Watching rice paddies blur into a single, blowsy swatch of green at 78 kilometres per hour is about as effective a meditative tool as any. I’ve tried apps, podcasts, special tea – basically anything Gwyneth Paltrow swears by – but nothing has worked quite as well as the six hours I spent gazing out the window of The Vietage, a luxury train carriage from the Anantara hotel group connecting its properties in Hội An and Quy Nho’n. Trees blur into trees, reeds into reeds, water buffalo into water buffalo, as the train ambles peacefully along. I have grand plans to do some work while transiting but although the lights of my laptop are on, there’s nobody home. I turn my head to the outside world and lose myself in the view.
Seventy-eight kilometres isn’t even that fast; for comparison, the bullet trains that zip across Japan can reach a top speed of 320 kilometres per hour. , by contrast, is practically leisurely,
