Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City.

Recently had a big investment in its transport. It is still a city of motorcycles, but with a much more organised system of buses.
From here its a 2 day (30-40hr) rail trip to Ha Noi in the north. There a 4 trains daily that make the whole trip so with an overnight stop in the middle you can do the whole trip in daylight, or overnight.
Deciphering the timetables on the VNR site is a nightmare. The overview is more useful.

A rough guide would be to allow around a half day travel for each segment.

Ho Chi Minh- Nha Trang 411km or 7hrs

Quite and interesting city. Stay for a whole day (2 nights)

Nha Trang – Hue 12hrs

Another Intersting Place, I guess, a bit past Danang, (1 Night)

Hue – Hanoi 13hrs

Here an attempt at some graphics

There you have it

Train TN2, then Train SE6

Stopping over in Vinh was take out as there are no daylight mainline connections to Hanoi.

Hanoi

Hanoi is another motorbike city. Although it does have bus services and with its rapid growth is looking a trams.

Cambodia – Vietnam

Much the same as getting in. Get a bus to the border, walk then a bus to Ho Chi Minh City.

A explanation of the options and a more important warning about doing this trip can be found on the usualy trip reports.

Buses run a couple of times a day City to City with around 1-2hrs at the border for customs. Total time is 7-10hrs.

A more interesting detour to see the sights would be to catch the ferry from Phnom Penh to Chai Doc (south east).

Phnom Penh 0830 Chai Doc ~1330 or possibly 1200 – 1700 depending on what you look at.

Then a bus to Ho Chi Minh City, possibly the Mailinh Express

This takes around 5hrs.

Allow yourself 2 days to get out.

A side note, Vietnam Railways is funding a study to build a meter guage line from city to city, no details on the route, its part of the Trans Asia Railway, China also has a keen interest in this project.

Cambodia

Internal transport is predominantly busses or trucks for most people. It is virtually cut off from the rest of asia, more due to poor infrastructure than politics. Apart from tuk-tuks and tourist buses there is little else in the way of public transport. The locals have come up with their own private rail transport know commonly as the Bamboo railway. From pictures it would appear that this is now predominantly there for tourists. Locals use the recently upgraded road network to move goods around. Tourist resorts at Siem Reap generate the other main bulk of movement in buses to and from Phnom Penh.
The railway system has been in steady decline since the 1960’s. Recent reports suggest that it is still possible to get a train from Battambang to Phnom Penh. Video trip a year earlier.

There are a couple of development funds being brought up to connect the Cambodian rail system with Thailands again. A major development grant was given in 2006 and later in 2008 for repairing the railway. Given that the newspaper articles from 2006 and 2008 sound almost the same and yet the situation on the ground has not greatly improved, I would suspect that a new rehabilitated system wont happen until without some industry involvement to pushup demand. China has also donated new loco’s, although recent photos are hard to come by. Cambodia is a major link in part of a larger project, the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link. Cambodia is due to complete its Thailand connection in 2008, although this may be delayed. Another change is the railways devolving into a PPP (Public Private Partnership). Ask most people in the railways about PPP and you will hear alot of swearing. Will be intersting to see what happens over the next few year. Will all the millions end up in new works?

The road network has recently undergone a massive upgrade, now with sealed roads from border to border.
There are also plans to build a skytrain in Phnom Penh. Although previous transport expansion plans havent always gone to plan.

The main problem with catching public transport is that it is predominantly there for the use of visitors and tourists. As far as I can tell the local population dont need the mobility buses and trains provide. Maybe in a few years when Phnom Penh grows beyond its 10km radius buses might be viable, until then bicycle and motorbikes are easier and cheaper. The exception is the train to Battanbang, it operates as a mixed service leaving in the morning.

The train line from Battambang to Poipet.

I ran the towns along to way through recent flickr shots. Some photos show the rail line with a nice shiny surface, which would at least indicate that changes are happening. Opening date is some time in 2010 for the rail link according to the ADB funding.

This raises another problem, there are very few published schedules and given to volatility of tourism services can vary from one season to the next, details in the next post are deliberatly sketchy.