On the train

On our way to Vietnam on the train now. 27 hours in a 'soft sleeper' that we used a lot on our first trip here. Quite restful and you can watch the views change. We share a 4 berth compartment with 2 others. Quite a lottery to know who it will be. This time it looked like we were getting a multi generation family complete with one year old, but it turned out to be just one family member. The others are in the next compartment.

The 4th bed was taken by a young man (see picture) who mysteriously needed to travel hundreds of miles to get his driving licence for driving on business. He was very chatty, as far as you can be when having to use a  translation app on a mobile phone. These apps are a major advance even since our last visit 2 years ago and make a huge difference. You can just type any English sentence and get it instantly translated into any language including the Chinese characters. Obviously we have been using it a lot in Chinese but also hope to use it in Vietnamese. It also translates the other way though it is more difficult. Oliver has a way of writing Chinese directly into his phone but with the man on the train we used voice. He could speak into the phone and it would get translated into English. Not always right first time, especially if other noises were going on as they often are.

Another very useful feature of the translation app is to use the built in camera. You can photograph some Chinese script, e.g. On a menu, and then translate it. It came in handy for checking the notices displayed when we were waiting for our train. The translation can then be spoken by the phone as well. Amazing! It does not seem far from instant translation voice to speech. Will we ever have to learn languages in future?

Oliver has just told us that Sasa's family have now set off back home, so they will have their first time alone since Theo was born. Or so we hope. Then Oliver goes back to work on Monday.