The feeling of taking the train in Vietnam

Vietnam is a typical country in Southeast Asia. Vietnam is an exotic country. Everything here is full of the tropical atmosphere of the beach, and all kinds of affordable food make you want to stop. Let's share the train raiders in Vietnam.

When you ask about the mode of transportation for traveling to Vietnam and how to shuttle between cities by train, most of the answers will be, train is highly recommended! Why? Because the price of air tickets between cities in Vietnam is quite cheap, the night bus that tourists often choose is comfortable, clean and cheap, while Vietnamese trains are known as "expensive and slow".

Take Hanoi to Da Nang as an example. The night bus is about RMB in 70 yuan, and the air ticket is about 200, while the soft sleeper of Vietnamese train is almost 400 yuan. Unbelievable!

However, the more I do this, the more my curiosity is aroused. So I went to Vietnam to experience the train, Hanoi to the soft berth in Hue (train number SE3), Hue to the soft seat in Da Nang (SE 1), and also experienced a period in Datun.

Trains in Vietnam are narrow gauge trains with a gauge of 1m (1000mm), also known as "meter gauge railway".

At present, there are still some areas in the world that use meter-gauge railways, such as France, China, Yunnan, Viet Nam, Myanmar and Malaysia. The narrow rails of Southeast Asian countries are basically the products left by the French who were colonized in the19th century.

Compared with China, where trains are an important means of transportation, the scale of Vietnamese railway stations is really too small, which is probably the scale of railway stations in small counties of China.

When I got the ticket for Vietnam, I completely doubted whether I could take it into the station. I was worried that the ticket would be thrown away as waste paper. It is expected that there will be a precedent, and the staff will remind me to take pictures. Normal tickets are similar to domestic shopping receipts. I found a picture online.

Vietnamese trains are divided into express trains and slow trains. The fast and slow trains here do not refer to the running speed, but to the number of stops. The SE+ number of trains, the greater the number, the more stops and the longer the whole journey takes.

As for the running speed, if you are used to the speed of domestic high-speed rail 300, the average train can reach about 80, and the speed of Vietnamese train 50 can be described as turtle speed.

Like domestic trains, every train in Vietnam is divided into soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat and hard seat (some cars have no hard seat). SE3 soft sleeper is quite surprising. The whole carriage is white, which looks like a sleeper of a domestic bullet train. It is very clean and warm.

There are drinking water, flowers, decorative flowers and a charger on the table. I mistakenly thought that all trains in Vietnam were of this standard, and then I went to see the hard sleeper on the train in Hue to Da Nang, only to find that the train was quite luxurious.

There is no quilt in the sleeping car, only a sheet. I'm worried that I will feel cold when I sleep at night. As a result, I didn't feel cold at all, and there were blankets in the soft seats, but the hygiene was not very good.

Most people who choose soft sleeper cars are foreign tourists, and there are also many tourists from Europe and America. The United Nations is far-sighted. My roommate is a Nigerian guy playing football in China and a Japanese girl, which is a very special experience.

However, after driving, the beautiful scenery disappeared and I felt a 360-degree shake in all directions. When I lie in bed, I can feel my body leave the bed from time to time. An empty cup is placed in the middle of the table and jumps to the edge of the table in a few seconds, just like an extended version of a tractor. If you want to chat, you should also increase it by a few decibels. Earplugs can isolate sound, but they are not resistant to vibration. Even if I was tired all day, the 12.5-hour train only slept for 2.5 hours. The sleeping car door in Vietnam is quite heavy and tight. Probably not tight enough, it will be shaken off by the bumpy train.

In the morning, a conductor suddenly opened the door of the sleeper and asked if you wanted a cup of morning.

Coffee, would you like to order? I'll ask you if you want to buy a beer in the evening. Ask after being rejected, just because the language is not so eloquent, which is no different from that in China.

My mother is very lucky. Fortunately, she came to buy a train ticket when she arrived. What if she bought an upper berth and jumped off?

My mother concluded that if you want to drink water by train in Vietnam, please hurry to stop.

How to buy:

1, the website of http://dsvn.vn/#/, Yuezhan, has an English interface and can purchase tickets online, but it is said that success depends on personality. Some netizens encountered the situation that money was deducted without a ticket.

2. Take your passport to Vietnam Railway Station to buy (recommended). Many European and American tourists will choose to travel by train, so there will be staff at the railway station who can communicate in English. I'm really worried that I can write down the starting point, destination and seat.

In non-Spring Festival travel rush peak hours, you can buy one day in advance or the same day. However, this little brother in a carriage, from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh, bought a ticket on the same day. Because there was no direct berth, he had to change berths twice on the train, and his language communication was not smooth, so he was worried all the way.