Thousands of selfie-takers in Ho Chi Minh City boarded train cars on Sunday as the busy business district celebrated the opening of its first metro line after years of delays.
Huge queues spilled out at every station along the $1.7bn line that runs about 20km (12 miles) from the city center – with women in traditional “ao dai”, uniformed soldiers and couples holding small children eagerly waiting to board.
“I know (the project) is late, but I still feel honored and proud to be one of the first on this metro,” said office worker Nguyen Nhu Huyen after taking a selfie in his jam-packed car.
“Our city is now comparable to other major cities in the world,” he added.
It took 17 years for Vietnam's commercial capital to reach this point. The project, largely funded by Japanese government loans, was first approved in 2007 and is expected to cost just $668m.
When the construction work started in 2012, the government officials promised that the railway would be operational within five years.
But as delays piled up, cars and motorbikes piled up in the city of 9 million people, making the city more congested, more polluted and time-consuming to travel.
The Metro “meets the growing travel needs of residents and helps reduce traffic congestion and environmental damage,” the city's vice mayor Bui Xuan Cuong said.
Cuong admitted that officials have to overcome “many challenges” to complete the project.
Back on the train, 84-year-old veteran Vu Thanh told the AFP news agency that he was happy to meet the ground in a good way after three years of fighting American troops on the famous underground Cu Chi Road. network.
“It sounds very different from what I experienced secretly years ago during the war. It is bright and nice here,” he said.
Professor Vu Minh Hoang of the Fulbright University in Vietnam warned that with only 14 stations, the line's “impact on reducing traffic will be limited in the long run”.
However, it is still “a historic success in urban development”, he told AFP.