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Train from China (Beijing/Guilin) to Vietnam (Hanoi)
July 7 | Comments (0)
This post is more for those travellers looking for information on the journey from China to Vietnam by train as we found it extremely difficult to find any reliable information before we went. Everyone we met seemed to have a different answer to the same question so we through we'd tell you our experience.
Tickets
Buying the tickets for us was relatively easy once we found a travel agent in Yangshou (see Note below for Beijing detail) who knew what we were talking about. You find a lot of people providing travel advice to tourists in Yangshou but make no mention of this method of crossing the border into Vietnam; we were even told by one girl that you couldn't take the train to Hanoi. We used the CITS travel agent across the street from the Morning Sun Hotel who was very helpful. We were told that there are only 4 soft sleeper berths from Guilin to Hanoi so they get booked quickly - make sure you book as soon as you can (3-4 days in advance). He also told us that there are no hard sleeper berths that go all the way to Hanoi - they all appeared to be soft sleeper from what we could see.
China to Hanoi trains originate in Beijing every Thursday and Sunday, arrive in Guilin on the Friday or Monday and into Vietnam on the Saturday or Tuesday. We took the Friday train from Guilin to Hanoi (there are more than these 2 stops throughout the entire journey).
The Journey
We got on the train at Guilin Central Station just before 15:00. The Chinese leg was relatively painless until we arrived at Nanning when we were all told to get off the train and we weren't sure why. We were told to leave our bags and sit in the soft berth waiting room. It turns out that the train separates and only a few cars continue on from Nanning to the border at Pingxian. Make sure you get some sleep in on the first leg as once you hit the border it becomes quite hard. Once back on the train we had a couple more hours before we arrived at Pingxian where the Chinese border officials board the train and have you complete exit cards and take your passports for examination. We were lucky as this only lasted 1.5hrs but our passports were gone for most of this time. When your passport is returned, make sure you get an exit stamp; if you don't, this could cause hassle at the Vietnamese border crossing in Dongdang.
Vietnam Border Crossing
The train rolled on for about 1/2 an hour after all of the Chinese hoo ha and stopped in Dongdang where we all had to get off the train, this time with all our bags, to go through Vietnamese border formalities. Remember, this is happening at about 3:00am. The crossing is a fairly small room with a customs window for collecting your landing card and an immigration window where they check your visa, Chinese exit stamp, completed landing card and then give you the necessary stamps. They tend to take large numbers of passports, check for the necessaries and then take the passports to another room, which you can't see into, and do some more checks (likely on a database or something). The room also includes a health check, which costs 2 Yuan to stick a thermometer into your ear, and a ticket window where you must verify your ticket.
Order in which to do things:
1. complete landing card
2. hand passport and landing card to immigration
3. verify ticket
4. health check
5. go back to immigration to pick up your passport.
Again, it is a very small room so you'll not be walking more than a few feet for each of these.
Our train from Nanning was 4 sleeper cars whilst the Vietnamese train was 2, hence the need to verify tickets and reshuffle passengers as necessary.
The Vietnamese train is not as nice as the Chinese one but it's a place to lay your head for the next 4 hours until you roll into Hanoi at 8am Vietnamese time (1hr behind China).
The journey was made even harder for me as I spent the entire night very sick (you know what I mean) - ate something dodgy in Guilin before we boarded. I'm still not feeling so great and only barely managing to hold down water after 24hours. Jen's been nursing me to health though so I'm sure I'll be better soon.
Note - Train Tickets from Beijing to Vietnam
This information comes from a passenger who did the journey herself and who we met along the way - we told her we'd blog her experience along with ours as she had very little information on the journey beforehand.
In Beijing she was told by her hostel to go to the East train station to get her train ticket for Hanoi. At the station they didn't know what she was talking about and after going to a number of different windows was told to go to Beijing West station. She went to Beijing West station only to be told that they didn't sell those tickets but to go to the bank next to the station. The bank told her that they didn't sell the tickets but to go to the Railway Hotel*, which is connected to Beijing West Station. Next to the entrance to the Railway Hotel there is a small door with an RTS sign - this is where you buy your Beijing to Hanoi train ticket in Beijing.
Whilst there may be other ways, this is how she managed to purchase her ticket in Beijing.
*The Railway Hotel may be called something else i.e. have another word in front of Railway - she couldn't remember specifically but you should recognise it if you go.