Of course there is no single train called “The Reunification Express” in Vietnam – that would be like East Coast calling the 08.30 from Kings Cross “The Flying Scotsman”.. Having said that I have a ticket on the SE1, so I’m going to imagine it is the closest thing to this mythical train, going all the way from Hanoi to Saigon in three days. My destination is Da Nang – 15 hours south of Hanoi in Central Vietnam.

After China, getting on this train was very straightforward – no big queues in the station – and the platform was opened an hour before departure, with just a cursory ticket check.

The train is about ten carriages long consisting of soft and hard sleepers, soft seat carriages and a restaurant. I’m in a four berth (second class soft) sharing with Rob, from London, travelling to Hue, and Mr Chi a Vietnamese Canadian, travelling with his sister’s daughter, Ram, on their way home to Can Tho (a place that I have actually been to in the Mekong Delta). Mr Chi left Vietnam in 1979 and went to Hong Kong, then Canada. I’m guessing he was one of the Chinese descended families that left when they were persecuted by the government after the war and became what I knew at that time as “Vietnamese boat people”.

The SE1 is better than my M2 from Dong Dang, in that is the right temperature and has no signs of rodent or insect infestation. It is quite a lively place. Music blares from the corridor and people shout at each other from opposite ends of the carriage. The conductor makes occasional chatty announcements on a PA, but I have no idea what he is saying. The train rocks, bounces and sways with a motion that feels more like a boat in a swell than something actually on rails. It’s pretty grubby, but not so bad as to be a problem. My impression is that Seat Sixty One is slightly too genorous with its descriptions of how “comfortable” trains in Vietnam are.. Douglas Adams might have called them “mostly harmless”..

The staff are quite informal by Chinese standards and perch on collapsible chairs at the end of each carriage drinking tea from proper tea sets and sending text messages to their friends. They don’t seem to have their own compartment. There is also a strange arrangement in our carriage with a woman who lives in a cupboard, but she can’t lie down with the door closed so her feet stick out on a stool and the opening is covered with a purpose made curtain. I have no idea what she does or if this is an official role.. Elsewhere there are flushing toilets and an open plan wash room at one end. The doors between the carriages flap and bang with the swell and provide some ventilation.

Rob is up for a beer, so we walk forwards nine coaches to the “restaurant” carriage. Not much food on offer, but we find all the off duty staff on the train smoking and drinking. When we arrive its pretty busy and we sit down next to a couple of locals who quickly move on in case they catch something from us. Icy cans of “333 Export” for 15000 Dong (43p). I love ordering this beer, as its one of my few passable Vietnamese phrases – three is “ba” in Vietnamese, so a 333 is simply a “ba ba ba”. A very satisfying piece of school boy linguistics. Rob tells me he is going to travel from Hue down to Hoi An by scooter –  a real “Top Gear” type adventure.

Life in the soft seat carriages looks tough. It’s packed, and quite a few people sit in the aisle on extra plastic stools. People are either watching a Vietnamese version of “Eastenders” on the small roof mounted TV, or covered by their coat trying to sleep. I do my best not to bump into people asleep as we walk through trying to anticipate the rolling motion of the carriage.

I took a sleeping pill and managed to get some rest. On the plus side these trains have no seat backs, so in the bottom bunk you get the full width of the bed, making it more comfortable for big chaps like me. My problem was I needed an extra pillow and I may do something about this for the next leg. The bedding looked clean and as the train was starting in Hanoi there was no issue with it being second hand. The bedding isn’t changed when passengers get off, but is just nicely re folded. I have a sheet sleeping bag and really must start using it.

The samovars are unserviceable throughout the train, which has somewhat thwarted my catering plans, but there is a good supply of decent local coffee from the trolley service. Mr Chi tucks in to the lunch saying its good, but I have my doubts.

We are running about two hours late. Its a single track in places so we have to wait for the Northbound trains to pass in stations. With luck I should be in Da Nang for lunchtime. We have been through Hue and the Hai Van pass over the mountains that looking back over the beach reminds me of “Charlie’s Point” from “Apocalypse Now””.

Its New Year’s Eve, so I need to get myself into a more celebratory mood.. I’m also wondering where might be a fair place to break out my shorts. The weather in Central Vietnam is almost warm and cloudy, so this could be it..

So a day munching through the streets of the old quarter with a guide called “Johnny” from a great little company called Vietnam Awesome Travel that I tracked down from TripAdvisor. Lunch started at 11.30 and finished at 16.30! The idea is only one dish at each place, washed down with some Hanoi Beer of course..

There was a mixed international group of about ten of us, and we were asked at the start if we wanted to try specialities like dog and various insects. The consensus was that we didn’t, so the places were chosen on this basis.

The first place was all about duck with duck rice. The secret is in the dipping sauce..

The duck was accompanied by salad, shallots and some aniseed tasting local herb that looked like basil but clearly wasn’t.

Next up was a street snack of rice with pork sausage – the dish was stuffed with “pate” of some sort – I wasn’t sure about that one..

Next up were some (sea) worm fritters. The worms looked disgusting, but once in fritter form they tasted quite good.

Then we moved on to mushroom and shrimp dumpling rolls – very tasty with coriander fried onion and a light dipping sauce.

Seemingly out of sequence we then had a course of banana fritters..

And then some fish. Apparently its unusual to get fish dishes on the street, so we were inside a proper restaurant for this.

Fish dish of the day was catfish, fried and then served in do it yourself rice paper rolls with noodles, peanuts, herbs and cucumber. Again it’s all about the dipping sauce..

The next place was more of a place to drink the local draft home brew beer – “bia-hoi” – incredibly refreshing and cheap at a few thousand Dong a glass.

Some sort of sausage rice paper roll snack to go with the beer..

Finally to a hidden place serving quite a famous local drink to wash it all down – egg coffee. This was served in a bowl of hot water to keep it warm as you slowly drink it.

I possibly regret not trying some insects today, but will make up for this further on my trip I promise!

One of the enduring good things the French did in Vietnam (other than import its taste in baking, brewing and the guillotine) was to popularise coffee and cafe culture, and it thrives today across the country. At the end of a long lunch (about seven courses in five places – more on this to come) I stopped at one of the many coffee roasters. Not to taste any old blends, but to appreciate the role of the weasel in high end Vietnamese coffee production.

Just to help you catch up if you are not familiar with coffee from Vietnam, most of it’s crop is lower grade robusta beans, the stuff they blend into all sorts of freeze dried coffee around the world. This tends to give it an undeserved reputation for cheaper coffee. I actually really like the robusta bean, but in the West its the arabica bean that is King, and Vietnam does grow some arabica in its highlands around Dalat.

Street coffee in Vietnam involves some super freshly ground beans and a simple tin filter that sits on top of your cup – a brilliant solution for good tasting strong French style coffee.

However if you peruse the beans on offer most Hanoi or Saigon roasters they will have an array of more exotic options. You may have heard of Kopi Luwak – the rather expensive Indonesian coffee with a USP that it’s been excreted by a civet cat. Well in Vietnam, the humble weasel plays the same role in the coffee production process. It eats the beans, digests them and excretes them, giving them a unique flavour. Once cleaned up and double roasted you have “Weasel coffee”!

You have to make a few more decisions though – what grade of weasel coffee to have, and do you want your weasel to be organic? Along with Johnny, our brilliant street food guide from “Vietnam Awesome Travel” I sat with a friendly Kiwi family trying some of the coffees on offer. We couldn’t work out if the grade one status is a reflection of the better quality bean or the better quality weasel, but it packed quote a punch and had a distinctive chicory aftertaste – less bitter than the grade two (both use the Vietnamese arabica bean). They even had a special version called “Weasel Legend”!

Grade one weasel coffee here costs about $65 a kilo, considerably cheaper than its famous Indonesian rival. I recommend you try some if you ever get the chance, and I’m going to bring a supply home with me, so do pop by my kitchen if you want to give it a go!

I’m sat in the Sofitel bar listening to piano music and drinking reasonably good coffee. I’m exhausted. My room isn’t ready but I’m just happy to be able to have the run of the place and use my now unblocked social media for the first time in a few days. The women at the bar wear Ao Dai’s and greet you in French, which seems very different from the Chinese way. (“The Chinese Way” by Level 42 also pays homage to another famous Alan Partridge line, so I get another ten points for linking it into my blog..!).

Firstly, an update and reflection on last night’s activities. The T5 down to Nanning was a great train – I could spend a week on it. The staff were kind, the food good, and the carriages very clean. Things got harder the further I went South, and the main hardship was just lack of sleep. However, the M2 train was a decrepid wreck if I’m honest about it. I spent the night shivering in my compartment with Basil (the mouse), waiting for the sun to rise and to get in to Hanoi. It was bearable, but only in the same way that a bivvy at Camp Two on Everest is bearable, it’s not a place you want to spend a lot of time in. Its ironic that after a couple of weeks training at jungle temperatures on Chinese trains, my first night in the jungle was in fact in an unheated, freezing cold and damp Vietnamese train..

My old work friend Rob advises me that not all Vietnamese trains are equal, and although this was technically part of an international service, I suspect (and hope) that I have not yet seen the best of their rail network. I have also considered the possibility that I may have picked up some bed bugs last night, so I’m going to chuck everything in the hotel laundry in one hit before I even open my suitcase. It was so cold this morning that I had to get my down jacket out, so I hope its free of any critters as it’s very hard to clean. On the upside, I didn’t see any mosquitoes.

For my next leg I will be prepared for the worse, but hope the SE1 offers a better experience.. Time now to have a couple of days drinking coffee and sampling Northern Vietnamese food before I head to China Beach for New Year. If you don’t know it, China Beach was an early American R&R facility “in country”. I’m going to stay in DaNang for a party before heading to Hoi An for a bit of a break.

Oh, by the way – did you see? – nearly 14 000 km now – that’s a new train record for me, and only another (very relaxed) 5000 km to go for the rest this trip..it’s taken 18 pretty tough days to get here (including stops) but I will spend the next 27 days on a more relaxed and meandering journey in South East Asia. Payback!