Hanoi to Nanning by train

A review of the overnight sleeper train service from Hanoi (Vietnam) to Nanning (China).

The Hanoi to Nanning train is the only international service from Vietnam, and one of the few international train services in Southeast Asia.

There is also a Hanoi to Beijing train that is a continuation of the Nanning service. For this article I am reviewing the Hanoi to Nanning section, which includes details on the border crossing.

Buy tickets for the Hanoi-Nanning train

Tickets can be bought online at the official site (dsvn.vn) and at Baolau (Nomadic Notes is an affiliate of Baolau).

If you are booking on the dsvn.vn website, look for Gia Lam (for Hanoi) and Nam Ninh (for Nanning). Baolau also allows you to book the onward service to Beijing.

Usually when you buy tickets online in Vietnam, you will get a PDF copy of the ticket sent to you by email. For the train to Nanning, you need to collect the ticket at the station. The ticket office will check your passport and make sure you have a visa (if required). China has expanded visa-free travel for more countries, so if you are eligible you no longer need to apply for a visa.

The tickets are in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian. This is a real relic of the past to have a ticket with no English on it.

The ticket is also old-school with the stapled booklet of multi-page carbon paper tickets.

Gia Lam (Ha Noi)

The train departs from Gia Lam Station and not Ha Noi Station. The easiest way to get there is by Grab taxi, and allow about 30 minutes to get there from the old city.

Gia Lam Station is an unassuming station in a small street. There aren’t many food options in this area, so have dinner before you arrive and stock up on snacks.

It’s a small waiting room with no cafe, so it’s not the best station to hang out at.

Passengers are allowed on 40 minutes before departure, so I was glad to be there early to claim my bed.

Note the dual gauge railway track. Vietnam Railways operates on the metre gauge, while this train from China is on the standard gauge (1435 mm).

The obligatory photo in front of the destination plate.

Onboard

Vietnam railway stations are not accessible if you have mobility issues, and it’s a steep step to get into the carriage at Gia Lam.

The ticket inspector takes your ticket and puts it in a little folder, and swaps it for a boarding card. You get your ticket back before arriving in Nanning (just in case you wanted to keep the ticket).

The train is all sleeper cabins, so there are no seats if you were looking for a cheaper option.

The tickets are Soft Sleeper 4-Berth, and there is no price difference for upper or lower. I requested a Lower Berth when booking on Baolau.

I was surprised to see that you get two pillows and a duvet (unlike the one pillow and blanket combination that you get on Vietnam Railways).

There are power outlets under the communal table, so this is a slight advantage for the lower berth passengers.

The mattress was comfortable, and I was able to fit in the bed without touching the wall. I’m 185 cm (6’1″) and I don’t fit in some Thailand sleeper trains.

There is also enough room to sit up on the upper and lower beds. The beds are permanent (like Vietnam and unlike Thailand where they are folded away in the day time).

There is no food service on this train, so come prepared. I had dinner in Hanoi and brought some snacks. I was sharing the cabin with a young Chinese couple, and they asked if it was ok if they eat noodles in the room. They also bought me a packet of chips, so it was nice to be travelling with these polite youngsters.

Pot noodles are the national travel food in China, and you will always find hot water at airports, train stations, and on trains.

The toilet was clean and spacious.

And there is also a separate wash area.

Vietnam to China border crossing

I would have slept well on this train if it wasn’t for the fact that it is interrupted by a long border-crossing procedure in the middle of the night. I saw the timetable at Gia Lam, and I couldn’t work out why there were such long gaps at the border crossing.

The train departs Gia Lam at 21.20 and arrives at Dong Dang at 00.55 (3h 35m).

At Dong Dang Station, you get off the train with all of your luggage and go through Vietnam immigration.

I estimate there were about 100 passengers on the train, and everyone was processed within an hour. Perhaps they have scheduled a 1h 55m stop in case the train is full and there are processing delays.

The train leaves Dong Dang at 2.50 and arrives at Pingxiang (Bang Tuong in Vietnamese) in China at 4.31. China is 1 hour ahead, so that is a 41 minute trip.

At Pingxiang Station, you get off the train again with all of your luggage and go through Chinese immigration. Visa-free travel for Australians made this trip much easier, but no one mentioned that there is an online arrival form to fill out (it would have been handy if this was mentioned in Hanoi). I activated my esim but it took a while to activate. An immigration officer told a foreigner standing next to me to share his internet with me (thanks random traveller!)

Here is the online arrival card.

Most of the passengers were single men (Vietnamese and Chinese workers), so the random handful of westerners were interviewed while waiting to go through immigration. The interviewers had translation devices and asked the usual questions (where are you going? how long are you staying?)

The train leaves Pingxiang at 6.05 (a 1h 34m stop), so overall it took 4 hours and 10 minutes to cross the border.

By the time the train leaves Pingxiang it is sunrise and there is 4h 1m left on the journey.

Pingxiang to Nanning

The Pingxiang to Nanning section is the only daylight section of the trip, so I wanted to see some scenery. The train goes through the region of Guangxi (officially the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region), and it is a scenic trip through limestone mountains (similar to Ninh Binh and Ha Long in Northern Vietnam).

Every square metre of flat land is given over to agriculture.

I think I nodded off for 30 minutes, but by now the train was getting close to Nanning.

The train passed a high-speed train on the way into Nanning. Most of China is connected by high-speed rail by now, so it was good to be on one of these slower green trains.

I was talking to a businessman from northern China while waiting for the train at Gia Lam. He was happy to practice his English on someone, and I was happy to get an insight on why someone would get this slow sleeper train. He was setting up a tech business in Hanoi and prefers to travel by train, even though it took him over a day to get there.

I did hardly any research about Nanning before I arrived, apart from saving Nanning Station and my hotel in my AMap app. Nanning has a population of over 5 million people, so I was looking forward for some urban exploration. I will have a separate report on my trip to Nanning.

Nanning Railway Station

The train from Hanoi arrives at Nanning Railway Station. This is the old main station in the middle of the city, and there are plenty of hotels nearby. The main high-speed station is at Nanning East (Nanning Dong Railway Station).

Unlike Gia Lam, the platform is level with the train door, so it is possible to place a ramp on the train door.

While the train was waiting at Pingxiang, some more carriages were added to the train.

These are “Hard Seat” carriages, which are padded bench seats that don’t recline. It’s a shame there isn’t a day train from Nanning to Hanoi with this seating option, as that would be a cheap way to travel to China.

At Nanning I got a glimpse of the connecting train that continues to Beijing.

I wanted to visit Nanning so I had no plan to continue to Beijing, but I am now curious about getting the Hanoi-Nanning-Beijing service another time.

After a few days in Nanning, I continued to Hong Kong on the direct Nanning-Hong Kong service. A foreign couple I met on the train were going straight through to Hong Kong. It’s a tight schedule but it can be done, so I will post another article about how to go from Hanoi to Hong Kong by train.

The future of the Hanoi to Nanning train service

One of the reasons I got this train (apart from it being a cool travel experience) was that I wanted to experience it in its current form before it is eventually upgraded. It will be years before that happens, but plans are already in motion. Vietnam has invited China to help build three railways to connect the two countries. Two of the railways will be upgrades of old lines (Lao Cai-Hanoi-Haiphong and Hanoi-Dong Dang) and there will be a new line from Haiphong to Mong Cai.

China have already built standard-gauge railways to meet these three railways at the border. In addition to the slow train that goes from Nanning to Pingxiang, there is a high-speed railway that operates in the same corridor on another line.

I checked for tickets between Pingxiang and Nanning, and the options include the slow train and high-speed railway.

The high-speed service is 1h 10m while the sleeper train is 4h 1m. The distance from Pingxiang to Gia Lam is 176 km, so that trip could be feasibly done in an hour.

[Train distance table at Gia Lam Station.]

If the new train line is built so that the immigration facilities for both countries are in one station, then the border stoppage time could be reduced to one hour. That would then make it a 3-hour trip from Hanoi to Nanning. Until that happens, enjoy the sleepover to China.

Read more railways of Vietnam and train travel stories from around the world. Also follow my other site dedicated to rail travel in Vietnam.

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