Places
Long Bien Bridge
The steel bridge over the Red River, completed in 1902 and still carrying trains, motorbikes and bicycles.
Long Bien Bridge was completed in 1902, in the French colonial period, and remains the city's most loved piece of engineering: a steel cantilever bridge that has survived war, repair and reinvention, and still carries trains down its middle and motorbikes along its edges.
The best view of the bridge itself is from below on the river bank near the northern gate, or from a cafe at its Old Quarter end at sunset. Walking the bridge is possible on the pedestrian lanes; go early, before the heat and the traffic build.