Westerner 6 years selling tours of Hanoi train street

Alex Sheal, a British man with a strong attachment to Vietnam, has been exploiting Hanoi's train street tourism product with his friends since 2013 until the street was banned.

Alex, 43, founder of Vietnam In Focus, a company that offers photography tours in Vietnam, said he was one of the first to create travel experiences on the railway for foreign tourists. During his first years in Vietnam (from 2007 to 2012), he lived on Cao Ba Quat Street, Hanoi, and enjoyed wandering along the railway line through the residential area.

He clearly remembers the railway street when there were not many tourists and no fancy cafes. People cooked, washed clothes, bathed their children, and read newspapers on the tracks. The presence of foreigners like Alex was "strange" to them.

"Life along the railway was so slow back then. I loved the feeling of walking on the tracks, especially in a city like Hanoi," Alex said.

Alex founded Vietnam In Focus in Hanoi in 2012 with Irish photographer Colm Pierce, 53. Their first product was called “Hanoi Encounter”, Old Quarter Tour, and “Long Bien Sunrise”. While the products were well received, Alex and Colm were still keen to create a more engaging sightseeing experience that would help visitors see the uniqueness of Hanoi.

Colm (in red) leads visitors around the train street in 2013. Photo: Vietnam In Focus — Colm (in red) leads visitors around the train street in 2013. Photo: *Vietnam In Focus*

One day, while walking, Alex noticed a train approaching and people quickly moved aside. At that moment, Alex knew he had an idea for a special tour - "On the Tracks".

Speaking to VnExpress on August 31, Alex said that foreigners coming to Hanoi want to seek experiences and discover new things from the small and narrow alleys in the Old Quarter, the markets, street food or maybe the bustling life of the city. Watching the train run seems promising.

“It was a real and unique experience of life in Hanoi that was more interesting than any temple, show or museum,” Alex commented.

When he first started selling tours, Alex was skeptical that tourists would want to explore such a poor area of Hanoi. This skepticism quickly disappeared as customers kept coming.

One of the first clients was Kana Baroda, an Indian photographer. Kana’s 2013 trip was cut short when Colm, the tour leader, had to leave mid-way through the trip when his wife gave birth to their first child. Despite this, Kana gave the trip a positive review, even writing about it in the Daily Mail in 2014.

According to Kana, the houses are so close to the tracks that sometimes the trains "pass by pedestrians and children on the street" and living by the tracks has become a normal part of the residents' lives. "When the train comes, people move their chairs about a meter away from the tracks and continue talking as the train passes," the Daily Mail quoted Kana as saying.

The tour quickly became popular, and Alex’s company began receiving inquiries about train schedules. With “On the Tracks,” visitors are guaranteed to see at least one train passing through the neighborhood. However, the focus of the tour is on experiencing, learning about, and photographing the daily lives of the neighborhood’s residents.

In 2014, Alex received an email from the production team of Globe Trekker, a long-running British travel television series, about an idea for an episode to be filmed in Vietnam. Shortly after, Alex and Colm had an interview with the show’s crew on Ly Nam De Street. The two shared many interesting things about Vietnam, especially the trains connecting the North and South.

By 2015, the explosion of Instagram had turned the train street into a must-see spot in Hanoi. Alex says cafes began to pop up, meaning the poor tenants had to move out. Not only did residents see the opportunity to make money on the train street, but so did businesses.

"They started taking customers to the route we discovered. It was like a small drop of water turned into a big flood. We could only take customers in the early morning to avoid the traffic jam," Alex said.

In 2019, the National Geographic film crew booked Alex's tour when the train street "really exploded." Alex compared this street to the famous Canaveral rocket launch site in the US because it was always packed with people waiting for the train to arrive, always holding cameras and phones to record.

After the National Geographic trip, Alex was no longer able to take visitors there because the street was closed due to safety concerns. Alex said he was not surprised when the day finally came when the train street was closed. In 2018, he witnessed crowds drinking beer right next to the train tracks.

Alex believes that Vietnam could actually do better to open up its neighborhoods rather than shutting them down. After the pandemic, competition for tourists among Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia is fierce. Meanwhile, Hanoi, the country's largest destination, does not have many unique sightseeing experiences. Tourists can absolutely visit temples, museums, and markets in many other countries, not necessarily Vietnam.

Sheal (left) on a trip to Dien Bien. Photo: Alex Sheal — Alex (left) on a trip to Dien Bien in June 2023. Photo: *Alex Sheal*

"I think it would be better to turn the neighborhood into a tourist attraction with specific safety regulations such as limiting the number of cafes and visitors," Alex said, citing how the US is exploiting tourism from the Grand Canyon, attracting 5 million visitors, despite an average of 12 people dying in accidents each year.

Since 2018, Colm left Vietnam In Focus and the company is now run by Alex and his wife. Not only limited to Hanoi, they have expanded their photography tour products for foreign visitors to many other destinations in Vietnam.

Tu Nguyen

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