What happens when you go third class in a third world country

Here is the journal entry I penned on the train tonight. Shudder...

8:33 PM We are on a train to Nha Trang Vietnam from Ho Chi Min City. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a 3rd World Country. We couldn't get a damn sleeper car, so we settled for an 8 hour trip in coach, soft seats, air conditioning (well, sometimes). These are the kinds of experiences I should write about, because it's been a heck of a train ride so far. We left Saigon at 3:45, it's almost 8:45 now, still 3 hours remaining...oh God.

I started the ride by playing hide and seek with the seemingly cute child in the seat ahead of us. It turns out, he was the devil reincarnate. He's about 4 and I've hands down diagnosed him with a very severe case of ADHD. Hyperactive?!? He was the Vietnamese Energizer Bunny!! To start, the kid made lollipop mouth raspberries on the window, them moved on to spitting some kind of nut peel at me. When I turned around to retrieve the wet shell in my seat, he assaulted me by pulling my ponytail. I handed it back to his mother, and she slapped his butt a few times. We have come to find that this technique of parenting does not work with this particular child (or any child?!) He continued to pull down the shade, nodding his head yes and chattering away in Vietnamese, while I shook my head saying, "no,no, no" in English. He giggled, then took a swipe at my head. He missed. What was better was that his mother missed it too. In fact, she failed to respond to most of his antics. How nice for her to take the hands off approach while he harassed me.

Ryan calmed me down by holding my hand (or maybe holding my hands down?) to make me feel better. I decided to read and ignore said devil spawn by reading my Nook. Devil baby thought it funny to try to hit it out of my hands because I wasn't giving him the attention he was craving. I ignored that. Then he turned his attention on Ryan, slapping his iPhone and pulling out his ear phones a couple times. Ryan's death stare did not faze the possessed youngster.

I had opened a bottle of water and set it on the windowsill. Devil baby grabbed it, put it in his seat, the shook it in my face. Eventually I stuck my hand over the seat to get it back, and the mother tried to hand me two opened bottles. For all the efforts of not drinking Vietnamese water, I'm certainly not sharing possible germs with the crazed tiny person. I gave up on the water. Especially after he tried one last ditch attempt to taunt me/ return the bottle upside down, where it started dripping all over me. Finally, I was just readjusting in my seat after hour 3, when out of nowhere the tiny hand of Beelzebub came shooting out to fully knock my glasses from my face. Dear Mama Risdon, I know you claim to never have met a child you didn't like. Well God Bless you if you fall in live with this one. Ah 3rd class riding in car 8 in Vietnam!

I must focus on something good. Some high points include seeing one of the most spectacular sunset skies. The hues of pink splashed behind big billowy clouds in the distance was truly a sight to see. As it grew darker, we could see a lightning storm taking place inside the largest cloud. Pretty amazing. Other than that, a overly boisterous and/or drunk Vietnamese man tried to make friends with us and had to find a very nervous teenager to interpret for us to be careful with our passports, while for the previous 5 minutes we thought he was talking about baseball. I love language barriers! A group of teenagers also gave a few charming renditions of some of their favorite Vietnamese camp songs, and actually harmonized quite nicely. Good on ya girls. Also, they showed Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for the first couple hours. Not bad, if but for the glare off the windows.

Oh great, El Diablo is literally running up and down the aisles cackling away in his tiny possessed voice. He might have also just coughed on Ryan. Ew. Alright. It might be time to just take a nap in order to make it through the rest of this semi-torturous ride. Is it a bad sign that Ryan asked a little while ago if we could go back to Cambodia?!

11:33 PM Longest train ride ever... It's late. I'm tired. The terrible two footer finally went to sleep on a mat under the chairs in front of us. His dirty feet are now taking up the space in front of me. The train stopped for 10 minutes for no reason. To top it all off, our boisterous/drunk friend ordered ramen noodles and has now spilled them all over the floor of the train. He's been slowly picking up the noodles with a plastic fork for at least 5 minutes. I cannot WAIT to get to this hotel!!!