Vietnam's $67 Billion Bullet Train Isn't Ready — Here's How to Actually Get Around the Country Right Now
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Vietnam's Bullet Train Won't Carry a Single Passenger Until the 2030s
Vietnam's National Assembly approved a $67 billion high-speed railway between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in November 2024, and as of mid-2026, not a single kilometer of track has been laid. Groundbreaking is targeted for the end of 2026, with trains not expected to run until 2035. If you're planning a trip to Vietnam this year, or even in 2028, the country you'll actually move through looks nothing like the 350 km/h future everyone keeps writing about. It's changing faster than most travelers realize, though — just underground and in the sky rather than on the rails.
What the $67 Billion Line Actually Looks Like on Paper
The North-South High-Speed Railway will run 1,541 kilometers from Ngọc Hồi Station in Hanoi to Thủ Thiêm Station in Ho Chi Minh City, cutting through 20 of the country's cities and provinces at a target speed of 350 km/h. That would eventually turn a journey that currently takes over a day into something closer to five or six hours. But the timeline has already slipped once. Construction Minister Tran Hong Minh has pushed agencies to lock in a late-2026 groundbreaking, with contractor selection targeted for mid-2026 and land clearance flagged as the single biggest bottleneck. Substantial completion isn't projected until 2035, and a second, shorter line connecting Hanoi to Quang Ninh (backed by VinSpeed) is moving faster and could open by 2028. That second line matters less for most Zensseys travelers headed to Hanoi, Da Nang, or Ho Chi Minh City, but it's a useful signal of which projects Vietnam can actually deliver on schedule and which ones are still mostly paperwork.
The Reunification Express Still Runs the Way It Always Has
Right now, the only rail option connecting Vietnam's two biggest cities is the Reunification Express, and it's genuinely worth understanding before you write it off as a relic. The daily service between Hanoi and Saigon takes roughly 31 to 34 hours depending on the train number, hugging the coastline through Hue, Da Nang, and Nha Trang along the way. In parts of Hanoi's Old Quarter, the track runs so close to people's front doors that residents can reach out and touch passing carriages, a detail that sounds like exaggeration until you've actually stood in one of those alleys and felt a train's horn rattle the windows. It's not a bullet train and it was never meant to be one, but for travelers doing a slower, overland Vietnam itinerary rather than hopping flights, a soft-sleeper berth on the Reunification Express is still one of the more atmospheric ways to watch the country change from rice paddies to jungle to coastline over a day and a night.
For anyone considering a Da Nang vs. Hoi An beach base or splitting time between Nha Trang and Ninh Van Bay, it's worth knowing the Reunification Express stops directly in both cities. Da Nang's station in particular has a reputation among travelers for being clean, well-signed in English, and equipped with USB charging points and a dining car, which is more than can be said for a lot of regional rail in Southeast Asia. That said, most travel advisors, ourselves included, still recommend the train as a scenic add-on for one leg of a trip rather than the backbone of a multi-city itinerary. A 31-hour ride is a genuine experience; it is not an efficient way to see four cities in ten days.
What's Already Changed Underground, Even Though the Bullet Train Hasn't
While the headline project sits in planning limbo, Vietnam's cities have quietly gone from having zero urban rail to running real metro systems. Ho Chi Minh City's Metro Line 1 opened in December 2024, Vietnam's first underground rail line, running 19.7 kilometers with 14 stations, three of them underground beneath District 1. In its first full year it carried more than 20 million riders, averaging over 50,000 passengers a day, well above initial projections, at a fare of roughly 27 to 79 cents per ride. It doesn't yet reach the airport, and a second line under construction will eventually connect to Tan Son Nhat, but for travelers staying near the Opera House, Ba Son, or the newer developments around Thao Dien, it's already a legitimate way to skip Saigon's infamous motorbike traffic.
Hanoi moved even faster in scale, if not in polish. In June 2026, the city broke ground on five metro lines simultaneously, an infrastructure push aimed at reshaping how both residents and visitors move through the capital over the next several years. Combine that with the Hanoi motorbike ban that's already reshaping how people get around the Old Quarter, and the practical result for a 2026-2028 traveler is this: don't assume the transport situation you read about last year still applies. Vietnam's cities are mid-transformation, and where a luxury hotel sits relative to a future metro stop is starting to matter the way proximity to a subway line matters when booking a hotel in London or Tokyo.
Zensseys Tip: If you're booking a stay in Ho Chi Minh City for later in 2026 or 2027, check a property's distance to a Metro Line 1 station before you check its distance to District 1's restaurant row. A ten-minute walk to Ba Son or Opera House station can save you more time in Saigon traffic than a "central" address that's actually a 25-minute ride from anywhere.
Skip the Wait Entirely: Private Jet and Charter Access Is Already Here
For travelers who don't want to plan a trip around a rail network that's still five to ten years from delivering on its promise, Vietnam's private aviation infrastructure has quietly caught up faster than its public rail has. Sun Phu Quoc Airways now runs private and chartered aircraft connecting Phu Quoc to Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Da Nang, alongside international routes, with the kind of VIP lounge access and seamless check-in that makes island-hopping feel less like a logistics exercise and more like part of the trip. Charter operators such as ASA Air Charter and JetVina run scheduled and on-demand routes across the country's regional airports, including Cam Ranh (for Nha Trang), Con Dao, and Phu Quoc, several of which have limited or inconvenient commercial connections. A short-hop charter from Bangkok into Vietnam typically runs about an hour in a light jet, and ground handling at Vietnamese airports generally falls somewhere between $420 and $2,300 depending on the airport and aircraft size, which is a fraction of what it costs to charter the same distance in Europe or North America.
This matters most for multi-country itineraries. If you're planning to see Thailand and Vietnam in the same trip, or want to add Cambodia's Siem Reap without routing back through a major hub, a charter flight often ends up saving more actual hours than the eventual bullet train ever will, since it skips the connection entirely rather than just making the middle leg faster. Pack for the shift between climate-controlled cabins and Vietnam's humidity with something that actually blocks cabin noise on the shorter hops, like a set of Bose QuietComfort headphones, and if you're juggling both a domestic flight and a train leg on the same trip, a digital luggage scale will save you from a surprise excess-baggage fee at whichever counter is stricter that day.
What This Actually Means for Trip Planning Right Now
The honest verdict: don't build a 2026 or 2027 Vietnam itinerary around the high-speed rail line, because it won't exist yet no matter how the headlines read. Do factor in the country's fast-moving urban rail and entry-requirement changes, since those affect your trip within the next twelve months, not the next decade. Before locking in dates, it's worth double-checking your Vietnam Digital Arrival Card timing and the current state of Vietnam's 2026 visa rules, both of which have shifted more in the past year than the rail network has in the past decade. And if you're stitching together a multi-city, possibly multi-country Southeast Asia route around all of this, that's precisely the kind of scheduling puzzle a Zensseys travel consultation is built to solve, especially once you're weighing a scenic overnight train leg against a charter flight against a brand-new metro connection that didn't exist the last time you visited.
Frequently Asked Questions
About the Author: This guide was written by the travel advisory team at Zensseys, led by William Harris, specializing in luxury travel across Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
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