Travelling around Vietnam on the rail links can be an interesting and relaxing way to see the country on a holiday tour.  Not all locations are on rail spurs from the main line, but this makes it more interesting as we disembark and travel by other means to visit other locations and towns.

As long as you book ahead you will be able to travel in some comfort in a “soft-sleeper” four-berth cabin.  Each carriage has a toilet and washroom and you main luggage travels in a baggage car, so be sure to take a day pack and a sleeping bag liner with you.

The French first unified Vietnam in 1887 under the governor-generalship of Paul Doumer who visited famine-ridden central Vietnam in 1897.  He realized that a rail line would not only allow the French to suppress rebellions more easily, but also move products cheaply and efficiently.  The line was built parallel with the old Mandarin Road which passed through Vietnam’s most densely populated areas and pleased the Emperor in Hue.

Work began as the century turned, and by 1912 three segments had been opened, but the advent of the First World War halted further work, and it was not until 1936 that Emperor Bao Dai and Governor-General Rene Robin drove the final silver spikes of the 1,074 mile Transindochinois near Tuy Hoa, 300 miles north of Saigon, ceremonially linking Hanoi and Saigon.  It has been estimated that the cost was $3 billion, four times the costliest French train line.

Authorities tried air-conditioned first class carriages to draw passengers rather than freight, but the service was not well patronised.  By 1942 the Japanese controlled the country and the rail line, and post World War II operations were disrupted by the guerrilla tactics as the people fought for independence from the French.  By 1953, only 570 miles of the original 1,355 miles of track were in operation, not including some sections which were in Vietminh control and on which they operated their own trains!

French trains were mixed freight and passenger and travelled in convoys of five or six at between twenty and twenty-five miles an hour with a pilot train ahead; travel was only in daylight hours and each train had at least one armoured carriage with mounted heavy guns.  While the trains stoped overnight, heavily armoured trains raced ahead over the next day’s expected travel, looking for guerillas and damaged track.  Even the Vietminh operated armoured trains and at least once in 1953 the opposing sides shot it out between trains in the dark near Tuy Hoa.

In 1954 after the Geneva Agreement, the government focussed on the redevelopment of the road system and the rail network necessary to carry the road building materials from the quarries and much help was received from the US and Australia.  When the US entered the war proper, the military re-built and reconstructed much road, bridge and rail infrastructure in the south while systematically destroying that same infrastructure in the north.  In reply, the VC did as much damage as they could in the south.  When read as baldly as this today, those ten years seem quite pointless, don’t they?  Nature played its part too: in 1964 the worst typhoons to strike Vietnam in 65 years did considerable damage to the rail system and split the line into five segments.

Once the two parts of Vietnam were re-united in 1975, it became a symbol of the unity of all Vietnamese to re-establish the rail link between Hanoi and HCM City and gives an understanding of the meaning of the new name: the Reunification Express.  It would be another 10 years before the first tourists began to travel this line.  The present 3,134 km of track needs a great increase in infrastructure and replacement of rolling stock.  Outside of its tourism potential, the rail network carries only 8% of total passenger and cargo movement nationwide.

Criticism is levelled at the rail system when it is revealed that even the fastest Reunification Express takes up to 36 hours to make the journey, but since we are tourists, what do we care?  We are here for the experience and the insights to be gained of the country and the people when we travel so far through so varied terrain.  Remember, the north and the south may be re-united, but temperamentally they are still quite different.

Anyway, we will not be on the train continuously and may even find it convenient on occasions to continue our journey from a different station than the one where we disembarked.  If you travel north, you will arrive in Hanoi in the early pre-dawn darkness; I promise you that this moment, as you make your way through the crowds to find your transport, is a memory which will not fade quickly.

Source: Viet Value Travel Co., Ltd