Soft Seat Air-Con
April 17, 3:07pm
A minty, antiseptic smell has just overtaken the sour cigarette odor in our Vietnamese train car (we splurged for the Soft Seat Air-Con tickets). The mounted TV serenades us with Vietnamese soft-rock favorites sung by 20-something darlings in sparkly evening gowns in front of a live audience. Their vocals compete with the clacking of wheels on track through the open rear door and the constant, low chatter of our full roster of multigenerational travelling companions. Every few seconds, someone coughs.
And it seems there are different cultural rules about feet here than in Thailand.
Your heads must be spinning with an endless, vaguely remembered set of conflicting cultural rules!