Bangkok to Vientiane by train
Across the Friendship Bridge, and the gauge break waiting on the other side.
1 legs · 2 days · 1 border · about $34 all in
Open this route in the planner Change the pace, the beds or the passport and the numbers follow.
Benh LIEU SONG · CC BY-SA 3.0Pragmatic routing
Bangkok Vientiane overland
Bangkok to Vientiane is a genuine rail journey almost end to end: 1 leg (1 on rails) across 2 countries, with 1 frontier in between. It works and it is comfortable enough, but the journey here is transport rather than the reward — plan the stops, not just the legs.
Stations that catch people out
- Krung Thep Aphiwat Bangkok's long-distance terminal since 2023 — not the old Hua Lamphong. Confirm which terminal your specific train uses.
- Pak Chong The railhead for Khao Yai. The park gate is a further songthaew or taxi ride.
- Vientiane (Khamsavath) Serves ONLY southbound trains to Thailand. 15 km from Banthen, no rail link between them.
The route
Durations are typical scheduled running times, not departures, and the figure under each service is how often it runs — the number that decides whether a missed connection costs you an hour or a day. Where a last departure is shown it is the one worth setting an alarm for. No planner in this region can give you a departure time you should trust: the operators publish nothing in common. Take these legs to the booking sites below and read the real clock there.
| Leg & operator | Time | Fare | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Krung Thep Aphiwat Vientiane (Khamsavath) State Railway of Thailand Reported Rapid 133/134 · Special Express 25/26 5 a day · two by day, three overnight to Bangkok via Pak Chong · Korat · Khon Kaen · Udon Thani · Nong Khai Book with SRTdticket.railway.co.th | 10h 54m | $34 |
Day by day
Shape, not a timetable. This is built from running times, the connection buffers above and your chosen pace — it deliberately states no departure time, because none of these operators publish one this page could stand behind. Use it to decide how many nights to book and where; use the operator sites for the clock.
- Bangkok Vientiane Rapid 133/134 · Special Express 25/26 10h 54m
Where you sleep
Every night on this route is spent moving — 1 aboard a sleeper, a bed already inside the fare. Nothing to book and nothing to pay.
Border crossings
Itineraries die at frontiers, not on track. Never plan one of these without checking the current position for your own passport.
Khamsavath ↔ Nong Khai
Laos ↔ Thailand- Where
- Lao formalities at Khamsavath, Thai immigration and customs at Nong Khai
- On the train?
- Yes, on the through sleeper
- Luggage
- Yes — all luggage comes off the train at Nong Khai for customs
- Visa
- Lao visa-on-arrival is generally available; Thai entry is visa-exempt for many nationalities. Confirm for your passport.
- Cash on the far side
- Small amounts of Thai baht and Lao kip.
- Time cost
- About 60 minutes of formalities
The trap. You must take every bag off the train at Nong Khai for customs. Travellers who do not know this get caught out at night, half asleep, and hold up the carriage. Separately: arriving at Khamsavath does not put you on the Laos–China Railway — that is Banthen, 15 km away, different gauge, separate ticket.
Where this breaks
Nothing on this route trips the risk rules — which is unusual, and worth double-checking against the operators before you take it as read.
Booking sequence
Book in order of scarcity times window length, not in the order you travel. The shortest leg on the whole spine sells out first.
-
1
State Railway of Thailand
~90 days
Sleepers on trains 9/10 and the southern overnights sell out first.
The official e-ticket site. Foreign cards fail on it fairly often, and an aggregator is the usual fallback when they do.
Book with SRTdticket.railway.co.th
Where an operator cannot be booked from abroad — the Laos–China Railway above all — an aggregator is the practical route in. They add a fee, and some sell tickets they do not yet hold and buy them when inventory opens, which is a genuine cancellation risk on a scarce sleeper. Prefer the operator wherever the operator actually works, which is most of the time.
No affiliate links on transport. Every booking link above goes straight to the operator or aggregator and earns this project nothing. The operator's own site is listed first because it is usually cheaper and always more reliable, not because of what it pays — that ordering is the most load-bearing judgement on this page and it is not for sale. Booking URLs were last reviewed 2026-07 and are not machine-checked — if one is dead, search the operator name rather than trusting a reseller that ranks well.
Where it does earn. The hotel links in “Where you sleep” and the insurance link below pay a commission, at no extra cost to you. They are marked as paid links. Nothing about them changes a route, a price, or the order of anything: no hotel is recommended over another and no leg is routed differently because of them.
Costs
| Transport, 1 legs | $34 |
| Accommodation, 0 nights | $0 |
| 1 night on a sleeper — a bed you already paid for in the fare | included |
| Total | $34 |
Against flying
2 days, $34, 1 legs versus a flight of roughly 1h 24m gate to gate at somewhere around $48–99. That fare band is estimated from the 514 km great-circle distance, not from live inventory — check it.
On a trip this short the train is genuinely competitive, and it puts you in the middle of a city rather than an hour outside one.
Photography
- Grand Palace — Jakub Hałun, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Khao Yai National Park — JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Pha That Luang — Benh LIEU SONG, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons