Disclaimer: Transportation during TET is a lot more expensive than normally throughout the year, where prices can be increased to above double the original price, so look out for this if you think about traveling to a lot of places in a short amount of time.
TRAIN (Hanoi - Hoi An)
So my train from Hanoi to Hoi An left at 7:30 PM, which seems reasonable… except that is the longest ass train of my life and I am on here until 12 PM the next morning. I am sitting in the “coach” section, which pretty much just means hard seats, surrounded by all Vietnamese people, meaning I am hopefully getting a bit of the real experience here. Normally it seems most foreigners pretty much take up all the sleeper cars. I also feel like I should be in the orient express right now, reading my book all sophisticated like.
Reminder - Kids suck, kicking your chair constantly while singing at 11 PM at night, and the parents will do absolutely nothing to stop it!
SLEEPER BUS (Hoi An - Da Lat)
Talk about some luxury ride! You get to literally pick a pod and sleep in it for the long haul, with AC included. There are bright fluorescent lights everywhere that kind of get a little weird, like you are in the red light district of Amsterdam. The only down side is that they never leave at the time that you were told, so be prepared to wait around for a couple hours for either A) everyone to actually get there, or B) the actual departure time to come. The only downside about this part of my journey was stressing to get back in time for the bus from a motorbiking day trip that I got lost on and was just roaming around by myself for an extra hour than necessary. AND getting missed at the food stop, where the guy just "never saw me sitting there"
REGULAR BUS (Da Lat - Ho Chi Minh City)
SUCKED! It was like a small greyhound bus with 40 seats or something... and at least 55 people on the actual bus. Which I had been warned about... but I was not mentally prepared for at 7 in the morning. 8 hours with a kid constantly touching my laptop screen, changing the pages on my book, and the parents just killing themselves laughing... NEVER AGAIN!
MOTOR-TAXIS (HCMC)
Random people on the side of the road offering to drive you somewhere for some price. Make sure you set the price with them and have google maps out to track your drive... or else you end up going for the "city tour" at 3 AM. Just DON'T DO IT!
