Travel across Laos on its new semi-high-speed train

(CNN) — The train is just north of Vang Vieng when the sound of a woman crying echoes through the carriage.

“I’m sorry,” sobs Ying, my seatmate on the journey north from Vientiane to Luang Namtha on Laos’ new semi-high-speed railway, tears streaming down her face.

“It’s just been so long since I saw my mom.”

Ying has been restless since the train pulled out of the station in the Laos capital, Vientiane.

She flits between apps on her phone as her feet play a skittish drumbeat on the floor.

The new train features white, red and blue stripes — the colors of the Laotian flag.

Cao Anning/Xinhua/Getty Images

That she seems a little excited is unsurprising. In the days before this new train entered service in late 2021, the journey between Vientiane, where she studies, and Luang Namtha, her home province in the far north of the country, was an epic affair of backbreaking proportions.

A bus journey on vertiginous potholed roads took at least 20 hours, even in perfect weather and traffic conditions. For the finale, she completed the last few kilometers on a motorized farm cart powered by an ancient two-stroke engine.

There are direct flights between Vientiane and Luang Namtha, but expensive tickets are a luxury for many citizens. As a result, she has only seen her family once in the last three years.

This slick new train, though, has changed all that. She must still cover the last few kilometers on the rickety old cart, but the bulk of the journey can now be completed in under four decadently air-conditioned hours.

“Before the train, it was hard for me to visit my family,” says Ying, who is making the trip north with her sister and her cousin. “I rarely saw them because the roads are so bad, and the journey is so long. Now I can make the trip easily.”

A faster pace of travel

Long regarded as a backwater in Southeast Asia, Laos is famous for its soporific vibe. So much so that the acronym in the country’s official title — Lao PDR — is often mangled from People’s Democratic Republic to Please Don’t Rush. But the new railway is encouraging a faster pace.

The train links Vientiane with top visitor destinations like Vang Vieng — a karst-studded playground famous for its adventure options — as well as Luang Prabang, the country’s charming former royal capital, and Luang Namtha, with its patchwork of hill tribe minorities and jungle-clad mountains — perfect for trekking and eco-tourism.

And it is a potential godsend for a tourism industry that desperately needs visitors in the wake of the pandemic.

Indeed, the semi-high-speed route now open between Vientiane, just across the Mekong River from Thailand, and Boten, on the border with Yunnan Province in China, is not just revolutionary for Laos: it’s as advanced as any railway infrastructure seen in Southeast Asia until now.

The new China-Laos passenger and freight railway, serviced by an Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) train, stretches 1,035 kilometers (643 miles) and was designed to link Vientiane with Kunming, capital and largest city in China’s Yunnan…