Riding the Reunification Express from Hanoi to Saigon
Thirty-three hours end to end, or four comfortable legs with stops. How the north–south railway works and which stretches are worth staying awake for. The railway from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City is 1,726 kilometres of single track laid by the French, wrecked by two wars, and stitched back together in 1976 — which is where the name Reunification Express comes from. It is slower than flying and, on the good sections, better than almost anything else you can do in Vietnam for the price of a mid-range hotel room. How the service works The trains you want are the SE services. SE1 through SE8 are the through trains; lower numbers run north to south. End to end takes roughly 33 to 36 hours depending on the service. There are also regional trains covering shorter hops, and a handful of privately operated carriages — Livitrans, Violette, and the Da Nang–Hue tourist coaches — attached to scheduled trains. Four classes exist in practice. Hard seat is what it says. Soft seat is padded and air-conditioned. Hard sleeper is six berths in a compartment, three high. Soft sleeper is four berths, two high, with a door that closes. For any overnight leg, book soft sleeper. The price difference is small in absolute terms and the difference in sleep is not. In a four-berth compartment the lower berths cost more and are worth it — you can sit up on them, and the upper berths have limited headroom and no window at eye level. Don't ride it end to end You can, and some people do it as an endurance exe…
- Published
- 2026-07-30
- Author
- Betel Editorial
