Around the World in 80 Trains

by Monisha Rajesh

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mean Nanjing?’ asked Jamie.

  ‘No, Nanning, definitely Nanning.’

  ‘Spell it.’

  ‘N-A-N-N-I-N-G.’

  ‘Oh, okay, so definitely Nanning then. I’ve never heard of it.’

  Nanning was right at the bottom of China, about the same distance from Beijing as Hong Kong, but since travelling on the Trans-Mongolian, these distances paled in comparison. What was a mere twenty-three hours? It wasn’t even a full day. After a week in Beijing, we asked Jamie to book our tickets to Nanning at a local agency, which was easier than queuing at the station. Unconvinced that we knew where we were going, he had almost sent us to Nanjing. He then took off to Shanghai, where he was reporting on a surge in sham marriages among gays and lesbians appeasing conservative family members; he was annoyed that his editor wanted photos, which went against the entire concept of the story. From Nanning, we would then cross over the border to Hanoi. These two journeys alone sent me spinning into a blur of happiness as I instantly fell back into step with the comfortable, familial way that Asians travel together. On our thirtieth train journey, from Beijing to Nanning, we sat in the dining car watching an elderly man eating a plate of steaming beef, pausing only to swig from a small bottle of whisky as though it was water. Opposite him sat his friend with puffy, deep-set eyes and grey hair, working his way through fried pork and beans, stopping to take bites from a cured sausage the size of his arm. The floor around them resembled the bottom of a hamster cage, covered in the shells of sunflower seeds that crunched under the wheels of a trolley piled with sausages on sticks. Fish heads and chewed bones lay strewn across tables in an unabashed declaration of a dinner enjoyed. At our own table, Jem swiped his plate with a finger, his cheeks flecked with chilli and oil.

  There was a shared joy and deep satisfaction in these mealtimes, a contrast with the gloom of European dining cars, where single diners sat at separate tables, each nursing a bottle of Pinot Noir in a state of ennui. On the way back to our compartment, we passed people gathered at the hot-water tank, filling bowls of instant noodles and flasks of jasmine tea. Passengers sat in the aisles watching loud soap operas on gold iPhones, shelling peanuts and throwing them on the floor. Open carriages displayed rows of cracked grey heels, T-shirts on hangers, and tightly wrapped babies in quilts. Some passengers smoked in the gangways or stood fully lathered by the sinks, shaving before bedtime. While I wandered around, Jem had made friends with a geology graduate nicknamed Xué, which appropriately translated as ‘studious’. Xué was travelling home to Nanning for the first time in six months, and was sharing our hard-sleeper compartment along with two grandmas and a pretty girl who spent most of the twenty-three-hour journey watching an epic drama on a crystal-covered iPad. While the grannies made loud phone calls, broke wind and ate mantou buns, Xué sat in between us watching Game of Thrones. None of us used earphones, and yet the combined noise did nothing to upset the harmony of our temporary communal living. The next morning, Xué accompanied us to breakfast, ordering soft mei fun noodles with black cabbage and peanuts, and chatting to us about his job prospects as rain lashed at the windows.

  ‘I’ve been away from home for too long. It will be good to go home to my mother.’

  ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ I asked, forgetting that Xué was part of the generation affected by the one-child policy.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What does it feel like being an only child?’

  ‘You don’t really think about that. For all my classmates, it is the same. They are all only children as well, so I don’t feel any different. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything.’

  Straight away I realised the stupidity of my question. Of course Xué felt no different. Having no siblings was as normal to him as having a brother was normal to me. I’d never considered what life might have been like as an only child or with more brothers and sisters.

  ‘At the moment there is a huge problem with jobs,’ said Xué. ‘Everyone is leaving the countryside to get jobs in the city. On the farms they earn maybe 10,000 yen per year, in the city they can earn up to 60,000 yen, so they are abandoning their farms and it’s a big problem for the government. They are trying to build better schools and more hospitals in the countryside to encourage people to stay, but I don’t think it will be easy. There are too many people looking for jobs. Sometimes the government is right and having less people will control the problem.’

  When we arrived in Nanning, Xué walked with us across town to help collect our onward train tickets to Hanoi from a local travel office, which we would never have found without him. He’d then brought us back to the station, located the platform, and wished us luck, telling us that his mother would be wondering where he was. These random acts of kindness always reaffirmed my faith in humanity. For Xué, there was nothing to gain but a telling-off from his mother, yet he’d given up an hour of his time having not been home for six months. Maybe he wanted us to have a positive impression of Chinese hospitality, or perhaps the answer was simply that he had enjoyed our company and wanted to help, but I will never know.

  In the same way that some travellers are drawn to collecting postcards, coins, stamps or beer bottles from other countries, I am obsessed with fast-food outlets, particularly KFC and McDonald’s, which always feature appropriated versions of classic items – like India’s Chicken Maharaja Mac, and France’s Le Croque McDo. On finding one I’d never seen before, we wandered into Dico’s, a fried-chicken chain. Slapping an English-language laminated menu under my nose, the server waited patiently as I ordered a couple of double-decker burger combos. As much as the West had influenced Chinese tastes and fashions, they remained resolutely Chinese: looking around the restaurant, I saw teenagers wearing fat trainers, eating fast food and reading their phones, but they sipped soy milk instead of Coke, and crunched shrimp sticks instead of chips.

  The overnight journey to Hanoi was spent sleeping, pulling bags off the train at the border, sleeping, pulling bags off the train at the other side of the border, then watching a young woman sob as she was taken into a back room, then led away in handcuffs. She’d been sharing our compartment – shoving her pink plastic suitcase under my berth – and now I was desperate to know what she’d hidden inside. The idea of wilfully committing any kind of crime in Southeast Asia never failed to baffle me. Security officials in this part of the world had the kind of demeanour that made me want to cry when they so much as appeared in the doorway. They didn’t come across as the sort to offer tea and sympathy to a spindly student in yellow flip-flops. As our train pulled out of the station, I looked over at her now-empty berth, the blankets bunched where she’d left them, a few long hairs on the pillow. She’d lifted clean out of our story, and we out of hers. Flipping off the light, I stared at her berth in the darkness, wondering if someone was waiting for her in Hanoi, and hoping she’d be okay.

  Bangkok has the worst traffic in the world – at least that’s what I’d thought until I’d visited Delhi and decided that Delhi had the worst traffic in the world. But now that we were here, I could see that Hanoi actually had the worst traffic in the world. Almost a source of national pride, it was so bad that hotels offered guests instructions on how to cross the road, none of which worked. We had been standing at the side of the road for more than seventeen minutes, trying to work out how and where to cross in what had turned into a real-life version of Frogger. Vietnam’s capital was home to more than five million motorbikes, most of which appeared to be swarming down this street, carrying crates, poultry and families of four. Inching back onto the pavement, we waited as another torrent of mopeds, motor scooters, bikes and Vespas came flooding around the corner, the women wearing reversed jackets and what looked like oven gloves to protect them from the sun. Trapped between parked scooters, and scooters trying to park, we were about to step off the pavement when a black Yamaha transporting a giant plasma screen came hurtling towards us and we leapt back. The traffic lights turned from red
to green and back again, as what we’d thought was a one-way system had rapidly developed into a two-way, then three-way system, as new lanes of traffic emerged and began to flow against the tide.

  To ease congestion and pollution, the department of transportation had announced plans to ban all motorbikes and scooters by 2030, but there was no way the city’s residents would survive without them as few could afford a car. Waiting for a lull, we hovered around for another ten minutes before deciding it would be faster and safer to hail a taxi to the other side of the road; but taxis knew better than to interrupt the flow of two-wheelers that dominated the roads like skinnier, more colourful versions of Hells Angels, and had kept away. Mustering up the faith of Moses, we stepped forward and hoped the bikes would part. Walking steadily around wheels and headlamps, we saw that the riders wanted to avoid us as much as we wanted to avoid them, twisting away as we approached. As we reached the other side, we jumped off the road just in time for a scooter to come careering down the pavement and into a fellow pedestrian.

  Every traveller we had met along the way had used Hanoi as a base from which to explore Halong Bay, before working their way down to Saigon. But as we strolled around Hoan Kiem Lake, the morning sky not fully awake, we had no desire to be anywhere else. Yogis stretched at the water’s edge as we sat beneath a tree eating fried egg and pork bánh mì baguettes and watching a group of old women doing t’ai chi. The slowness and precision of their movements was at odds with the pace at which the rest of the city moved around them. Happily unhurried, they lifted their limbs with careful control, their whole being present in each moment. As a people we’d become obsessed with speed, checking our watches, glancing at the clock, running for the Tube, inventing bullet trains, faster internet and instant coffee, yet where was the extra time we were saving? And what were we doing with it? If speed was improving our lives, then why were the days busier, longer and harder, our minds overburdened and tired? Over the previous weeks, the slowness of train travel had replenished my own mind, allowing me to pause and pick apart my thoughts – which it turned out were gratifyingly few. Leaving my job, my home and my possessions had quietened the noise in my head. My immediate concerns were where to eat and where to sleep. The less I carried, the less I worried.

  Jem and I spent the next few days strolling Hanoi’s tree-lined boulevards, eating big bowls of pho, and sitting in rooftop cafes, drinking dark percolated coffee with condensed milk, as tiny birds beat their wings in wooden cages. One afternoon we paid a visit to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, not realising that he received guests only until 11 a.m. Housed in a starkly Soviet marble monument, the late leader was embalmed in a glass coffin – which it turned out had gone completely against his own wishes to be cremated and to have his ashes placed in three urns buried upon unmarked hilltops in the north, south and centre of Vietnam. In 1989 the Vietnamese government admitted to fiddling with his will and falsifying the date of his death to make sure it did not coincide with Vietnam’s National Day and turn it into one of mourning. After finding out we’d arrived too late to see the inside of the building, we’d staggered around the grounds, cursing the humidity, and reassuring ourselves that Uncle Ho had never intended to be seen in that state.

  Sad to leave Hanoi, but eager to see the rest of Vietnam, we arrived at the central station ready to board the Reunification Express, which runs from Hanoi to Saigon. Like the Trans-Mongolian, no single train bears this name, but the route is still commonly known as such. Completed by French colonists in 1936, the line was severed in 1954 when Vietnam was divided into north and south. Throughout the Vietnam War the railway was battered and bruised by American bombs, but resurrected itself and resumed a regular service after the country’s reunification in 1976. We were travelling at peak season and an extra service numbered SE17 – the Limited Express – had been put on to cope with the increased demand. Approaching the train, I eyed the hem of rust and struggled to decide what colour the outside used to be. Nervous to put my foot on the steps in case they broke off and fell into the tracks, I climbed into the carriage as it creaked beneath my weight. ‘Limited’ was an understatement: the inside of the compartment looked like the aftermath of a fire. Paint flaked off the walls like dead skin, covering the berths with yellow dandruff. Rat-grey tufts sprouted from the edge of the air conditioner, which was held together by four pieces of tape – two of which were flapping off, the body of a bluebottle attached. Black mould stained the ceiling, and the smell of decay leaked from under the sinks where a pipe had broken and was bubbling down the carriage. Ankle-deep water sloshed along the side, swept up by a guard whose shirt was stuck to his back.

  Whenever I read about these kinds of trains on blogs, they were described as having comfortable compartments with vendors bringing food to the seat, and were usually accompanied by twee photographs showing tied-back curtains, pink plastic flowers, and bald middle-aged men holding aloft their beers. No one else seemed to travel in these mobile skips, and while appalled, I was inwardly thrilled when faced with journeys like these. It was a test of wills, to see what stuff I was really made of, and how long I could go without contracting tetanus. Keeping my rucksack at the foot of my berth, I moved to the window as the carriage began to shake, assuming we were on the move, only to discover the quaking was the result of four brothers and sisters under the age of six, tearing up and down the corridor in vests, pants and bare feet. A Danish couple was sharing our compartment, reading in their berths, and getting ever more annoyed by our attempts to make conversation – eventually turning over to face the wall.

  Over the PA system, an anguished woman began singing like a sonic weapon as we rolled out of the station through a downpour of warm tropical rain, the kind that obscured and drenched everything in the three minutes while it lasted. The city’s red lights blurred at the window, as water wormed down the glass. For the first hour, the train ran parallel to the highway with nothing more than a single wooden fence separating us from couples on scooters, and trucks flashing past in the opposite direction. After running neck and neck with lorry drivers chewing cigarettes, glancing sideways into our compartment, the train wrenched away from the road, delving into the guts of the city. Presumably resigned to the dire state of the compartment, whoever was in charge of the railway’s soft furnishings had attached a pair of incongruous gold curtains in the hope that they would distract from everything else. Holding them back, I sat at the window watching as the train panted in the darkness past run-down houses lit by hurricane lamps, and strung with children’s laundry. Night trains indulged a special kind of voyeurism, and I sat in the dark as the others slept, spying on inner-city families winding down for the night: fathers washing dishes and mothers unpinning their hair. But soon the shops were shuttered, the lamps blown out, and nothing but blackness met my gaze. As the city fell away, I let go of the curtain and crawled into my berth, the train thundering on through the night.

  A groan came from the berth above, followed by the sound of a pillow being punched. The Danes were not having a good time. Mandolin music began to whine from the PA system that was just outside our door, along with the same woman who was still in mourning or pain – or both. Dawn was about to break, and this was not at all conducive to a relaxing journey. The Vietnamese siblings were charging down the carriage playing knock-and-run. Whether I liked it or not, I had to concede that the day had already started and I threw off my blankets. Rolling back the door, I met the red-eyed gaze of the children’s father who was standing in resignation, smoking out of the window. With a sympathetic nod in his direction, I realised that what was an isolated experience for me, was his daily existence. He nodded in return with an expression that was part apology, part envy, part suicidal, as his children clattered past for the third time, the smallest covered in the dank water from the night before.

  Sharing a metal mug of hot chocolate and a packet of sugary biscuits, Jem and I sat by the window enjoying the warmth of the sun as it winked through the trees. Thick, waxy leaves flappe
d at the sides of the carriage, rustling into the windows, opening up to reveal fat fists of green bananas. Skinny palm trees leant to the side and buffalo wallowed in lotus-filled waters, white birds prancing boldly on their backs. The Danish couple disembarked at Hué, neither of them saying a word as they packed up their things and left. It takes such a valiant effort not to talk to fellow passengers when travelling in such close proximity that I couldn’t help but admire their determination to remain as unfriendly as possible. Between Hué and Da Nang, the jungle crept up the hill and wrapped itself around our train, shadows and sunlight strobing through the carriage. This was the most beautiful stretch of the journey, and I was pleased the Danes had missed it. Leaning from the doorway, I watched the front of the train curling in and out of tunnels and boring into cliffs, when suddenly the South China Sea opened up below in a magnificent haze of blue. From Lang Co Bay, a finger of creamy sand ran along the edge of the water, tracing the foam all the way to Da Nang where we were due to break the journey. Stopping just long enough for us to drag our bags across the track, the train shuddered, then continued down the coast and on to Saigon.

  4

  The Death Railway

  Cambodia had no trains. For the first time since we had left London, we came to an abrupt halt. After a couple of nights in Hoi An, buying tailored silk and eating cao lau, we had re-boarded the Reunification Express at Da Nang and carried on down the country, sitting upright on wooden benches for seventeen hours. The Vietnamese had watched us as closely as they watched TV, and I suspected they’d placed bets on which one of us would be the first to have a mental breakdown. Aside from being cheaper, the ordinary hard-seat carriages had no benefit other than to offer better opportunities for photography from the open windows, but this half of the journey was nowhere near as scenic as the first, and it was mostly dark.