Notes on Bac Ninh: The booming manufacturing powerhouse near Hanoi

On the railway to China, the hidden ancient citadel, and visiting the Koreatown and Chinatown in this booming manufacturing hub of Northern Vietnam.

Bac Ninh is the capital city of Bac Ninh province, neighbouring Hanoi. Bac Ninh province is part of the Hanoi Metropolitan Area, and on the drive to Bac Ninh it’s hard to tell where Hanoi ends and Bac Ninh begins. At least there is still some farmland in between that stops Hanoi fully merging into Bac Ninh.

Bac Ninh is an industrial powerhouse of Vietnam, so it’s not exactly high on the list of places to visit for leisure travellers. Apart from the fact that I am making my way through the list of provincial capitals in Vietnam, there were some things here I wanted to see.

The Hanoi-Dong Dang Railway passes through Bac Ninh (the train line to Nanning in China), and I noticed there is a citadel next to the station. I also read that Bac Ninh has a large Koreatown and Chinatown area, which seemed unusual for a provincial city.

[Map of Bac Ninh Ancient Citadel.]

I visited Bac Ninh in July 2024, and these are my travel notes.

Bac Ninh Station

Bac Ninh is on the Hanoi-Dong Dang Railway, though there were no trains running at the time of my visit. The Hanoi-Nanning train was cancelled during the pandemic and had not been restored.

[Bac Ninh Station]

Even without this international connection, it seemed like a missed opportunity to not run local trains on this line. I couldn’t find the bus stop for the local bus, so I ended up getting a Grab taxi from Hanoi to Bac Ninh.

For rail nerds, the Hanoi-Dong Dang Railway has a dual-gauge track. There is a metre-gauge track for local trains, and the standard-gauge line is for the train to China.

The line goes through the urban area of Bac Ninh, and I wondered if any of these streets would become famous like Hanoi Train Street if the train was running.

Bac Ninh Ancient Citadel

The Ancient Citadel of Bac Ninh is next to the train station, so this geographical advantage had me wondering if the citadel could become a tourist attraction in the future. I already knew the answer was going to be no, but I had to see for myself.

There are several citadels like this in Vietnam, and most of them have been absorbed into the cities they are part of. There is a citadel in Dong Hoi that has a major road through the middle of it, and you wouldn’t you were driving through a citadel unless you looked at a map.

The Bac Ninh citadel is accessible by a bridge and there is no through traffic, so it has the right geographical ingredients to be a tourism attraction.

The citadel is a residential area that is shared with an active military base, so that explains why it’s not a tourist attraction. Thus I had to be careful of taking photos in this area.

Inside the citadel it is residential area that could be anywhere in Vietnam. There are a few hints of it being a fortress, but it is not filled with architectural marvels.

Being inside the citadel doesn’t feel like you are in a citadel. This is partly because you can’t see the water from most places inside. If there was a walking path around the citadel perimeter it would be the gem of Bac Ninh.

A fair chunk of the citadel interior is off limits, so there wasn’t much to see here.

Old Bac Ninh City

There isn’t really an old town in Bac Ninh, but I discovered that there are two distinct areas of Bac Ninh: normal provincial city Bac Ninh, and the new international boomtown Bac Ninh.

I had a wander around “old” Bac Ninh, and it’s a typical provincial capital city of Vietnam with tube houses built next to each other and market vendors on the street. I enjoy wandering around provincial cities to reset after being in more touristy places.

There are some lovely tree-lined streets here that defy the stereotype of Vietnamese cities being chaotic. It feels distinct from Hanoi, even if Hanoi is gradually creeping up to Bac Ninh.

If you ever find yourself in a provincial capital, look for the provincial bao tang (museum). The museums almost always have some war remnants such as an aircraft or tank.

[War-era jet at the Bac Ninh Museum.]

And even in the seemingly unremarkable cities there is always something to see by wandering around.

New Bac Ninh City

The older area of Bac Ninh follows the train line, while the new area is a few blocks to the south and follows Ly Thai To Street.

[Ly Thai To Street in Bac Ninh.]

There are more modern apartment towers in this area, and there are many shopfronts with Korean and Chinese signage.

I was interested to visit this area after reading an article about the tech worker Chinatown that is emerging here. It is noticeable from walking around that Bac Ninh is a manufacturing hub with ties to China.

Bac Ninh has an established Koreatown here as there are numerous Korean factories in the province.

The most well-known Korean brand in Bac Ninh is Samsung. There is a special Samsung bus that goes from the city centre to the factory. This reminded me of the Google Bus that runs from San Francisco to Silicon Valley.

As the aforementioned article mentioned, there is now also a visible Chinatown area.

There isn’t a demarcated Koreatown or Chinatown, and there is an overlap between the two cultural areas.

What makes Bac Ninh so distinct from other cities in Vietnam is that the Chinatown area is so visible. Most Chinese businesses in Vietnam are low-key, and there are no Chinatown arches like in other cities in Southeast Asia. Bac Ninh feels like a boomtown where everyone is coming to make money.

Despite its economic success, the city is still too provincial for international hotel brands to consider, so there are these big local hotels to serve business travellers.

Chain stores have not arrived in Bac Ninh yet either (apart from Lotteria and Jollibee). I saw a Luckin Coffee (the massive chain from China), but Luckin have not arrived in Vietnam yet so I don’t know what this was (it was closed when I went by).

Future Bac Ninh

A year after my visit, Bac Ninh merged with neighbouring Bac Giang province (so I never got to visit Bac Giang on my province list).

Bac Ninh continues to thrive economically, with the province topping the list of exporters from Vietnam.

While I was researching this article, I discovered Bac Bling by Hoa Minzy, which was released after my visit to Bac Ninh.

I don’t have my finger on the pulse of Vpop, so I had never heard of this song. I was intrigued by the title, so I clicked through and was staggered to see that this song has a quarter of a billion views after only 5 months! Even if this music isn’t your style, the video production is outstanding, so it’s no wonder it has found a global audience. I ended up watching the “making of” video that was recommended after watching this.

Hoa Minzy is from Bac Ninh, and this video is a homage to her home province. The video made me want to visit these parts of Bac Ninh that I didn’t see. This video would do more for tourism than running ads on CNN, and a local news site has made a map of the places in Bac Ninh that are featured in the video.

I was in Bac Ninh city to visit the Koreatown and Chinatown areas that are serving the industrial boom of the province. Bac Bling seems like an appropriate name for modern Bac Ninh.

There are some grand transport plans for Bac Ninh that might see me back here in the future. Bac Ninh is building a new airport, and the plan has been revised to make it larger than Hanoi’s Noi Bai Airport. This will be the second airport of Hanoi, so the planned second airport will be the third airport.

There was also talk of a 12-line(!) urban railway. I have not seen any maps for this, but presumably it would be integrated with the Hanoi Metro railway. Another useful railway would be a commuter line to Hanoi, and perhaps there will be international train services from Bac Ninh to China when the Hanoi-Dong Dang Railway is upgraded.

Meanwhile there there is also a new tourist train that will run from Hanoi to Tu Son (in Bac Ninh), helping to elevate the Bac Ninh name beyond its association of being a manufacturing hub.

Maybe I will be hanging at a cafe in Bac Ninh sooner than I thought.