Taking the Train

We have family of friends (from Red Deer) we wanted to visit in a town called Tuy Hoa. It was only going to be my wife and me, the kids were going to spend the day with the grandparents (in summary - kid2 continues to love every moment with them, kid1 was bored and did not make life easy for them on this day). These friends live about 130km north of us. In Vietnam, this is not a short distance. It would take 4-5 hours sitting on a motorbike to get there and about the same on a bus. And that means braving the Vietnamese roads. So, instead we took the train. The train took 2-3 hours, was cheap (around 8 dollars each, round trip) and more comfortable than the bus. We don't get motion sick on the train, but both of us can get ill on the bus.
First train we took was a 'local' train that went directly to the town we were heading. It left at 6:30am so that means we left before 5am to make this train. My wife bought the tickets for this train. My wife is not a detail person when it comes to travel. So she just asked for two tickets and got the cheapest seats she could get. This meant hard seats - literally wooden benches and no AC. It was a 3 hour trip (only late by 10mins, which is very good for Vietnamese trains) and the train was pretty crowded. Comfort was alright, but my butt hurt after sitting on the hard seats for 3 hours. We tried to sleep, but that wasn't very successful. So my wife and I had a good chat on this train. We haven't had a lot of opportunity to do that this trip, we've just been so busy. Since there was no AC, the windows were open so that meant it was also noisy. The train was blowing its horn at least every 30 seconds.
So we got into Tuy Hoa and met our hosts. We bought our tickets back to Nha Trang right away. We would go back the same evening and this time my wife decided to try out a bed. We spent time with our friends, had a great swim in the ocean and had a seafood lunch.
On our way home we had a bed in an AC car. But the trip was only 2 and a half hours and a bed does not turn into a seat - they stack the berths 3 high. So you had to lay down for the trip. But the nice thing about AC is that the windows are closed - so no horn! The berth itself is wood and they have a thin mat over it. It was not very comfortable. We slept for about 30 mins or so. My wife started chatting to the other people in our room - 6 berths in a room. On a short trip my wife admitted it would be better to have a AC soft seat. So its always a learning experience, although we're unlikely to take the train again on this trip. The train we were on came from Hanoi and was heading to Saigon - that trip takes 36 hours.
It was cool to see another town. It was a nice little city and we were very happy to take the trip. Next time the kids will be older so we'll likely take them with us. We only went 130km, but we went somewhere a bit different, and I always enjoy that. And taking the train was far better than our other transportation options.