A C. T U. A L. L Y

  FEBRUARY 22 The train from Hoi An to Hue hugs the serpentine coast where the landscape is covered in a thick carpet of what looked to me like kudzu.  The track is so curvy, I could see the last car of the train when I looked out the window of our compartment. We arrived at the Hue train station late in the afternoon and grabbed a cab to the Leranda Homestay (no website; we booked through booking.com).  Homestays, as the name would suggest, are owner-occupied guest accommodations.  At Leranda the owners, an architect and his wife, live in this ancestral home of his grandfather with their young daughter and two cats.  Access to the building is via a covered, narrow alley 50 meters off a main street, so the rooms are at a remove from the urban hustle and the atmosphere is very peaceful.  The compound is oriented around a koi pond with covered areas where you can relax in inviting hammocks or comfortable chairs.   After getting settled in our room, we ...

FEBRUARY 19 We caught the 17:40 sleeper train from Binh Thuan/Mui Ne to Da Nang/Hoi An.   There are two-person couchettes on Vietnamese sleeper trains, but none was available for this journey.   Nonetheless, we had the compartment all to ourselves until around Midnight, when we were joined—miraculously, almost silently—by a couple from France, who took the top berths. FEBRUARY 20 On awakening we started a conversation with our compartment mates.   The woman spoke English and said she was a widow who had been married to a Vietnamese man she met in France.   The man, her second husband, spoke no English but was originally from Italy, so we conversed in Italian.   They were full of suggestions and assured us we would love Hoi An. We arrived at the station in Da Nang at 9:12--right on schedule--and shared a cab into the town, which took us through Da Nang, site of the airbase built by the French and used by the US and South Vietnamese during the Vietnam War....