China’s Belt and Road Initiative a plus, the rest so-so on Hong Kong-Chiang Mai journey

A Hong Kong resident’s trip to Chiang Mai via Laos on Chinese-built railways, then by road, mostly smooth with a few bumps along the way

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A road in northern Laos adjacent to the Laos-China Railway built under China’s Belt and Road Initiative that our correspondent was supposed to take until he missed his train, thus learning a salutary lesson about road transport in Southeast Asia. Photo: Kristian Odebjer

Kristian Odebjer

Published: 7:45am, 16 Jun 2024Updated: 12:30pm, 17 Jun 2024

A trip from Hong Kong to Chiang Mai using Chinese-built railways and a road shows what a boon China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been, and what’s missing in less developed Southeast Asia.

Day 1: Hong Kong – Kunming (February 5, 2024)

It is Monday morning, five days before the start of the Lunar New Year holiday, and my wife and I have just left our home in Hong Kong, destined for Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand.

We take the MTR together, but while Mimi heads straight for Hong Kong International Airport, I have decided to take a more roundabout way, following the Belt and Road Initiative between the two locations.

A high-speed train pulled in at Kunming Nan (Kunming South) Railway Station. Photo: Kristian Odebjer

So with my wife just a few hours away from being able to order a bowl of authentic khao soi, I board a high-speed train at West Kowloon Station.

We have all heard a lot over the past 10 years about newly built railways, ports and highways in far-flung places all enabled by the Belt and Road Initiative.

While China’s domestic high-speed railway is not included in the initiative, it still falls under the “make massive infrastructure investments and there will be growth” philosophy favoured by Beijing, and thus qualifies as an acceptable mode of transport for my expedition.

My train on the gaotie (high-speed railway) takes passengers 1,500km (930-mile) across southern China to Kunming, Yunnan province, in a mere seven-and-a-half hours. My mind boggles at the engineering effort that must have been involved in negotiating the mountainous terrain.

At times it feels like riding the MTR, with the train running through seemingly never-ending tunnels.