His name was Anh Lac, and his partner, Anh Thuy. They shared the forty-four hour drive from Hanoi to Saigon, taking turns at the helm and sleeping in the green army hammock that hung between the door knob and the gear box. They spent their Southern stopover on board to save the thirty-cent hotel fees. Their feet touched solid earth only every seventh day.

They both had families back in Hanoi, and admitted to the hardship of their frequent absences. Anh Thuy had missed the birth of all three of his children and, worse yet, his father's sudden death. Anh Lac worried about his young wife's safety, and her aging parents. They were both silent for a moment, lost in their thoughts. As quickly as it had come, their momentary sadness left them, replaced by a cheerful resignation. "It is life," Anh Thuy said. "One must work to eat." I wondered, though I didn't have the words to ask, what gave them the strength to accept their fate. Was it their Buddhist faith? Or their farming ancestry, with its yearly monsoon rains? I remembered Ho Chi Minh's long-ago promise to his men, to fight thirty years if need be, until the North prevailed. The VC heading down the Trail had signed a pledge not to return home until the war was won. They couldn't know that they would need as much grim courage to survive the peace as they had to win the war.

Anh Thuy offered me a cup of tea from a thermos lashed to the gearbox, and we drank while Anh Lac drove. Both men knew the tracks like Mark Twain knew the Mississippi, and could tell me to the year how old each section was and what gear best suited the coming gradient and curve. Their route took them through some of the most enchanting landscape in the whole of Vietnam, and I had a ringside seat. To the east, the sand dunes fell away to a turquiose sea and to the west the rolling hills climbed ever higher, until they became one with the rocky mountain chain that ran, unbroken, to the roof of the world. The tracks themselves seemed a magnet to all manner of wildlife, from blue-winged birds to local boys with rocks and hideously accurate aim. The dogs too, seemed to relish playing chicken with the oncoming locomotive, lingering between the humming rails until they all but disappeared under the wheels.

I slipped through the side door and leaned against the front railing, and suddenly understood the unusual attraction the gravel embankment had for bird and beast. The stench of raw sewage that I had associated with the train's latrines really came from the tracks themselves. The open sewer fed hungry strays and chickens. The train, I was told, dispatched at least three roosters on every run and the occasional crow that stopped to feed on them.

We approached a small station and Anh Lac called me back inside. He hung a heavy metal ring on a hook outside the train window and proceeded full speed ahead. With a loud crack it disappeared, and another took its place. Anh Thuy hauled it in, unwrapped a handwritten note and read it carefully. "S3 approaching," it said, and indicated time and station number. Anh Lac looked at his watch, did a quick calculation and poured on steam. Seven minutes later we pulled off the single track at a bypass. I had barely taken three breaths before S3 came barreling by. I was impressed -- and appalled. The trains had no way of communicating with each other except by passing notes via the station masters, who kept each other posted in a complicated game of chicken that went on night and day along the busy single track.

Once the danger was past Anh Lac retired to the hammock, while Anh Thuy tapped out another cigarette and poured himself a cup of tea. I gathered my courage, sidled over to him and whispered in his ear. He grinned and thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly.

For the next hour I was allowed to fulfill a childhood fantasy, something that I've wanted ever since I was six years old.

I drove the train.