‘Reunification Express’ Train in Vietnam Making Headway

With conductors waving old-fashioned kerosene lanterns, the “reunification express” passenger train rumbles out of this capital each night promptly at 8, bound for Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, 34 hours and 1,078 miles away.

It is not a journey for the fainthearted, and few Western travelers clamber into the vintage Indian and Romanian carriages, pulled by an old Czechoslovakian diesel engine, for the trip between onetime enemy capitals that can be made on a Vietnam Airlines jet in 90 minutes.

Only one of the eight coaches is air-conditioned, and the toilet in each car is a hole in the floor. Many passengers carry their own food and water.

Still, the train runs on time, the cars are clean--and business is booming.

While passenger trains remain in financial trouble in the United States, in Vietnam they have become an integral part of the transportation system, largely because of Vietnam Railways’ decision to upgrade track beds and equipment.

The improvements have cut running time between Hanoi and Saigon, as it is still referred to in timetables, from 72 hours in 1980 to 34 hours and increased average speed from 15 mph to 32 mph.

Last year, Vietnam’s state-run rails carried 8.4 million passengers, a four-year high. The enterprise made its first profit in 1995 and now runs three daily trains between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in each direction--the express and two slower ones.

In the breathless heat of early autumn, train No. S-1 plunges into the darkness of Hanoi’s outskirts. It moves through villages, past long, empty expanses of rice paddies and just before dawn slips into the now-unmarked demilitarized zone that divided Vietnam into two countries, North and South, between 1954 and 1975.

As the name “reunification express” suggests, the Communist government attaches great import to its Hanoi-Ho Chi Minh City trains--as well as to the 16 or 17 daily flights between the two cities. They are a symbol of national unity and freedom of movement: Vietnamese and foreigners can now travel freely within the country without having to acquire special permits.

But even under communism, true egalitarianism remains elusive. Foreigners pay from $50 for a “hard” seat on the express to $157 for a “soft” sleeper berth. Vietnamese pay less than half that. Foreigners also pay about double for plane tickets, hotels and admission to tourist sites throughout Vietnam.

The train pulls into the old imperial capital of Hue--one of only five stops it will make on the long journey--on time, at 8:52 a.m. The platform is crowded with vendors wearing conical hats and baggy pajama-like garments once associated with the Viet Cong.

On the shelves of their makeshift stalls are bottled water and soft drinks; cigarettes; peanuts; and huge grapefruits. As soon as the train stops, the women hurry alongside to sell their goods through the coaches’ windows.

Vietnam’s extensive rail system was developed by French colonialists, who completed the first leg, from Hanoi to Haiphong, in 1901 and linked Hanoi with Saigon in 1936.

Today, Southeast Asian transportation ministers are looking at the Ho Chi Minh City-Hanoi line as an integral part of a trans-Asian rail network that ultimately could connect Singapore to Beijing via Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The “reunification express” pulls into Ho Chi Minh City with the dawn.

“Saigon, Saigon, five minutes now!” yells the conductor in Vietnamese and English. The passengers stumble off and head directly for the station’s air-conditioned waiting room.