Ho Guom pedestrian-new playground at weekend

Starting from September of 2016, the streets surrounding Ho Guom (Sword lake) were blocked every weekends (from Friday to Sunday) to save place for pedestrians making these places the playgrounds for thousands of Hanoi’s inhabitants and tourists.

Ho Guom pedestrian street

These streets belongs to the Old quarter which is always hustle and bustle with tons of shops, stores and restaurants, therefore turning them into pedestrian streets attracts so many people there. This is like a new and tasty disk for inhabitants hungry for a space for hanging out inside the busy city.

Lots of trees around the lake’s bank

Every weekend nights, people flock there to walk, breathe the fresh air purified by the lake’s water and tons of long-lasting trees growing along the lake’s bank. But it is not all, with their creativeness, the young started to bring the streets with excellent art performance from magic, street dance to music playing. The young’s dynamic and energy work out quite well and attract lots of audiences. Walking in these streets, it is not at all hard to find large groups of people circling performances with the joy and interest obviously in their eyes.

A group of people are enjoying the lion dance

Besides, this is also the place where the young revive Vietnamese traditional games that are faded away by the modern devices of the current age. They hold games like rope-skipping, Ô ăn quan, hide and seek and so on and lure lots of people joining. Participants are quite excited to live their childhood that felt into ignorance for quite long.

Ô ăn quan-a traditional games of Vietnam

Also, vendors never forget to make use of this fertile land, they bring here countless of colorful handicrafts, especially Tò he (toy figurine), made of glutious rice into many shapes.

Colorful Tò he

Another point that attracts tourists is that these streets are so closed to the night market, tourists can easily stop by and take a look at the market and do some shopping or even go inside a bit to Ta Hien-the famous beer street to enjoy some beer.