Vietnam's Future Rail Plans

There is money available from foreign donors for upgrading rail within Vietnam as this would help the economies of eastern Asia as a whole as improve the natural environment. Currently, both Korea and Japan have offered their own development plans. Korea is offering less money than Japan, but that money is grant money. Also, the money can be used for upgrades to conventional speeds or to high speed. The Japanese have been offering a lot more money, but the money is all loans and the Vietnamese would be required to buy Japanese made equipment. There is also at least 2 billion in potential aid from other sources to build a rail connection to Cambodia, some coming from Australian business groups. China may also be a source of aid money.

Dong Daegu

Of Interest: entertainment district, multiple bus stations

Lodging: multiple, hotels and motels

ATM: multiple banks in the area

Other transit: subway station, intercity and express buses

Dong (East) Daegu is Daegu's KTX station. It is in the midst of East Daegu's entertainment district. There are a lot of bars and restaurants nearby, and people come here to walk at night. There also two or three bus stations in the area. Therefore, this area has the most forms of lodging of any area of Daegu.

Daegu is relatively spread out for a Korean city. It actually takes up as much space as Seoul, even though it has less than one-fourth the people. The subway is the best way to get from one part of the city to the other. It goes downtown. So do most saemaeul and mugunhwa trains.

Heading south, Busan is a little over an hour away by KTX high speed train. It takes an hour and a half by regular speed train.

Heading north, Daejeon is fifty minutes away by KTX and two hours by regular speed train while Seoul is an hour and fifty minutes by KTX and two hours and forty-five minutes by regular speed.

KTX trains are frequent. Other trains are hourly.

Occaisional trains head into the mountains to end at Yeongju three hours away.

Another recycling idea

As you may know, every now and then I publish a fun way to reuse old train tickets. I have a new post on my American blog that would work well for anyone with a lot of old Korean train tickets.

Asian Trains - making environmentalism fun since 2009.

Traditional Lunches for the High Speed Train

Taiwan Railways has lost customers to the new high-speed line, but many of those customers miss the old railways food. In response, Taiwan Railways has opened box lunch stands at Taichung and Kaohsiung Stations. These are the next biggest cities after Taipei.

On opening day in Taichung, the box lunch stand sold twice as many lunches as at Taichung City Station, the station for the conventional rail line. Lunches cost around $2.50 US, and they are big. Probably the high speed train lunches are small and expensive.

Traditional railway battles high-speed foe with lunch boxes

(Just a note. Even if the traditional railways get half the passengers that the high speed rail does, that is still a lot of people.)