationing Finnish medical students in my cabin) that I had last checked at 1:51 and, then, it had been about an hour that we’d been stopped. Now it had been two. One of them left to see if he could figure out why the train had been stopped for so long. He came back a few minutes later and reported that he had spoken to someone who said that the train would not start again until 7 PM and that a lot of people were trying to take other trains or busses instead, and maybe we should do the same. WHAT?!?!

Luckily, the lovely MJ acted as my link to the World Wide Web and did some quick research to see if it would be possible to take an alternate route. She found a link that said there are mini-bus taxis that can take you from Thanh Hoa to Hanoi for 40,000VND (about $2). YES PLEASE- ANYTHING TO GET MOVING AGAIN.

But then came the hard part. How would we find these alleged mini-bus taxis in this random rural town in the middle-of-nowhere? Enter Allison Backman, Competent and Confident Vietnamese Speaker! Faced with no other option (and with the hot Fins depending on me), I approached a nice-looking Vietnamese mother. “Do you know this town?” I asked her in Vietnamese. She said that she did not. I asked a gentle-looking older Vietnamese man. Same answer. Finally, I asked a grandmother who asserted that she did, indeed, know the town of Thanh Hoa! Score!

Okay, Question Two: “Is there a bus that will take us from Thanh Hoa to Hanoi?” Affirmative. Score! Okay, Question Three: “How do we get to the bus? Does the bus leave from right here, or do we have to travel far to get to the bus?” The lovely grandmother gave me some easy-sounding directions and pointed us in the direction of the supposed bus station. Sweet!

Faking 100% confidence to impress the Finnish men, I led us off the train (around 4 PM by this point) and asked one of the station attendants where we should go to find the bus. According to this person, there actually was no bus! The only way to get to Hanoi would be to take a taxi.

Okay……………………..

“How much would it cost?” I asked warily. 10,000VND per kilometer (a pretty standard taxi fare). “How many kilometers to Hanoi?” 106. Some mental math told me that spending around 1,000,000VND (approximately $50) split between me and the 4 Finnish guys would not be the end of the world, especially if it meant taking a direct route to Hanoi and bypassing the train delays. Then, best of all, the station attendant told us that if we brought our tickets to the ticket window, we could get the remainder of the trip refunded! Score- that will pay for half of the taxi ride as it is!

The guys and I trudged over to the ticket window, explained (in English, this time) that we wanted to refund our tickets. The woman started handing us over a large pile of bills when, abruptly, she yelled at us, “Your train is leaving right now! Do you want to take the train?!” So confused, we handed back the pile of bills, grabbed our tickets, and ran to the train that was blowing its whistle and getting ready to depart.

Sweating and out-of-breath, we made it back to the train, only to have it not leave for another 30 minutes or so, and only to have the air conditioner on the train stop working. Oh brother…

The end result, however? I survived the train ride, made it into Hanoi around 8:30 (only 5 hours behind schedule, no big deal!), and, best of all, proved total self-sufficiency in Vietnamese! At 2:51 when I realized it might be time to start figuring out alternatives to the train, I initially panicked. “NOBODY ON THIS TRAIN SPEAKS ENGLISH AND CAN TELL ME WHAT TO DO OR HOW TO GET TO HANOI.” An hour later, I felt confident enough to try my hand at Vietnamese in order to get myself (and three foreigners who were depending on my feigned confidence) to a (possibly) imaginary bus station.  

Becoming a pro at everything Vietnamese, all in one day? Check. Making the days count? Double check. I think I will declare myself the winner of the Getting Shit Done, Taking Names, and Kicking Ass medal for today, thank you very much.