Trains in Vietnam
When I heard of Vietnam’s trains – especially the one from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi, covering a distance of 1726km, with a journey’s time of 33-36 hours – I could not resist the temptation.
I first realised that I am a train buff when I visited India in 1975. India’s train tracks are the fourth longest in the world, after the US, China and Russia. And if you have some time on your hands, train is the best way to get a sense of the “real India”.
Perhaps my most adventurous train trip was in 1976, from Cairo to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan (all up about one week). It started with a train from Cairo to Aswan in southern Egypt. Then a boat to cross Lake Nasser to the Sudanese border town of Wādī Ḥalfā.
According to AI, the train from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum only runs twice a month today. The journey is slow and basic, taking around 40 hours, with major stops at Abu Hamed, Berber, Atbara, and Shendi. Passengers should be prepared for an old and crowded service with minimal amenities and should bring their own water and provisions.
But what a trip as the Wadi Halfa to Khartoum leg traverses the Nubian desert. When I arrived in Khartoum (May 1976), the temperature was 46 degrees Celsius. We intrepid Western travellers at the Khartoum Youth Hostel all slept on the front lawn. It was simply too hot inside.
But Khartoum in those days was a rather nice town. It is of course where the Blue Nile joins the White Nile and, as the Nile, flows through Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria.
With age creeping up on me, recent trainathons have been more mundane. When we lived in Canada, I took the train coast to coast, from Vancouver to Halifax some five days. Despite the prairies, it is actually rather pleasant, with some variety in landscape.
Back in 2017, I took the world’s longest railway, the Trans-Siberian Railway, which connects Moscow with the Russian Far East city of Vladivostok. This railway is approximately 9,289 kilometers (5,772 miles) long, crosses eight time zones, and a continuous journey can take up to seven or eight days. Construction of this historic rail system took place between 1891 and 1916.
As exotic as the Trans-Siberian Railway might seem, it is rather monotonous, with its never ending steppes. But it was nevertheless of interest. It can give a sense of the vastness of Russia – why does Putin want or need more land?
The train stopped at many drab Soviet style towns – thank God for capitalism and freedom. And I met all sorts of people on the train from Russian soldiers to vagabonds like me.
For a portion of the trip, I was joined in my compartment by a Russian guy, who shared his dark chocolate and Russian brandy with me. We communicated thanks to Google Translate.
And last I should note that in recent years I took Australia’s two long distance trains – the Indian Pacific between Perth, Adelaide and Sydney, and the Ghan between Adelaide to Darwin. These are both tourist trains that aim to please with food, wine and a few excursions. They are of course less exotic, but a wonderful way to discover the vastness of Australia.
As you can sense, I simply love trains. It was against the background of these experiences that I could not resist the temptation to take the train from Hồ Chí Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi, which I will report in the next article.
All the photos of this article are from my Vietnam adventure.