Nam Dinh is a city in Ninh Binh province in the Red River Delta region of Vietnam. I visited Nam Dinh in October 2025 as part of a rail trip where I was stopping at lesser-visited cities. This was a research trip for my website, Rail Vietnam.
I was on my way from Vinh to Hanoi, and I stopped at Nam Dinh mainly because I was intrigued by why the line takes such a dramatic detour on the North-South line.
[Vietnam Railway Map.svg by Dragfyre via Wikimedia Commons.]
Nam Dinh was the capital city of Nam Dinh province until Nam Dinh was merged into Ninh Binh in July 2025. I was previously visiting every provincial capital in Vietnam, which was 63 provinces and cities. The provincial mergers have now reduced the list to 34, but I will probably still visit the former capitals.
There is hardly any travel information about Nam Dinh online (apart from empty Tripadvisor pages), and there is no Wikitravel page. I did find a backpacker blog that created a guide to Nam Dinh, but this was an obvious AI hallucination once I explored Nam Dinh (I’m not giving them a link). This problem is going to become more common.
What ended up being most useful was this map from 1924 on the Nam Dinh Wikipedia page.
[Nam Dinh Map from 1924 via Wikimedia Commons.]
The citadel no longer exists, and its footprint has been erased from the current street grid. The other streets are the same, though, so I used this map as the most likely place to find old and interesting buildings.
These are my notes from my visit to Nam Dinh.
Nam Dinh Old City – Hanoi in miniature
Nam Dinh is about 85 km south of Hanoi. The city was an important textile centre in the colonial era, and the province (or former province area) is still a major textile hub today.
Walking around Nam Dinh is like walking around parts of the Old City of Hanoi without the traffic.
Someone in Vietnam commented on my Instagram that they thought I was in Hanoi.
Also similar to Hanoi is that most of the historic shophouses have disappeared, and the shopfronts are a mishmash of different styles.
Most of the high-rises in Nam Dinh are apartment blocks outside the city centre. The inner city features skinny tubehouses that are common in Vietnam, with some larger office buildings that beef up the skyline.
Every province in Vietnam has a provincial museum, and they are often the architectural highlights of the city. Now that the provinces have been merged, these museums will need to be renamed.
[Nam Dinh Museum.]
Provincial museums usually have war remnants around the building.
Another museum is the Nam Dinh Textile Museum. This is at the site of the historic Nam Dinh Textile Factory, which was demolished.
City theatres are another landmark to seek out.
I didn’t intend to make so many comparisons to Hanoi, but the Nam Dinh Flag Tower looks remarkably similar to the Flag Tower of Hanoi.
As I have mentioned countless times in other city notes, if you are in a new city in Vietnam, seek out the central market. The main market here is Cho Rong (Dragon Market), which is easily identified by the dragons on the roof.
Vi Xuyen Lake
Vi Xuyen Lake is a good place for a green walk in the city centre.
The lake and the Khoai Dong Parish Church appeared to be the most prominent landmarks when doing an image search for Nam Dinh.
Nam Dinh River
Referring to the old map again, the road along the Nam Dinh River looked like a potential place for colonial-era buildings. The river is connected to the Red River, and thus connected to Hanoi.
The riverfront road has an embankment in front of it, so the only river view is on the embankment.
I saw one old building of note there, and there is one hotel and not much else to do.
Big churches, domed homes, and phoney coat of arms of the United Kingdom
The Red River Delta and North Central Vietnam are famous for big churches. If you search for things to do in Nam Dinh, you will find guides for churches scattered around the former province. To see these, you will need your own transport or take a guided tour. For this report, I was focused on sites in the city.
The Khoai Dong Parish Church (which can be seen from the lake) is one of the main landmarks of the city.
The city of Nam Dinh was building a new cathedral when I visited.
Here is what it will eventually look like.
Also popular in the North Central region are new mansions with domes that look like churches.
I saw this building from a distance and walked towards it, thinking it was something significant, only to find it was a multipurpose business building.
I’ve seen many of these new rich houses that have the coat of arms of the United Kingdom, though with different details, such as the lion and unicorn on opposite sides. This is something I have seen all over Vietnam, and I assume it’s what people who have come into money think how people with money decorate their houses.
The home of phở?
Nam Dinh is supposedly the birthplace of phở, though Hanoi also claims this title. My friend Connla wrote what is probably the best article ever written about phở (the purist’s guide to phở in Hanoi). The article gives a brief history of its disputed origins.
Whether phở is from Hanoi or Nam Dinh, I figured I should cover my bases by having phở every day while I was in Nam Dinh. There was a phở restaurant near where I was staying that is from Hanoi, so they have a foot in both camps.
Unlike the protagonists in Connla’s essay, I’m not a purist, so my main criteria for picking a phở restaurant are that they only serve phở (not a menu with several types of dishes) and that it is busy with predominantly Vietnamese diners.
What grabbed my attention at this restaurant was the different cuts of meat hanging in the preparation area.
My palate is not refined enough to distinguish what is the best bowl of anything, so I would never proclaim anywhere to be the best bowl of whatever. I can confidently say that this was a good phở.
Getting the train to Nam Dinh
Nam Dinh Station is the second-last station before Hanoi, and you could come here on a day trip by train if you were looking for a quick train trip from Hanoi. For example:
Train SE5
Depart Hanoi: 8.55
Arrive Nam Dinh: 10.31
Train SE8
Depart Nam Dinh: 14.16
Arrive Hanoi: 16.10
The station is close to the city centre, so you can walk to the main sites from the station if you are travelling light.
[Train SE8 in Nam Dinh]
The day before my train trip, I got a text message from Vietnam Railways alerting me that the train was cancelled. There were big floods in Central Vietnam that disrupted the entire rail network. Some trains were running a limited schedule, while some trains were cancelled outright.
Luckily, Nam Dinh is close enough to Hanoi to have minivan service running at regular intervals.
I will do another trip on the North-South Railway to visit more stations on the line.
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