Describe a long journey you went on

The long journey I'll describe is a train trip from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City — about thirty-two hours on the Reunification Express. I did it about four years ago with a friend from university. We went by train specifically because everyone told us to fly, and the flight is two hours. In hindsight they had a point, but that wasn't really the aim. Who I was with matters here, because thirty-two hours is a long time to be in a small compartment with somebody. We shared it with a couple in their sixties who were travelling to a wedding, and they fed us for most of the journey. We'd brought instant noodles. They had a genuine picnic. What I remember most isn't the scenery, although the stretch along the coast near Da Nang is genuinely beautiful. It's the change in pace. On a plane, the journey is a gap you delete. On the train the country arrives gradually — the accents change at the stops, the food sold on the platform changes, the rice paddies give way to different rice paddies. You end up understanding the distance instead of just covering it. Would I do it again? Probably not the full route. But I'm glad I did it once, and I'd never have understood how long Vietnam actually is otherwise.