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.
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.
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.