Lao Cai lies in the far North of Vietnam, right at the border to China.
It is not the most charming place in Vietnam, but it is the gateway to the more scenic town of La Pa, to Farsipan – Vietnam’s highest mountain – and to the Great Northern circle, covering a string of formally French colonial out-posts along the borders to China and Laos.
The most exciting option to cover the distance I thought, was to make use of the old French colonial – of course metric – railway system, where an overnight sleeper train is covering the nearly 300 km in about 8 hours.
Following dinner in Hanoi’s Old Town, I arrived with good time at the Central Railway station, expecting an organised chaos, very much in line with the mostly motorscooter driven road traffic, that similar to a system of capillary bloodvessels is oxigenating even the smallest corner of this huge city. What I found though was a nearly empty station hall, where only a handful of travellers were occupying the few available seats.
Far gone are the days of Paul Theroux’s Railway Bazar scenes. No street vendors were in sight, trying to sell last minute vital provisions to excited and slightly disorientated travellers. No French nobility or American heiresses with a multiple of their own body weight in Louis Vuitton luggage and with the necessary support staff to shift it. Compared to Waterloo station at this time of the day, this was a graveyard.
Why was that? ….
Well, taking the train – as in so many other countries today – isn’t the done thing anymore, especially if a comfortable shuttle bus with onboard wifi service can cover the distance in not more than 4 hours.
The next disappointment was the train itself and the compartments: electronic displays had replaced the friendly and always helpful multilingual conductor.
Plastic and steel fittings were now the norm instead of marble and (what looked like) mahogany
and instead of an elegant restaurant service, bananas and some plastic wrapped biscuits had to suffice as sustenance for the nocturnal journey.
And while the train started to squeeze itself through the labyrinth of buildings in the center of Hanoi, with not as much as a meter to spare on either side (which in itself has now developed into a tourist attraction),
I started to wonder if the old world flair had all but gone from this railway line.
Time to take a walk I thought…….
While the train was rattling – rather noisily – along with a lot of sideway shifting because of the narrow gauge, I delved into the bowels of this slow moving reptile.
Turning left to the remaining carriages, the standard deteriorated rapidly, with both the condition of the on board installations as well as the standard of hygiene fading rapidly.
The equally poorly maintained lighting was progressively appreciated…..
In comparison to this, our compartment wasn’t actually so bad, I thought, and once I had reached the final carriage, I turned back.
Time to explore the other end …….
Risking my life by jumping over the threshold between the moving carriages, I stepped back well over a hundred years :
Here it was – the mahogany lined wall panelling, the well attended restrooms and the individually crafted compartment doors.
Even the emergency equipment gave a historic impression…..
The compartments were prepared for four or even for two travellers and there appeared to be a good mix of both Vietnamese as well as foreign passengers.
It struck me that this train was a bit like Vietnam in the 21st century – a complex mixture of old and new, embracing some aspects of its colonial past, but at the same time moving forward, no always in an expected or even appealing way, but at least with a bright future ahead.
If you want to experience both, you need to move fast and certainly more than at 40 km/h…….
The Blue Vet Diary 