I had the same opinion when taking high speed train for the first time in China. Many stations seemed to be far away from anything and there was a lot of proces

I had the same opinion when taking high speed train for the first time in China. Many stations seemed to be far away from anything and there was a lot of process when you get to the station. That's not the case now as all of those areas have sprung up, along with convenient transportation via subway/metro to the places you'd want to get to. You can also board the train quickly now. I'm not sure if that makes sense for Laos, but for China it seemed to work pretty well.