Hanoi’s ‘train street’ lures tourists despite safety fears

HANOI (AFP): Tourists snatch arms and legs away from a passing train in Hanoi, shrinking back into railside cafes that have brought lucrative business to a former slum disdained by the government.

Authorities have repeatedly tried to shut down the tumbledown quarter of the Vietnamese capital for safety reasons, but any closure seems unlikely as social media brings more visitors to the area.

“I feel adrenaline because (the train) was so close,” Helena Bizonova from Slovakia told AFP, standing inches from the colonial-era locomotive chugging past at 10 kilometres (six miles) an hour.

The lantern-adorned tracks – and the elegant cafes that line them – are well known online and “something that I will never experience in my life again”, she told AFP.

Vietnam’s French former rulers built the railway in the early 1900s to transport goods and people across the country, then part of French Indochina along with Laos and Cambodia.

Parts of the line were badly damaged when U.S. bombs rained down on the communist-ruled north during the Vietnam War that ended half a century ago.

Vietnam now hopes to build a $67 billion high-speed railway linking north and south, in a much-needed boost to infrastructure that is expected to drive growth.

But the state-owned Vietnam Railways Corporation still manages the old and underdeveloped metre-gauge tracks, which remain a mode of transport for budget travellers.

Cleaner, nicer and safer

Similar “train streets” in Thailand and Taiwan attract thousands of tourists drawn by the rush of jumping aside when a locomotive rumbles through the throngs.

Previously in a notoriously rough part of town frequented by drug users and squatters, Hanoi’s stretch of track now offers a business opportunity for enterprising baristas.

A cafe owner who asked not to be identified said tourism had transformed the area into a “cleaner, nicer and safer place”, admonishing the efforts to shutter it.

“We should never try to close streets down, instead, making full use of them and turning them into a distinctive feature to promote tourism,” he told AFP from his cafe festooned with Vietnamese flags.

As a red train rumbled into view, everyone in the tiny street cleared the tracks, packing into adjacent cafes and pulling their phones out to capture the scene.

The cafe staff warn visitors to make way, which reassures tourists such as Slovakian Maria Morikova.

“It is not dangerous,” she said. “They are preparing the streets for it. They are telling you strictly like you should stand by the line.”

Vietnamese visitor Nguyen Le Trang, from the southern Mekong Delta, called the street “the one and only tourism speciality in Hanoi”, adding authorities should not close it.