To get from Hoi An to Nha Trang we took an overnight sleeper bus, leaving at 1830 to arrive by the beach in Nha Trang 12 hours later. We subsequently learned that this particular sleeper bus route is known amongst travellers as 'The Hell Bus'.

The layout of a sleeper bus is similar to how I imagine a submarine sleeping quarters would be, if that submarine was designed and manned by dwarf contortionists. Each person is allocated a reclining chair/bed, with a leg compartment neatly tucked under the chair of the person in front. There are around 7 chair/beds in each row, three rows to a level, and two levels on the bus – about 40 people per bus in total. Unfortunately, the leg compartments are designed to be a snug fit for the average Vietnamese person - for anyone taller than about 5'5'' they're pretty much useless. I spent most of the night exploring a series of equally uncomfortable configurations of feet, knees and legs before landing on a complicated half-foetal position that enabled me to wedge my body into the seat and prevent my falling out whenever the bus went round a corner.

The tight fit would have been fine for an hour or two, had we been on a straight-run down a motorway. But motorways don't really exist in Vietnam. And our route took us down the coast on a two-lane road that wound around an endless series of hairpin bends. The driver was either super-confident or suicidal, as his preferred strategy for taking these blind corners was a) top speed, and b) simaltaneously overtaking the more sensible slow moving traffic on the wrong side of the road. This led to a couple of near-misses, where all passengers were suddenly woken by the flashing headlights and horns of oncoming traffic bearing down on us at full speed, with us on the wrong side of the road, hemmed-in by a cliff on one side and the 'slow moving' traffic we were in the process of overtaking on the other. Miraculously we survived every time, although I have a feeling that without the cover of darkness we would have seen the roadside littered with the rusting husks of less fortunate buses.

Even the tight fit AND manic driving would have been just about manageable, had the bus been clean. However whilst first appearances were good, when the lights went at our first rest stop I observed a not-insignificant number of cockroaches scrabbling for cover, disappearing back under seats and floorboards. I jerked awake from my foetal position a couple of times in the night due to a skin-crawling, clicking sound near my ears.

Leaving Nha Trang, we took the train. The day train.