Chris Tarrant relives the highs and lows of his journey on Vietnam’s Reunification Express
Claire Webb - 26 January 2019
Chris Tarrant chugs up the spine of Vietnam on the 1,072-mile Reunification Express in the last in the series of Extreme Railways. As well as being very long, it turned out to be extremely slow and cheap.
“Initially, I went for a ‘Hard Seat’ to see what that was like and it was awful – a bare wooden bench,” he says. “But it cost about 30,000 dong – a pound – to go an enormous distance, and you can get a ‘Soft Seat’ with air-conditioning for a few pounds more.” He wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or alarmed by the railway’s regulations. In addition to forbidding intoxicated persons and anybody with infectious diseases, they warned passengers not to pack corpses or the remains of human bodies in their luggage. “This was pinned up at every station. Now why would I pack a human body in my suitcase?”
The Reunification Express isn’t a single train; it’s any train on the north–south railway line between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The railway was built during the decades of French rule, but repeatedly sabotaged and bombed during the three decades of the Franco-Viet Minh War and the American War (as it’s known in Vietnam).
Following the Viet Cong victory in 1975, the new Communist government repaired 1,334 bridges, 27 tunnels and 158 stations in just two years and the renamed line became a symbol of a united country. It’s become popular with tourists because it offers a sedate way to see rural Vietnam, meandering through sleepy villages, rice paddies and dense jungle at an average speed of 55km per hour.
Tarrant started his journey in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s biggest metropolis. It was also renamed after the war (after the first Communist leader), but the dilapidated letters on the train station’s roof still spell out its former moniker: Saigon. Today, fancy shopping malls and skyscrapers jostle with faded temples, a redbrick colonial cathedral, and pavement cafés dishing up fragrant bowls of pho (noodle soup).
But the first thing most tourists notice is the roads, which are famously jammed with honking motorbikes carrying whole families and all sorts of unlikely objects. Tarrant took a scooter taxi to the station, and the experience made a hard seat on a slow train seem infinitely more appealing. “I was terrified. How do you do that every day? They don’t seem to have any road rage, that’s the weird thing. They just pootle around.”
One of Ho Chi Minh City’s most sobering attractions is a warren of passages hand-dug by Viet Cong guerrillas during the war, the Cu Chi tunnels. They lived under ground, carving out weapons factories, kitchens, classrooms and field hospitals. Tarrant visited another of their former subterranean bases in the north, and squeezed into one of the narrow tunnels, which were often infested with vermin. “I hated it,” he says with a shudder. “It was horrific, especially when you think there were children being born down there who didn’t see daylight for years. Lots of them died there, buried alive when bombing made the tunnels cave in.”
Most visitors to Hanoi admire its Buddhist shrines, tuck into streetfood and haggle over silk scarves in the city’s atmospheric Old Quarter. Tarrant sought out a narrow lane nicknamed “Train Street” instead. It’s like any other alley – children play outside, laundry dangles overhead – except a train screeches down it twice a day, only inches from their front doors. Rather than scurrying indoors like the residents, he stationed himself in a doorway and came nose to nose with it. “It’s just extraordinary and terrifying. The railway was built and then they built housing for the workers right next to it.”
He hopes his penchant for tight spots won’t put viewers off Vietnam. “I really enjoyed it. It’s like nowhere you’ve ever been: the food, the smells, the people... The Vietnamese are incredibly kind and friendly. They seem to have no grudges against the Americans or anybody else. The attitude is: ‘Welcome back, we want to expand our tourist industry.’ When you think of what they’ve suffered… but everywhere we went people were really welcoming.”
TARRANT’S TOP TIP
Chris also explores Spain’s extremely efficient trains in this series. “When Spain built its railways about 150 years ago, they had this thing called the Iberian gauge, which meant the gap on the rails was different from everywhere else,” he says. “It was almost like a wall: ‘Our trains will stop at the French border and none of your trains can come down here.’ They eventually had to rebuild the whole railway so it fits with their neighbours.
“These days Spain’s railways are the best in Europe. They have these streamlined high-speed trains that bat along. They’re punctual, very clean and the restaurant cars are beautiful.”
“Initially, I went for a ‘Hard Seat’ to see what that was like and it was awful – a bare wooden bench,” he says. “But it cost about 30,000 dong – a pound – to go an enormous distance, and you can get a ‘Soft Seat’ with air-conditioning for a few pounds more.” He wasn’t sure whether to be reassured or alarmed by the railway’s regulations. In addition to forbidding intoxicated persons and anybody with infectious diseases, they warned passengers not to pack corpses or the remains of human bodies in their luggage. “This was pinned up at every station. Now why would I pack a human body in my suitcase?”
The Reunification Express isn’t a single train; it’s any train on the north–south railway line between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The railway was built during the decades of French rule, but repeatedly sabotaged and bombed during the three decades of the Franco-Viet Minh War and the American War (as it’s known in Vietnam).
Following the Viet Cong victory in 1975, the new Communist government repaired 1,334 bridges, 27 tunnels and 158 stations in just two years and the renamed line became a symbol of a united country. It’s become popular with tourists because it offers a sedate way to see rural Vietnam, meandering through sleepy villages, rice paddies and dense jungle at an average speed of 55km per hour.
Tarrant started his journey in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s biggest metropolis. It was also renamed after the war (after the first Communist leader), but the dilapidated letters on the train station’s roof still spell out its former moniker: Saigon. Today, fancy shopping malls and skyscrapers jostle with faded temples, a redbrick colonial cathedral, and pavement cafés dishing up fragrant bowls of pho (noodle soup).
But the first thing most tourists notice is the roads, which are famously jammed with honking motorbikes carrying whole families and all sorts of unlikely objects. Tarrant took a scooter taxi to the station, and the experience made a hard seat on a slow train seem infinitely more appealing. “I was terrified. How do you do that every day? They don’t seem to have any road rage, that’s the weird thing. They just pootle around.”
One of Ho Chi Minh City’s most sobering attractions is a warren of passages hand-dug by Viet Cong guerrillas during the war, the Cu Chi tunnels. They lived under ground, carving out weapons factories, kitchens, classrooms and field hospitals. Tarrant visited another of their former subterranean bases in the north, and squeezed into one of the narrow tunnels, which were often infested with vermin. “I hated it,” he says with a shudder. “It was horrific, especially when you think there were children being born down there who didn’t see daylight for years. Lots of them died there, buried alive when bombing made the tunnels cave in.”
Most visitors to Hanoi admire its Buddhist shrines, tuck into streetfood and haggle over silk scarves in the city’s atmospheric Old Quarter. Tarrant sought out a narrow lane nicknamed “Train Street” instead. It’s like any other alley – children play outside, laundry dangles overhead – except a train screeches down it twice a day, only inches from their front doors. Rather than scurrying indoors like the residents, he stationed himself in a doorway and came nose to nose with it. “It’s just extraordinary and terrifying. The railway was built and then they built housing for the workers right next to it.”
He hopes his penchant for tight spots won’t put viewers off Vietnam. “I really enjoyed it. It’s like nowhere you’ve ever been: the food, the smells, the people... The Vietnamese are incredibly kind and friendly. They seem to have no grudges against the Americans or anybody else. The attitude is: ‘Welcome back, we want to expand our tourist industry.’ When you think of what they’ve suffered… but everywhere we went people were really welcoming.”
TARRANT’S TOP TIP
Chris also explores Spain’s extremely efficient trains in this series. “When Spain built its railways about 150 years ago, they had this thing called the Iberian gauge, which meant the gap on the rails was different from everywhere else,” he says. “It was almost like a wall: ‘Our trains will stop at the French border and none of your trains can come down here.’ They eventually had to rebuild the whole railway so it fits with their neighbours.
“These days Spain’s railways are the best in Europe. They have these streamlined high-speed trains that bat along. They’re punctual, very clean and the restaurant cars are beautiful.”