Following a line 1,700km long and connecting north with south, Vietnam’s Reunification Express is perhaps the best way to visit the country’s UNESCO sites. Award winning travel writer Alex Robinson discusses the highlights and surprises of taking this epic journey with Aaron Millar.
This episode is hosted by Wanderlust‘s founding editor Lyn Hughes and special features editor Rosie Fitzgerald. Wanderlust is the UK’s leading independent travel magazine which has been taking the road less travelled since 1993.
“The Reunification Express. Sedate train. A film-reel window of pagodas and paddyfields, wheels clunking over the Red River bridge. That’s how I’d imagined it. And how it pretty much is. Built after the Vietnam War, the North-South Railway is still seen as a shining symbol of a progressive, unified country; one with the energy to build and grow that’s seen it catching up with Korea and even China. Pieced together in a blinding two years, the railway line links northerly Hanoi with Ho Chi Minh City, more than 1,700km, 1,300 bridges and 27 tunnels away in the south. Rumbling through rural fields and glistening new glass cities, past pearl-white beaches and bays of islands, the railway line joins the dots between almost all of Vietnam’s UNESCO World Heritage Listed sites – from Halong Bay in the north down to Imperial Hue in the country’s thin middle. My plan was to visit as many of them as possible.”
