Hanoi’s Instagram hotspot, 'Train Street', finally reopens to tourists

A train passing by cafes that line Hanoi’s ‘Train Street’. — CHRIS HUMPHREY/dpa

Nearly three years after Vietnamese authorities shuttered cafés along Hanoi’s famous “Train Street” and banned selfie-snapping tourists from visiting, vendors have cautiously returned in recent months – although nobody knows how long the area will remain open.

On the approximately 50m-long thoroughfare in central Hanoi, locomotives thunder down a railway line that runs perilously close to residential buildings, many of which have been turned into cafés, bars and souvenir shops.