How to do Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi by train

The best way to explore Vietnam is via its iconic Reunification Express. Andrew Eames hops on board

Travelling around Vietnam by rail allows you to see more of the country (Andrew Eames)

I have a couple of tips for anyone intent on travelling through Vietnam in the most sustainable and charismatic way: that is, by train.

The first is that the nation’s iconic Reunification Express is actually six different trains, mostly composed of sleeping cars, moving at regular intervals between Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in the south and Hanoi in the north. And the second is that the designated “hard sleeper” is, in fact, just as, er, un-hard as the “soft sleeper”, despite costing less.

I’d worked out the first fact from studying the Vietnam Railways timetable beforehand, but I didn’t realise that “hard” was just as soft as “soft” until I turned up at Saigon station after dark on a monsoon-soaked evening.