Vietnam offers super cheap train tickets through Christmas holiday
Vietnam Railways is offering tickets of up to US$4.40 on all train routes until late December and they will be delivered randomly.
The company said that 10,000 tickets of between VND10,000-100,000 (44 cents - US$4.40) will be on sale online and at train stations from September 26.
The tickets are applied for travel between October 1 and December 27 on all routes, and will be delivered randomly instead of on the first-come-first-serve basis.
The tickets are part of the efforts being made to restore the romance of train travel, which market share in the transport sector has shrunk from 30% in the 1930s to less than 2%.
Vietnam’s lawmakers passed amendments to the Railway Law in June, promising bigger infrastructure investment into the system, which still runs on the crash-prone one-meter gauge design and which is threatened by a large number of unmonitored crossings.
Some companies have also taken initiatives by offering first-class trips with restaurant cars like the five-star train service launched this year from Ho Chi Minh City to the coastal resort town of Nha Trang or from Hanoi to the northern highlands town of Sa Pa.