Train Travel

If you don't want to lose the best part of a day driving to Sapa, take the overnight train from Hanoi to Lao Cai. The most comfortable trip is on Friday night, when you get a soft sleeper in a four-person compartment on the "luxury" train. The one-way ticket costs 500,000d. Trains leave Hanoi train station at 9:35 pm and 10 pm, and take 11 hours. The easiest way to buy tickets is through a Hanoi travel agency, but the Vietnam Railways System website is an ultrahandy online resource that lets you study timetables for every route in Vietnam, including the Hanoi–Lao Cai service. Tickets booked online can be delivered to your hotel or picked up at the departure train station.

Don't lose your ticket after boarding the train. You need to present it to the station guards in Lao Cai when arriving at the station and again when departing the station upon returning to Hanoi. You can purchase your round-trip ticket in Sapa (and check train and bus schedules) at the tourist office in the center of town. Hotels in Sapa can book a round-trip in a private soft-sleeper carriage.

Minibuses waiting at the Lao Cai train station can take you the 35 km (22 miles) to Sapa for 30,000d–50,000d. The buses leave when full and usually drop you in the town center. From Sapa, buses return to the Lao Cai train station every hour starting at 6 am. You can also join with other travelers and share a bus or a taxi that will leave at the time you want. If you'd like to combine a one-way train to Sapa with a return to Hanoi by car, you can arrange that in Sapa at one of the tour agencies dotting the main roads.

Train Contact

Vietnam Railways System. www.vietnam-railway.com.