Vietnam Railways – HCMC to Da Nang was a 17-hour trip!
We started at the downtown station at 6 AM and worked our way South traversing the Oceanside and rice fields arriving in Da Nang at 11 PM. It was neat to see the Countryside through a window most of the trip.
It would have been about the same price to fly with an advanced ticket, but I’m glad I did this trip once. It also gave me a pretty good idea of what it will be like using my Europass.
I put together the below trip but thinking about it for 17 hours may change the aggressive but inexpensive plan:
If I do stick with the plan, I will definitely make shorter trips. I initially thought I would see the countryside via train which still may be the case in Switzerland and colder countries in the Northern part of the map. I have ten legs for 60 days available to use so trying to get the biggest bang for the buck was going far but that thought process will not work for me again.
Here are some more videos from the train trip:
There were plenty of rice farms. It was amazing to see how each farmer had their own land setup. There were water sources and flags indicating the readiness or each separate patch of land.
A lot of the trip was along the Oceanside which was neat to see. Most locals were out there fishing.
I was in car three of over twenty cars on the train. Being it was the New Year’s holiday; the train was relatively full. We probably made 10-12 stops along the way picking up and dropping off passengers as well but it appears most of us were there for the full 17-hour trip. I also booked a one-way trip as I was unsure how long I was going to stay in Da Nang and then Na Trang on the way home.
I just checked the tickets and there is an 80% surcharge on the tickets due to the holiday!
How about that BS? The actual train ticket is 16% or $8.39 of the entire $52.42 cost of the ticket without fees. That is only my halfway point home too so another $50+ to get back which is more expensive than flying!
The overall shitty experience gave me no hesitation to cancel my Euro-rail pass this morning:
I knew there was a chance I would need to cancel so I bought the $8 cancellation insurance. I am sad that I will not see that part of the world via train but thankfully it was the only money lost. Ultimately, it sounded like a great idea and the price was phenomenal price for a ten-day pass.
I can still hit some of the cities with my Wizz airlines all-you-can-fly pass as detailed in this blog.