Hey, I'm trying to book a train to Hekou at the Vietnam border. Usually, there is a night train (22:55) and a few daily options that return, including one at 17:00.

I can not find a night train or a night or afternoon return train. Does anyone know if these routes has been eliminated?

night train to hekou was concelled on july because few people go to hekou recently.

Other day I was told, at the train station ticket window, that the night train was booked up, some 10 days in advance. Then was told the tickets for the morning train could only be bought 3 days in advance.
No mention of the night train online.
Somebody's confused, beyond just me.

Managed to buy, at Kunming station, a hard-seat ticket (58rmb) yesterday (Tuesday) for Thursday morning 8:25 - tickets sold out for Friday, and still unclear whether the overnight train, which no longer appears on the online sites I checked, still exists or whether it too was sold out.

Yes, what is up with this route?

It is so fiercefully popular that the major booking agents can only offer a bullshit seat 6 weeks before departure..
For those not familiar, a soft seat is not a seat at all, but rather sitting on the lower bunk, with no head room or back support.. Might be 8 people in your "soft-seat", designed for 4.

Noisy children stomping on your feet while running into and out of the compartment.. Need a nap? Forget it.. Want to look at Hell? Try this.

It's only six hours for goodness sake.

Yea, thats what I was thinking too. Whats the fuss over a sleeper or a seat when its just a few hours reasonably comfortable journey.

I recall sitting on a hard seat from Beijing to Xian in 1999, for 28 hrs. Those days it was a carneval too, with chickens running in the train, someone playing erhu, beggars coming in the train on every station, some of them with limbs dripping blood, and cigarrette smoke so thick u could cut it with a knife. Toilets? Dont ask about them. Barbequed pigtails was the main lunch, someone always selling them, 1¥ lampoil baijiu as anesthetic, and dont slip on the sunflower seeds piling the floors. Heard some people had made it three days to Kunming on a hard seat too. Now a six hour journey, on a modern train, wow, must be arduous for the modern person.

I was on Ctrip yesterday. There were more time options than the day before. There is still not a night train advertised.

Hopefully you could recharge your batteries after that strenuous experience, in some nice megamall, over a capuccino, a boneless chicken steak, and some fake news.