I took the high speed train from Chengdu to Chongqing a few months ago and it was so quick I barely had time to get comfortable, like less than 1,5 hours from buying the ticket to getting off at Chongqing station.
A few weeks ago I went from Hue in the middle of Vietnam to Hanoi on a train and it was literally never faster than 60 km/h
twice the distance but it took like 16 hours, Vietnam really needs to suck it up and ask China to build their railway up.i was travelling in Vietnam a few months ago and considered taking the train from Hanoi to Danang. a friend did it last year and looked pretty comfy.
looks close enough on the map and i’ve been spoiled by hsr in mainland China and Taiwan. well Vietnam has no hsr but it should at least be as fast as a regular train right? like 8 hours at the most? nope, almost 20. ended up not taking the train and just staying longer in hanoi instead.
Vietnam really needs to suck it up and ask China to build their railway up.
we were also in Laos and considered taking the new HSR from Luang Prabang to Vientiane. built by the chinese and looks like the chinese HSR, even connects to Yunnan, should be great. turns out tickets are crazy expensive (LPB to Vientiane costs about the same as a cross-country ticket in China) and also you have to book them half a week in advance
sigh, the chinese system really is the best in the world, not even close
I actually worked with a guy who ran a civil engineering company in Vietnam back in the late 2000’s and from what I could gather the Vietnamese are very proud of the infrastructure projects they take on, so I wonder if it’s a pride thing?
I’m sure they got that juche in them, but I also think public works projects just move very slowly here, there’s only like one metro line in Hanoi for almost 9 million people and I don’t think they’ve even completed the first one in Ho Chi Minh City yet after 12 years of construction.
Not that I can really point fingers, the Copenhagen metro began planning in '90, construction in like the mid 90’s and the first line wasn’t done until 2002 after something like a doubling of the budget and years of delays.
The only reason why we don't have this in America is
You cannot fast travel when enemies are nearby.
I remember as a kid doing Beijing - Changsha in 2 nights/3 days on the old bunk bed trains. It was kinda fun tbh because you stopped for a while at the bigger stations and you could buy street food from the vendors on the platform. But being able to do it in half a day now is so sweet. My parents live in Guangzhou now and they can see my grandparents who are still in Hunan any weekend they want (and they can visit). It’s really awesome how it’s enabled families to see each other more.
holy shit do they already have a rail line all the way out to Urumqi? And it only takes 12 hours from Beijing!?
Looked it up and they’ve had conventional rail since 1962 and HSR since 2014.
mfw USAmerican
Why so “much” time to the north (compared to down the south) ? Is it mountainous ? Or just train connections not frequent enough ?
I don’t know the actual answer, but I’d assume it’s dictated by climate. Engineering for -40° is a nightmare.
Bwoah, thank for the guess, I didn’t think it would get that cold, it’s roughly the same latitude as southern France, geography’s impact on climate is crazy
Northern China gets real cold in winter. Once upon a time I lived in one of Harbin’s sister cities (go Oilers!) and our extremely cold winters was something we could definitely bond over.
Harbin gets very cold. They’re known, among other things, for having a huge ice sculpture park with working bridges and buildings you can walk around in. It’s up for two straight months every year!
I definitely want to visit Harbin to see this
I live a little north of NYC and have family my mom and I stay with in South Carolina. It’s a 740 mile drive, about 13 hours. with unpredictable traffic and rest stops it usually takes 15-19 hours (ntm it’s awful for the car and very mentally draining)
Beijing to Wuhan looks to be a little under 4 hours on this map. They are 730 MILES APART
next time we drive south i’m gonna spend the whole time yearning for an alternate universe where the trip is done at noon and we spend it watching a movie and appreciating the countryside dashing by instead of sitting in stop and go traffic in bumfuck virgina hoping we make it before 2am while evangelical billboards about the rapture loom over us
I’m Morrowind these are literally the same thing (excluding teleportation spells).
I travel 8 hours only to be in the same state :l
I hate the fact that 深圳 city gets overshadowed by 广州 and 香港, horrible and awful map……
