Train Street has become a famous tourist destination

In 2017, when Mark Bowyer walked along the railway connecting Phung Hung and Tran Phu, his only impression was a simple living space of indigenous people.

Train Street at that time had no cafes, no tourists and no security barriers. Instead, there are rows of houses close to the railway tracks, where people make use of every square meter to cook, wash and pull out each other’s gray hair right on the sleepers. Data from Vietnam Railway Corporation shows that this is the inner-city railway section with the highest population density, with safety corridors in many places less than one meter.

The change began clearly in the period 2017 – 2018 when social networks exploded. Mark Bowyer recalls that in 2017, when he held a camera along the street, children were still chasing on the tracks and elderly people looked at the foreign visitor with curious eyes.

“Hey hey, speak Vietnamese, I don’t know foreign languages,” the woman smiled cheerfully, waving at Mark while he was filming. In response, he said in Vietnamese as fluently as a native, “Oh so you can’t speak foreign languages?”. Mark’s answer made everyone laugh out loud in surprise.

The children were also excited about the only foreign guest present on the street at that time. They kept saying “What’s your name” and communicating with Mark in broken English. In another corner of the train street along Phung Hung, people cook on charcoal stoves and feel shy when Mark asks “What are you cooking?”. He remembers a woman instead of answering asked him “How many children do you have?”.

Going further towards Tran Phu Street, Mark witnessed shabby houses with corrugated iron roofs. In front of each house there are ropes to dry all kinds of clothes and blankets.

According to Mark, outsiders will find it scary when the distance between the house and the railway line is less than one meter. But normally there are no trains passing by, life here is quite quiet. If looked at from a positive perspective, he thinks the people here have a more peaceful space than many other places in the capital. He said that at that time, the traffic density in Hanoi’s Old Quarter was so dense that walking along the tracks sometimes felt safer than weaving on the main roads.

According to statistics from the TripAdvisor platform, in 2018, the keyword “Hanoi Train Street” began to reach the top of must-try experiences when coming to Vietnam, creating a fever on Instagram and TikTok.

In 2019, this expert was shocked to return. Old houses have been painted and redecorated into vintage-style cafes. The greeting “Coffee?” replaces questions about family visits in Vietnamese.

“The entrepreneurial spirit of Vietnamese people is always amazingly sharp,” he said. One of them is Ms. Dung, who opened a cafe and craft beer shop in 2018 in the style of a train. She told Mark that all the chairs in the restaurant had been used by the railway industry to serve customers for 50 years. To her, it is a “rare thing” that creates the unique quality of the shop.

This spontaneous business boom led to the Hoan Kiem district government first ordering the closure of cafes in October 2019 to ensure train safety.

After the pandemic, the attraction of Chinatown has not decreased but has even increased. Train Street becomes a practical lesson in spontaneous tourism. Expert Mark Bowyer commented that Hanoi has invested a lot in staged experiences, but it is a street naturally formed from social networks that attracts international visitors the most.

As of 2023, despite the ban and fixed barriers at the beginning of Tran Phu street, every day there are still thousands of visitors trying to get inside to witness the train passing close to the house.

However, fame comes with management risks. Mark Bowyer realized that nearly 10 years ago, the risk of an accident was an individual risk, but now it has become a matter of responsibility for the entire city. The Vietnam Railways Department has repeatedly issued written requests to completely handle violations of safety corridors here, after a number of incidents where trains knocked over tables and chairs close to the tracks or collided with tourists standing too close to the tracks to take photos.

Looking back at the past ten years of the train street’s journey, Mark Bowyer believes that the cohesion of the community of residents who are former railway employees has created the soul of the street. They were proud of their time serving the railroad and living closely with their neighbors.

He considers the train street to be a special tourist destination because it does not need the intervention of large travel agencies but still maintains its attraction thanks to the originality of Hanoi’s urban life.

The train street is currently facing a “tug of war” between preserving a unique culture to attract tourists and complying with strict safety regulations. Mark Bowyer believes that the biggest risk today is that excessive commercialization can destroy the inherent peacefulness. He hopes the city will find a harmonious solution instead of simply banning it. Currently, the government still maintains the barriers but visitors can still experience the train tracks, where the Control regulations are somewhat more flexible.

At the end of the visit in 2024, the Australian expert believes that Chinatown will still be a symbol of the business acumen of Vietnamese people. Although the appearance has changed from clotheslines to neon signs, the identity of a life dependent on the railway is still what makes international tourists willing to wait in line.