The Laos-China Railway is a brand new, high-speed railway, spanning from the Laotian capital of Vientiane to Kunming, China. Inaugurated in December 2021, it's a comfortable, air-conditioned ride that slashes the travel time between cities in Laos, and bypasses hours of twisting mountain roads.

However, obtaining a ticket is not an easy task, particularly for a foreigner. At time of writing, it's not possible to buy a ticket online. That limits you to two options:

1. For most locations in Laos, you can only book a ticket at the train station. Unfortunately the stations are built far outside of the cities, so you must journey all the way there and back. In Vientiane and Luang Prabang, for example, the stations are 30 minutes away.

2. In Vientiane and Luang Prabang only, there is a small ticket office in the city centre. This is, in theory, much more convenient than having to make your way to the station.

   However, there are many issues with the ticket offices, starting with the fact that the number of tickets available is extremely limited. They only pick up a certain number of tickets for each journey each day from the train station, and so can only sell what they have in the office.

   The second issue is that they are only open for around four hours from 10am each day, and they appear to sell out within the first hour. Finally, the big one: they do not accept cash or cards; only OnePay is accepted, which requires a Laotian bank account.

You can only buy tickets a maximum of two days in advance, and they sell out quickly.

We planned three journeys on the railway and experienced the issues first-hand. Here's how it went for us in December 2022.

Vientiane

Our first journey was from Vientiane to Luang Prabang. We sought out the ticket office in the city centre three days before our train to find out some more information.

When we arrived, there was a detailed sign written in Lao and Chinese, which read that you can book a ticket three days before and use several different methods to pay, such as Alipay and WeChat Pay. In fact, this is not correct: only OnePay is accepted, and you can only buy a ticket two days in advance, so we wasted 40 minutes queueing.

It was not a completely useless afternoon though, as we did learn something very important: there is a man who stands at the front of the queue while the ticket office is open, and will use his OnePay in return for cash plus a 30000 LAK commission per ticket.

We chatted with him and confirmed that he would be there tomorrow from 10am. He told us the doors open at 9:30, and that if we were in the first 20 people we would be guaranteed a ticket.

Armed with this information we arrived the next morning at 9:10. We were the first there, and it wasn't until just before 9:30 that other people began to arrive. The doors opened at 9:50, although there was no sign of the cash man yet, and so we let a few people in front of us. He showed up at exactly 10, and we were able to successfully buy our tickets with cash.

It is important to note that you need to present your passport. Your name and passport number will be printed on the ticket, and this will be checked before you can enter the station.

Luang Prabang

The next journey we planned to make was from Luang Prabang back to Vang Vieng. We showed up to the ticket office two days before our train feeling confident after our experience in Vientiane.

We again arrived before 9:30 but this time there were four or five people ahead of us. The doors opened late at 10:15. They announced that those who wanted tickets for tomorrow should come forwards first, which meant we lost our advantageous position in the queue.

When it was our turn (about fifteenth in the queue) there was already only one ticket left for Vang Vieng in two days' time. Our options were to buy a second ticket for Vientiane (for an extra 100000 LAK) and leave the train early, or to buy one ticket and try for the second tomorrow morning.

While we were deciding what to do, we were offered a third option by the staff member. She said that if we left one of our passports with her, she would be able to get us two tickets from the station tomorrow morning. We were worried about leaving a passport with her overnight, but as she assured us the tickets were "100% guaranteed" we decided to take the risk.

The next morning we arrived early again at 9:30 and were again about fourth or fifth in the queue. Once again, doors opened late at 10:15. This time there wasn't a call for the people for tomorrow to come forward and so we were able to keep our queue position.

When we got to the ticket desk we were relieved to see our passport was still there, but unfortunately the "100% guaranteed" tickets for Vang Vieng had sold out at the station and so she had reserved no tickets for us.

Fortunately, there were two tickets left to Vientiane. We had no choice but to buy these for an extra 200000 LAK.

It's also noteworthy that at the Luang Prabang ticket office, there was no "cash man" waiting at the front of the queue like in Vientiane. In this case, we were forced to ask someone in the queue to pay for us in return for cash.

Vang Vieng

Our final journey was to be from Vang Vieng to Vientiane. There is no ticket office in Vang Vieng, and so if you want a ticket you must travel to the train station.

The opening hours of the train station seem to change regularly, but while we were there it said 7:30-10:30, 11:40-12:40, and 14:00-19:20. If you want to be guaranteed a ticket, you'll probably need to arrive there for the first time window, two days before your train.

After our experience in Luang Prabang (and finding ourselves 200000 LAK poorer than planned) we reluctantly decided to travel to Vientiane by minibus instead. The journey time by road between Vang Vieng and Vientiane is only about 100 minutes, and we reasoned that with all the hassle of buying a train ticket and having to get to and from the station, it's probably cheaper and faster to just get a bus.