Vietnamese Trains: India, take note.

Detail from a burial tomb near Hue, Vietnam. Vietnam is set to bury India in tourist savvy.

India would really like to attract 10 million tourists by 2010. At least, that’s what I read in the newspaper in Bangalore in an article bemoaning the drop in tourism in the wake of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Well, India, I don’t know what to tell you to attract more tourists, but I have a few constructive ideas for how to get them to come back. First, we must look to Vietnam.

Seriously.

Vietnam and India share some significant features. They were both recently European colonies that became free from their masters after protracted struggles. Vietnam gained independence from France in 1954, only to be invaded by America shortly thereafter, while India threw off the British yoke in 1947. They are both poor and have many, many uneducated people. Both cover large distances- India is of course larger, but Vietnam is very long for it’s size, extending at least 2000 km down the edge of the coast. Both have large relative populations and high population density. I might add that they are also both inordinately fond of rice.

So how do they stack up in the tourist experience? Let’s look at the train system.

Recently, I booked some tickets from Hanoi to Hue, an overnight trip of 624 km. At the station, the normal sleeper class was full due to some holiday weekend, and because of our timetable, we happened to be moving during that weekend. Having been disappointed by the patient Vietnamese woman behind the glass, I looked down the plain-jane government counters to the end of the row where I saw a colorful sign for a high-end tourist train run by a company called Livitrans. This service, which attaches privately run train cars onto the publicly run train, cost slightly more than the normal first class service, but only by about 5%.

The beds are clean, the compartments private. Everything works, from the lights to the locking cabin door. The chains that hold up the top bunks are even wrapped in crushed-red velvet fabric. The mattresses are comfortable and clean and there are recessed halogen lamps that give a modern, sophisticated and comfortable feel. There is even convincing faux-wood paneling. The bathroom is spotless. An attendant (one per car) brings us jasmine green tea served in our own ceramic cups. There is a trashcan. It’s very comfortable. It is nothing like an Indian train.

Just try to get India to be this coordinated...

I have to say that I do love riding the rails in India. If I didn’t I might not take the time to write this. However, some improvements could definitely be made. Take cleaning, for example. It is done in Vietnam in a coordinated manner, but in India it is haphazard at best. I was once on a particularly filthy and electrically unfunctional Indian train and I was actually shocked to discover that it had been completely remanufactured less than a year prior. There are cleaning contracts awarded in the Indian system, but I think most of the money ends up getting skimmed off so not a lot happens. India has a throng of people who need jobs and could be converted into an army of cleaners for not very much money. Instead, there is an army of beggars- polio victims with twisted legs, people with terrible industrial accident birth defects, etc- who come through sweeping the coach of some detritus. This should not happen.

I applaud India’s online rail booking system- it is efficient and effective- though it is pretty clunky to operate. It’s functional if not pretty, so high marks for that one.

To be sure, Vietnam has some advantages over India in the organization department. Vietnam is a monoparty country that is at least nominally communist. It has a long history of pulling together as a nation for a common cause, defeating invading Chinese armies 13 times in the past 900 years (including 1979), which implies a level of organizational ability. India has never, to my knowledge, rebuffed any major onslaught from anywhere- they just don’t seem to care. India is a democracy, which is incredible if you try to imagine a process by which a billion people could ever manage to make anything happen. But still, a country that has tested an atomic bomb should be capable of clean bed linens.

The larger context here is that in order for India to be taken seriously by tourists from the developed world, there are certain standards that must be met. Cleanliness and quality in transportation is one. Fairness and transparency is another. I read that the Vietnamese government had previously exacted a harsh four-times ‘foreigner tariff’ on their trains, but they dropped it. Now everyone pays the same price. This is also true of Indian trains, but all government monuments, such as the Taj Mahal, charge foreigners 10-20 times more than locals. Now, with an official government attitude of discrimination and price gouging based on country of origin, it is little surprise that India is home to some of the world’s most unscrupulous and nasty tourist scammers. If the government would like to lead by example, perhaps singling out non-locals isn’t the best way to encourage a welcoming environment!