Guide to Visiting Hanoi’s Famous Train Street in 2023

One of the most popular tourist attractions in the Hoan Kiem District of Hanoi is the Hanoi Train Street. Train Street is a narrow section of train tracks at Phung Hung and Tran Phu street. It’s famous because the train runs right alongside the narrow houses and cafes that line the tracks. Tourists can sit at a cafe and feel the air from the train rushing by just inches from their bodies.

As of May 2023, Train Street is currently technically closed to tourists. However, that doesn’t people from finding their ways onto the tracks and enjoying some coffee, beer or just photo ops. If you’re interested in visiting Train Street, it’s definitely still possible, especially if you’re willing to patronize a cafe.

Here is my guide to visiting Train Street in 2023:

Train Street has three entrances. One is at the intersection of Tran Phu and Phung Hung Street. However, police officers at this entrance stopped people from entering. I saw two other entrances off the street, with staircases leading up to the train tracks.

These entrances are theoretically free, though there are signs warning not to cross the tracks. Sometimes, the entrances are guarded by business owners. They promise to get you across the tracks if you patronize their establishment. Other times, they’re open. 

We passed both a business owner-guarded entrance and an unguarded one. Truthfully, the signs made me a little nervous about going up the unguarded entrance. We passed an entrance with the business owners who promised to get us across and asked if they had egg coffee. When they said they did, we accepted their offer to help. It was still about 30 minutes before the train was due to arrive, so we got a spot right on the tracks in their empty cafe.

Let me talk for a minute about the train schedule 

If you’re visiting train street during the week, you only have an opportunity to see the train a few times a day in the evening. It runs more frequently throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday.

I had a hard time finding anything official online about the time the train was due to pass through Train Street. I was able to find some blogs that agreed on the following times for the weekday and weekend schedules:

• Monday – Friday: 7:00 PM; 7:45 PM; 8:30 PM; and 10:00 PM
• Saturday – Sunday: 6:00 AM; 9:00 AM; 11:20 AM; 3:20 PM; 5:30 PM; 6:00 PM; 7:00 PM; 7:45 PM; 8:30 PM; 9:00 PM; 11:00 PM

We got there on a Sunday at 10:50 a.m., plenty of time to catch the 11:20 train. We enjoyed our egg coffees – a staple of the Hanoi coffee scene – and waited. The posted train arrival time came and went, but I’d read the train could be up to 15 minutes late. We waited another 25 minutes, then thought that maybe the train schedule was different because of the holiday. Though we had nothing to confirm our theory, we decided we didn’t want to waste our day waiting for a train that may or may not come. We relinquished our prime seats, and some people sitting behind us at the cafe immediately jumped into them. 

You can’t leave Train Street without taking some photos of the tracks

We walked the length of the train tracks in one direction to see what the rest of the tracks looked like, then started walking back towards the original entrance. Just as we were contemplating whether we wanted to get another coffee and see if the train would show up, there was a commotion. Suddenly, the business owners who had once been frantically trying to usher people across the tracks and into their establishments were ushering everyone to clear the tracks. They ordered everyone who was not already at a café off the street because the train was coming!

I felt a little foolish for giving up on the train’s appearance so easily, but luckily, I was able to stand on the side of the tracks opposite the café to see it pass by. In a way, this was even more exciting than being in the café itself because I was able to watch the visible excitement and anticipation of everyone lining the opposite side of the street.

The train came, passing within inches of houses and cafes where people sat. I’m still not sure if the train was just 35 minutes late that day. Maybe the actual schedule is 11:55 on weekends instead of 11:20. I will say, when we took our train from Hanoi Station to Sa Pa, it was exactly on time.

Passing through train Street on board the train was perhaps even cooler than seeing it from Train Street. Regardless, make sure to be patient if you want to see the train pass by from the cafe side of Train Street.

Visiting Hanoi? Make sure to read more about my four-day Hanoi itinerary here.

You can also read about my full Vietnam itinerary and about my visit to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex.