Good afternoon everyone, it's Cory here.
I am on Trần Hưng Đạo street, this is the street that I actually live along.
And right behind me over here is the main Hanoi Railway Station. It's the main train station in Hanoi city.
So today's walk is going to be going down Trần Hưng Đạo street.
And this street runs right through the center of Hanoi, from west to east, east to west.
And so I'm just going to start from here, this is the very west edge of Trần Hưng Đạo street.
And we're going to go all the way east to the very end, I don't know exactly how many kilometers it is.
But, we're going to go there, we're going to see some stuff along the way.
And I'll kind of point out some stuff. And I guess talk while I'm doing it.
Because the last time that I did one of these videos, I didn't talk at all. And I got a lot of feedback from a lot of
you guys saying you wish I had spoken about anything. So I will go back to my original ways of doing these
walking videos, by talking and walking at the same time. So let's go ahead and start.
So it's a Monday afternoon, it's about 2pm, maybe a little after that.
And it's actually cold again. I'm wearing long sleeves and jean pants.
And it's about 18° or 19° Celsius, I think that's like 67° or 68° Fahrenheit.
It's cool enough that, you know, here in Vietnam we're so used to hot weather, that this feels really cold.
But maybe to other people who live in North America or Europe or wherever,
where it gets cold often, then this is like nothing. This is like t-shirt and shorts weather for you guys.
Anyway, the lunch rush is over. So, people are back to their offices so it's not as crowded.
But we're going to go ahead and walk down the sidewalk.
Pretty much the entire way. And I'll be crossing the street a few times throughout the video to point out
different things along the way.
You can see all these motorcycles, this is on the sidewalk. The sidewalk has become parking.
That's how it is here in Vietnam.
And yeah, so...
We'll see a lot of that along the way.
Lot of motorcycle dodging on the sidewalk as well.
There will be times where I might have to walk in the road, I'm not too sure.
Yeah, it was actually raining this morning just a little bit.
So I did bring my little umbrella with me, just in case.
But it feels so nice to actually be walking around in this cool weather.
For some reason, a month and a half ago it was this cold, then it just got hot again.
So like a few days ago, it was hot.
And that's kind of weird because last year this time,
the end of... mid-November, it was cold.
So I'm looking forward to the winter season here in Hanoi.
It's a good break (from the heat).
So coming up here is a bakery.
I don't know how to pronounce French words.
It's called O'Douceurs, this one. And it's one of the only French-owned bakeries in the city.
That was Silen (the owner) inside, looks like he was talking so I won't bother him. Anyways, cool guy.
He's from southern France. Legit French baker. They have good pastries, breads, and sandwiches
and stuff there, that's where I go often.
So that alley across the street, I live down there. That's where my house is.
We're going to keep going this way. We're going eastbound right now
So I wanted to talk about Trần Hưng Đạo street.
It's actually named after a famous Vietnamese prince and general, he was a military general.
And imperial prince. And he is one of the most iconic Vietnamese historical figures.
Ever.
He defeated Mongol invasions in the 13th century.
I think three times. Three different times the Mongols tried to take over Vietnam.
During the Tran Dynasty.
And Trần Hưng Đạo, he defeated them three times.
So, very famous name.
Oh look at that, look at the styrofoam on that motorcycle.
So this is a roundabout right here, near my house.
That's Quán Sứ street.
And can you see the buildings across the way? Those are old French buildings. They were all part of
what used to be here back in the day. In like the year 1902 or something.
It was the Palace of uhmmm... I forget what it was called.
Palace of Expositions or something like that. It was an expo, so this is not the original structure.
But this is still a convention hall, and like an art center. They do like theater performances,
musicals, and other cool events.
Anyway, so those buildings across the way, they were part of that whole expo palace.
It's like every three days, they have a new kind of an expo/convention kind of a thing.
Like right now, it looks like there's some kind of a grow
growing like farming type of convention (the word I was looking for was agriculture, lol)
So farming equipment and technology and stuff, so it's pretty interesting.
Alright, let's continue the walk.
I do want to say that along the way, there are some buildings that have security guards in front.
I don't know if they're going to tell me to stop filming or not.
There's a lot of sensitive buildings around here that the government is pretty....
I guess the word is "anal"
anal about you if you're going to take photos or film, so hopefully no one stops me and tells me to stop filming.
Along the way, this street, Trần Hưng Đạo, there are several embassies as well.
So we'll see some of the embassies and...... yeah.
*loud screeching sound*
Ouch, loud screeching noise from the brakes.
That guy has a bird cage.
Waiting for our chance to go here.
It's like as soon as the walking light turns green, people from the other way are going to start going,
so, yup... see? It's green for me...
That guy almost just hit me, just now.
So it's kind of like a, you need to go or just don't go.
Cause if you don't go, then everyone is just going to go and you'll never have a chance to go.
That's kind of how it works here. (pedestrians never have the right of way)
Anyway, coming up is, I think, a police museum. A Vietnamese police museum.
And coming up is a security guard, we'll see if... he'll probably look at me and be like "What is this guy filming?"
I'm just going to pretend I'm a dumb tourist who has never been here before.
And film everything. Until someone tells me no.
Yeah, he didn't stop me.
Ok, anyway, this is the police museum.
So they show the... the guys in the khaki uniforms, they are traffic cops.
They deal with traffic related stuff. The guys in the green are just like civil police.
They deal with domestic stuff and whatever.
I forget what the dark color is and what the light color is.
But I think the blue is firefighters.
Yeah. I'll have to have the info on the video later when I edit it.
Anyways, it's cool. Police museum. I haven't been in it.
I really had no interest to check it out. But maybe one day I'll pop my head in and see what it's all about.
Along the entire street, there's so many cafes all the way to the very end.
Cafes, restaurants, some bakeries.
The guys with the light blue shirt, like the one that just walked by,
he's not like an official cop, they're pretty much hired security.
Mainly... like this guy coming up here chilling, he's one of them too.
They're like security for the businesses, they're privately hired.
And they also deal with the parking, they're like parking attendants.
So they deal with the money, like if you have to pay to park or whatever.
And then you know, they'll pull your motorcycle out of this mess here.
They'll pull it out for you so you don't have to do it yourself.
This is a bank, they got two guards.
They're both staring at me like "What is he doing?"
Man, it's just never-ending motorcycles. Look at that.
Yeah, this is annoying. I cannot walk. I have to go around.
Sometimes when I wake up, and I have some coffee or whatever, then I go for a walk.
And this is usually the road that I walk on, just cause it's easy.
And it's not too bad.
It's a big, wide sidwalk.
So it's not like some of the other places around the city, where it's just impossible to walk.
Here you can see I have no problem walking on the sidewalk.
Here's a cool building.
I forget if this is the Cambodian embassy...
Oh it is, yeah, here.
It says Royal Embassy of Cambodia.
So that's this building, with the banana trees. Oh, it's hard to see.
Anyway, we'll keep walking.
Wow, did you hear them laughing? I don't know if you could or not. They're having a jolly old time on that bike.
So across the street is the Embassy of India.
Ok. Good timing with the bus. Uhmmmm
Across the street is the Embassy of India, and that building it's really beautiful.
Actually, I'm going to try and go across the street and show you guys.
Oooh, I still have the green light. Ok, let's go!
Green pedestrian light.
Oh, it's red. It's all good.
Man, literally everybody at that red light just stared at me when I walked by.
They're like "What is he holding?"
It's a camera guys. Have you never seen a camera?
Anyway.
Yeah, so, this place is the Embassy of India.
And it's a really beautiful building. Hopefully I can get a good shot of it.
You can see here, it says Embassy of India.
It's pretty cool huh?
And I'm not sure if the Ambassador also lives here or not.
They have this cool gate, with some peacocks.
You can see the nice house. There's the flag for India.
And there's a sculpture of Mohandas Ghandi inside there, can you see that?
And let's see here, this is a better shot of the house.
And it's a really beautiful French Colonial style architecture.
Really, really cool.
I like this like slate grey or something, it's a really cool like cool-colored grey, it has like a blue tone to it.
That's just awesome.
I love that.
So we're actually in part of the, on the edge of the French Quarter. (I was wrong, we were not on the edge.)
So we're going to see a lot of buildings that have French influence or that were built by the French.
For example, this restaurant across the street is an old French house, converted into a restaurant.
Maison Sen.
It's kind of an upper scale restaurant.
And another French-influenced thing is this place right here.
This is called Marou.
And Marou is a chocolate business.
And, yeah you can just see it, it says chocolaterie.
Super famous.
Woah, and check out this vintage bike.
Very cool.
And speaking of France again, and French influence.
We're here on Bà Triệu street, it's a main like north-southbound street right through the center of Hanoi.
But across the street over there, diagonally, that big white building, it's a huge compound.
That is the French Embassy, the Embassy of France.
It's very large. And I can imagine why, because of France's influence in Vietnam for so long.
If you guys didn't know, French Indochina, during the French occupation of pretty much the whole Indochina
peninsula, the French made their capital here in Hanoi.
It was a good location, so they decided to take over it.
Anyway, there's more behind the big white building on the other side of it,
there's some smaller, I guess like homes, that were converted into office spaces and stuff so...
yeah, can't see it from this side.
I'm a popular guy today, everybody is staring at me.
Like "What is he holding?" It's a GoPro guys, GoPro.
I'm sure you've seen it before.
You can see the French flag across the street, and like a house.
It's very nice.
I'm going to keep walking straight on this sidewalk.
Oh, before I keep going, can you see across the way?
There's a really nice old French house. That thing is old!
Alright, I think the Embassy of Indonesia is up next.
If I remember correctly.
And then after that, I'm not sure what other embassies are on this street.
I just knew that India, Cambodia, France, and Indonesia are on this street.
There's a lot of embassies in and around this area.
In the old French Quarter area.
This is a hat and helmet store, right here in the pink.
I'm a huge hat guy, as you could tell in all my videos, I wear hats.
But they don't have any hats that I like. All the styles are kind of janky.
If you're tall, walking down this sidewalk, you could get hit by these ropes overhead hanging the tarps.
It's happened to me a few times.
I'm 6 feet tall, so....
yeah, anyway....
Here's a cool cafe.
Oh, I forgot about this. It's the Embassy of Qatar.
Across the street, directly across the street.
They have an LEDscreen of somebody.
I don't know how that guy is, but that's the Embassy of Qatar. And next door is uhhhhh....
what is it?
I don't know. Anyways. Woah.
This old French building. Look at the doorway.
That's cool. It's got stained glass as well.
And here's a cafe and this is part of Indonesian tourism, their office.
And here is the Indonesian Embassy.
In huge letters, it says INDONESIA.
So that's pretty cool huh?
Yeah, it's interesting that all this stuff is on the street that I live on.
I can go.
A little known fact, about Indonesia and like how it somehow relates to me.
Look at this, I can't even get... ok, this is my only way.
These guys are playing chess.
So what I was going to say was about Indonesia and how it relates to me.
So a long time ago, like... frick... I don't even know, like 17 or 18 years ago,
I used to study, with my friend, Indonesian Pencak Silat.
That's an Indonesian martial arts.
And yeah, it was really cool.
It was specifically with Kuntao Silat, it's a form of Silat that was created by Willem de Thoars.
And he's a Dutch-Indonesian guy from back in the day, like plantation-style martial arts master.
You know, they were like punching their fingers through banana trees and kicking coconut trees, like old school training.
Anyway, yeah. Little known fact. I used to do that.
More cafes, everywhere.
The cafe culture in this city is very vibrant.
What's really cool is all the old French style buildings,
they build the cafes into them.
So it's just these like really charming, old places that are converted into cafes.
And I don't know, I just never experienced cafes like that anywhere else.
Let's take a look around at this intersection, just to show you guys what it looks like.
So this place right here is the Ministry of Finance, according to that sign in English.
Because I cannot read Vietnamese.
There's a bank across the way.
Yeah, anyway, let's keep going.
There's still a little ways to go, and then it's going to end. Trần Hưng Đạo street will end.
We'll still see some cool stuff along the way.
In my apartment hunting videos, if you go through my videos from last year (2017).
I was doing some apartment hunting in this area.
This is a restaurant. Cha Ca restaurant.
And here's a different kind of restaurant, this is a Vietnamese restaurant, kind of more modern style.
Kind of nice in there.
This place is always packed at lunch time.
This is a little corner street like chill tea spot.
Get some drinks.
Smoke some tobacco. Xin Chao! (Hello)
And uhmm.... yeah.
Very common sight to see.
Hello doggy!
Smell me.
Awww... OK.
Seemed a little bit cautious, so I didn't want to immediately try to touch it. Touch him or her.
Check out these banyan trees, there's just, I'm sure you've seen them earlier in the video.
There's just a ton of banyan trees down this street. They're really cool.
They have the hanging roots.
The root system here, really awesome.
Here's more old French buildings that still exist and are occupied.
I think this is an apartment complex?
I'm not sure.
Oh, it says Center for International Cooperation.
Ok, I don't know what that's supposed to actually mean.
Anyway, it's neat.
Old French balconies.
And then one of the coolest places I've seen
is the one that's across the street, it might be kind of hard to see from over here.
But it's this huge French building with this wrap-around balcony on the 2nd floor.
That is just awesome.
There's another old building right next to it.
There's a little school here, I think it's a pre-school.
I don't know if you can hear the children on the other side of this wall.
Some shops.
Check this place out.
Wow.
Check out the fence.
The fence is cool too.
I want to say these are residential, cause I've seen before this gate open and inside the parking was
a BMW. Oh yeah, there's a Mercedes in there. But before there was a BMW also.
So I think these are residences for somebody very important or someone with a lot of money.
What's in this one? Oh, there's a Lexus inside of that one.
So I know I had some questions from people before about what does a gas station in Vietnam look like.
And this is a perfect example, right across the street.
A Petrolimex.
It's like one of the main gas station brands or companies or whatever.
This is how it works at gas stations, these cars are lined up, this guy is literally just in the middle of the street.
Waiting to go behind that white taxi.
And that blue car is also behind him.
And that's just how it goes, people line up in the street .
Kind of blocks traffic.
Sometimes.
And then the two stations over on the right side, those are for motorcycles.
And when it gets packed, it's crazy. There's like... no one knows how to line up or get in a queue.
So everyone is just cutting in front of each other to get to the pump first.
Right now it looks pretty orderly, but trust me, when it's packed, it's like chaos.
So we got a modern style building across the street this way.
And then directly across from there are these old-looking apartment complexes.
It's a pretty big, drastic difference between the two.
Alright, which way am I going to go? I think I'm going to cross the street this way.
And pray I don't get hit.
There's no crosswalk light at this one, so I have to just go when I can.
And that's when your wisdom of the Vietnamese road comes into play.
Look around, alright, no one is running the red light. I'm good.
So coming up is a very large hospital, it's a really really large hospital.
I can see it all the way from my rooftop and it's really big.
But along this street, in this area, there's all dentistry businesses.
So there's a dental clinic there, there's one there.
And there's also pharmacies and stuff.
So we'll walk right by some.
And a very common thing to see in Vietnam are patients in hospital gowns walking around.
And chilling, smoking cigarettes, drinking tea.
Kind of the same as in Korea.
They believe that patients, like if they're in-patients,
they should have the freedom to, you know, within certain limits,
be able to walk around outside for some fresh air, some exercise, you know, it helps boost their morale.
And you know, they believe it actually helps them heal better. And I can totally see how that would work.
I would hate to just be in a room, all day, every day.
I would want to go outside, go to the park, chill out like at the tea stand just down the street.
Here's all dental clinics. Dental clinic.
Here's a pharmacy.
More dental clinics.
Woah! She laid the law down, did you see that?
She like slapped at that guy's face. (I thought it was his face, it was his back)
She's like "MOVE OVER THERE NOW!"
That was kind of awesome.
So another common sight besides pharmacies and stuff outside of a major hospital is
a lot of motorcycles, and a lot of motorcycle drivers that want to take you places.
It's a good place to help families get to and from the hospital.
So there's just a lot of these guys waiting around.
They could be Grab drivers, they could be fake Grab drivers.
Taxis. There's a lot of taxis here, they're all just waiting to pick up somebody.
So you gotta watch out and not get hit.
Here it is, the Military Central Hospital.
See these Grab drivers, I don't even know if they're legit or not.
You can see a lot of these guys just chilling out on corners, not doing anything.
Many of them are fake. They're not registered, not licensed by Grab or anything.
And they just bought a used Grab jacket and a helmet online.
And they pretend to be Grab drivers. So, if you want to use Grab, always use the app!
Book through the app, do not just walk up to a guy on the street just cause he has a jacket.
Because there's a high chance that he will not be a real Grab driver.And then he'll try to jack you for a price.
Rip you off.
Anyways, we're coming up on the end of Trần Hưng Đạo here.
There's a... I don't know what that says in Vietnamese, if anybody does...
Maybe I'll just add the info later, when I edit.
But it's I think a military-related building.
There's another one here on the right side.
Here's an example of a guy in a hospital gown.
There's one there, and then there's another guy there.
You can find some good food, cheap food, outside of the hospitals, you know?
People buy the food and then go inside and take it to their family members or friends.
Whoever they're visiting in the hospital.
It's cool.
It is very noisy right now.
These guys are grilling corn.
And sweet potatoes.
It's good winter street food.
So we're at the end of Trần Hưng Đạo street,
I'm going to try to cross and end the video up over there,
above where the graffiti is.
Alright, looks like I'm just going to have to go for it.
Nobody stops for pedestrians.
There's some oranges for sale.
We're going to go up these really steep stairs.
Oooh, sweet potatoes and corn.
So this is a major road.
If you follow it this way, it goes all the way around the edge of Hanoi, and leads towards the airport.
I hope you guys enjoyed this video, walking down Trần Hưng Đạo, the street that I live on.
And you know, kind of just experiencing what a Monday afternoon is like here in Hanoi city.
Check out the description box for a Google Map, it'll show the exact route that I took.
And yeah, subscribe to the channel, give the video a thumbs up, and I'll see you guys later. Peace out!
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