I’d messed up my timings.  I thought the train was due to pass at 3.40PM when, in fact, it had arrived ten minutes beforehand.  By the time I’d got there, everyone else was packing up and leaving.

Train Street, Hanoi (otherwise known as Ngõ 224 Lê Duẩn) is famous for being a busy pedestrian thoroughfare and a mainline railway track all at the same time.  Tourists flock to sit at a Train Street café while the express to Ho Chi Minh City flashes by inches from their table.

Predictable to type, I rushed to join their number, but I was too late.  The train had already passed.  The next one was not due for another hour.  What should I do?  Sit and wait?

It was a rainy afternoon in Hanoi.  Train Street was uncharacteristically quiet.  An elderly Vietnamese woman beckoned me to sit at her café.  Why not?  I had nothing better to do.  I would sit and wait for the next train.

Even by Train Street standards it was a small café.  Two tables on the street itself, with two chairs at each, and a large refrigerator of cold drinks filling the entranceway to a kitchen beyond.

I was given a menu but, also, given no choice.  The elderly Vietnamese woman was pointing to a picture of an egg coffee.  From her sign language, I understood her to explain that it was a good choice on a cold, wet day.  It is priced at 60,000 Vietnamese Dong.  I try to calculate the conversion rate in my head.  About £1.50.  That is fine.

Large puddles were forming in the street beside the railway tracks.  To little avail, shopkeepers attempted to sweep the excess rainwater from their doorsteps.

Ever-entrepreneurial, strolling vendors offered colourful, cheap plastic rain macs for sale.  Other shop-owners were starting to shutter up their premises, resigned to the weather having hurried off the better part of their trade.

My coffee arrived.  It was strong and dark, served in a glass cup, and topped by a teetering froth of whipped egg yolks and condensed milk.  I took my first sip rather suspiciously, but I needn’t have been worried; it was delicious.  Or do I mean ‘delicious’?  More it was pleasantly not so disgusting as I feared that it might have been.

The rain continued to fall, and a rumour reached my ears that the next train was running late.  Should I stay or should I go?

The old lady topped up my coffee with the remainder of the egg and condensed milk mix.  She seemed in no hurry to move me along; little bothered that I had stretched out my single coffee to last over an hour.

Suddenly there is a buzz of activity.  The train is apparently approaching.  Some tables are moved back from the tracks; the few brave tourists that remain prepare their cameras.  There is the familiar hoot of a train whistle from around the bend of the street, and then, before I know it, the train has been and gone.  The 4.50PM to Da Nang has whizzed past in a jiffy.

I drain the rest of my egg coffee, thank my kind hostess for her hospitality, and step out into the rain of Hanoi.

© E. C. Glendenny

E. C. Glendenny enjoys watching the trains pass by.

E. C. Glendenny is the author of several books of travel writing including Easy Come, Easy Go.