I am always the first to say that traveling is awesome!
You get to visit amazing new places and meet fellow travelers worldwide. I love it 90% of the time but, you need to take the bad with the good.
It still beats going to work, I think!

Well, in the last few days, I experienced the good and the bad! The good always outweighs the bad long term but, this was some short-term suck for sure. It started with a self-inflicted 17-hour train ride up the coast from HCMC to Da Nang, Vietnam. I planned to go all the way North in one day and work my way back South slowly.
Great plan in theory!
I made it through the hellish train ride and had a great first day in beautiful Da Nang as I blogged here. The dragon bridge was neat to see too but it was just a bridge as blogged about here.
On day two, I woke up with a train hangover and sore throat and my body just hurt. The good news is that a massage can be had for about $12, I was able to fix my body with a couple of massages. The bad, my sore throat turned into a full-on chest cold, and I was coughing up nasties. This chest cold was different as I was coughing up the air pollution as well. Awesome!!
I was able to fight my way through it and made my way to Hoi, An as I blogged here.
It was a beautiful place to visit but, I was just not feeling well enough to enjoy it. After a couple of days, I planned my get-a-way to my next destination, Nah Trang. It would be another nasty 12-hour train ride South which was more than halfway home to HCMC.
Well, that turned to dog shit in a hurry!!
I took a 45-minute shuttle from Hoi An to the Da Nang train station to find out that the tickets were sold out. I begged the agent to help me as I was sickly, and she did her best. She put me on two different trains to get me to Da Nang and the train was scheduled to leave in an hour but delayed 45 minutes. Math tells me that is 1:45 minutes, right? RIGHT!!
The train pulls into the station and the waiting room heads to the platform; I hand my ticket to the train operator and settle in for the long ride. I ordered a few beers and a sandwich and enjoyed the ocean view on the EAST side of the train.
Most people would realize that they are headed north, nope, not this guy but look at that view!!