Bangkok to Vientiane by Train

state railways of thailand

Bangkok to Vientiane by Train

A new international rail service linking Bangkok with Vientiane, the capital of Laos, will be inaugurated on July 19th. Trains will leave Bangkok Central Station at Bang Sue at 21.25 and arrive at Vientiane’s Khamsavath Station at 09.05 the next day.

Train travel in Laos is a relatively new experience. Due to its mountainous terrain building railways had never been practical. The French did try by building a narrow gauge portage line on the islands of Don Det and Don Khon, in the Mekong River. This was intended to get passengers and freight around the Khone falls which couldn’t be navigated by boat. That line was closed in the 1940s after just 50 years of operation.

The Thai-Lao friendship bridge, which opened in 1994, was built with an eye to adding a railway line across it at some point. This was realised in January 2007 with the construction of a five-kilometre extension of Thailand’s metre-gauge network from Nong Khai to a new passenger and freight terminal at Thanaleng station near Dongphosy, about 20 kilometres southeast of Vientiane. This opened on March 5th, 2009.

The high-speed rail link connecting Boten, on the Lao-Chinese border with Khamsavath station, to the north of Vientiane, began operations in December 2021. A further extension linking Thanaleng with Khamsavath was completed in early 2024.

This new service is intended to promote tourism, with the historic city of Luang Prabang just a further two hours away, as well as improve logistics between Thailand and Laos. It also completes another link in the Kunming to Singapore corridor which aims to connect China with cities and ports in Thailand, Malaysia and the Lion City.

Picture: Utraman style livery of the new Thai locomotives (State Railways of Thailand)

Watching the river flow – Luang Prabang 25 years ago

Villa Santi Hotel Luang Prabang

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