We turned up at 2.30pm with our cameras to stake our spot because the internet had told us the train would come between 3pm and 3.15pm. No sign of any trains at 3.15pm so I asked a passerby if we had come at the right time. In typical Hanoian fashion, she eyed me as though it were the Great Famine of 1944-45 and I had just stolen all her rice. “It’s gone,” she said. “You’re too late.” The tone of her voice suggested that if she’d been chewing betel she would have spat it out in my eye.
We waited another ten disheartening minutes then left. As we approached Long Bien bridge, where the track continues from the alley, the long horn of an on-coming train sounded, but by then it was too late to go back. Foiled!
That was in October 2016, when the narrow lane way was still relatively quiet. There were a few tourists wandering along the tracks but local life went on without any regard to them. Women made dinner on their outdoor cookers by the rails. Neighbours sat side by side on the makeshift iron benches, catching up on the news.
By March 2019, the Hanoiian commercial instinct seemed to have finally kicked in. Each side of the tracks was dotted with souvenir shops and little cafes heaving with tourists looking to photograph the trains taking their cargo to Lang Son and Hai Phong. The locals were far more hospitable now, and the air was electric with the excitement of tourist money and potential fatalities. I was in the area on a Sunday morning, saw a tour guide leading a group into the alley and followed. She herded them onto a patch of concrete and berated anyone who leant out too far. Nearby, a man was cutting up some form of animal carcass on the ground outside his house.
The train chugged slowly down the alley, parting the sea of selfie-takers, with the driver having to choose between keeping to the railway timetable and the paperwork attendant upon workplace accidents. He must have had nerves of steel…
Postcards from the Golden Peninsula 