The Purpose of a Road is in its Name

 Our guide this morning explained to us that in the Old Quarter, each street is named after the things that are sold there.  So it is easy to go, oh, Meat Street, or Spice Street, but I went Linen Street, when it was in fact Cotton Street, so there are traps for young players.  Hardware Street was another, could be Metal Street, or Weld on the Footpath without Safety Goggles Street, but we got there in the end.

The one that Sara was looking for was called Train Street and if you are thinking along the lines of Train your Dragon, or teach your dog to sit, you would be wrong.  This street was created around 1902 when the French built the railway line that connects Hanoi to the rest of Vietnam.  Over time this street became the home to railway workers and they originally built their homes about 12m back from the railway line.  However, in the ultimate game of urban creep, the cafes and shops are less than a metre from the railway line that it is STILL IN USE.

So we sat on some really tiny chairs outside the cafe and everyone else around us took a seat and down the rumbling track came a normally sized freaken train!  I tried to video it on my phone, but I was alarmingly conscious that my knees were within striking distance of an entire train, so the filming took second sport to the cringing and trying to be small.

Fingers crossed the video works.