An ode to "slow travel" - Vietnam by rail

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Trollopian

Trollopian

OBS Chief
AU Supporting Member
Joined
Sep 19, 2014
Messages
723
Location
Washington, DC and Pittsburgh, PA
From the Washington Post. "I wanted to see the country in a different way, so I decided to skip the short flight from Ho Chi Minh City [former Saigon] to Hanoi and take two overnight trains over three days instead...The result was just as I hoped." First leg was on the 22+ hour "Reunification Express," which of course was hardly an express. Read the article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/vietnam-reunification-express-trains/. (Possible paywall, but everyone's entitled to a few free articles per month.)
 
I got pay walled, but the post still reminds me of the time I traveled from Saigon to Hue, then Hue to Hanoi. Slow, but very fun. Just like in China, my feet stuck out the end of the hard sleeper but I still slept like a rock. And just like China, there was always a crowd near the "samovar", discussing their blend of tea and accoutrements. I saw spices, flowers, stuff that looked like vegetables, all going in with their tea leaves. One of the cool things about Vietnamese trains is the welcome you get from the locals, they are surprised to see Westerners and are really gracious hosts. As an American that welcome surprised me at first but it was nearly universal in Vietnam.
More so in the South but to some extent it was there in the North, too.
 

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