Laos Trains put UK to shame

This was a very easy, do not much day. Our last day in Luang Prabaang. Get up late, pack bags, lunch, and/or swim. Later train to Vieng Vang.

First hiccup the ticket price that the hotel bought for us. It says on the tickets 680,000 Kip, so about $40, but the hotel says they have to charge $82. There follows various explanations like the price, which includes the touk touk to the station, but that is only $10, so they have another $32 to explain. After a while they admit the truth, they paid a ticket tout $60, because of course in good old India style there are no tickets left, ( at face value), and for good measure they added a nice additional margin, that they abruptly dropped. The government has tried to stop this by only putting tickets on sale very short term and by adding ID details in the ticket, but somehow, this isn't working.

As I check out, I see the government rules on hotels. Young people, please take note of rule B3.

The next hurdle is when to be at the train station. The hotel suggests 2 hours before, we say we said train station, they still insist 2h. In the end, we settled for 1.5h, which was still 1h too much. I suspect the hotel employees have never been on the train.

The station is in the best Soviet style with a bit of recent tech. Like Uzbekistan tickets are checked and bags are scanned like at an airport, but there is no queue since there is ONE train this evening. There is also not a single shop, not one in the vast empty train station.

What I haven't mentioned is that these train lines and trains are brand new, having opened in 2021. The line runs from China to the capital, with 5 stops in Laos. It cost $6bn, and I suppose a significant part came from China. Whatever the politics of this, there are undoubtedly benefits for Laos, though it can be argued that it just increases the already heavy dependency.

The reference to the UK is in the headline. Well, Laos has high-speed trains of the >200km/h variety before the country where the industrial revolution started. Very strange, and something Brits should reflect upon.Read more