Padang to Pariaman

About 65km up the West Sumatra coast from Padang to Pariaman, taking around an hour and a half. The run is genuinely pleasant, with sea views for much of the way and hills inland, and it costs almost nothing.

Note the name change. This service was called the Sibinuang for years and many guides still use that name, but it was renamed Pariaman Express under the GAPEKA 2023 timetable in June 2023. It is the same train. It runs the full Pauh Lima to Padang to Naras line, operated by KAI Regional Division II West Sumatra, roughly four times a day.

Booking. This is a local service, so it does not appear on KAI's long-distance booking website. Buy it in the KA Lokal section of the Access by KAI app, through Traveloka or tiket.com, or simply at the station counter. At Rp 5,000 a ticket there is no financial risk in leaving it to the day.

Pariaman is a modest beach town, which makes this an easy half-day out from Padang rather than a destination in its own right. Gandoriah beach is beside the station.

Scale your expectations. This is a regional line with a handful of daily departures and basic rolling stock, and it connects to nothing else. Reaching Medan or Palembang from West Sumatra means flying or a very long road journey. The separate Minangkabau Express runs on a branch of the same small network, connecting Padang with Minangkabau International Airport.