(Commonwealth Union) – The rail roads have existed for hundreds of years although one doesn’t speak of it much. Rail travel has also been a mode of transport for many centuries now. Of course, the railways and trains have improved since they began. We have different types of trains now.
Rail travel has improved to the point where one can visit a whole new country. An example to this would be you can take the train from London, locally called the tube, to Paris, or one can take the train from Cambodia to Vietnam. So, it’s not just European countries that have this but all over the world. If you were to look at countries such as the United States and Japan or Korea the train is used as regular commute to work and back.
So, it comes as no shock that within countries train travel is used to travel to far away places. For example, in Sri Lanka, you can take the train from the capital right up to the north of the island for less than 5 dollars. This is exactly what Laos has done.
In Laos they have introduced semi fast trains that you can now travel all over Laos in record time. The station a little north of Vang Vieng you will find a semi bullet train that is ready to take of to the other side of the country. The journey will start from the north Vientiane to Luang Namtha. Many people take this train since this route was newly introduced.
When the media was speaking to the staff and the passengers at the station, they claimed that before the train route was introduced the journey was a tiring one, as you start in a bus where even with the best of weather it would take up to 20 hours and that too would not afford you the luxury of getting down at your desired destination but somewhere close to the destination where one would have to find their way to Luang town. There is of course the flight option but it’s a very expensive option and not many people could afford that.
This new train and this new rail route of course have been the game changer. People can now afford a little bit of luxury of not having to break the bank for a plane tickets or break their backs in a bus for 20 hours.
