International trains from China
Only some international trains can be bought on 12306. The rest are sold at station ticket counters or through a travel service, and two of the six routes below are currently suspended. Every card states the real status of that train and the date its schedule was verified.
Three statuses appear on this page, and they matter more than the timetable:
- Bookable online — the train runs and seats can be reserved against your passport before you travel. D87 to Vientiane is the only route here in that category.
- Running, sold offline — the train exists and departs on schedule, but no online channel sells it to foreign passports. You buy at the station counter, or we buy for you and hand over the paper ticket. K23 to Ulaanbaatar, K27 to Pyongyang and T8701 to Hanoi work this way.
- Suspended — the service is not running, whatever older guides say. K3/K4 and K19/K20 to Moscow have been suspended since the pandemic and have not resumed.
International trains also differ from domestic ones in two practical ways: you clear immigration at the border station with all your luggage, and the timetable is published in the local time of each country, so a 20:00 departure can cross a time zone before you arrive.
Short border crossings
401/402 Suifenhe (绥芬河) — Grodekovo (格罗杰科沃) · 353/354 Manzhouli (满洲里) — Zabaikalsk (后贝加尔斯克). We do not cover these two shuttles yet.
Group tickets and ticket-purchase assistance
Travelling as a group, or need someone to queue at the counter for a cross-border ticket? We help with group bookings of 10 or more, counter purchases and visa or border briefings.
Ask about international train tickets →