Pham Dinh Toai Street - Promising new street vision

(Baonghean) - The road has been paved, flat and smooth, full of life like a young woman in her mid-twenties wearing fashionable clothes, but there is still a bit of shyness and reserve from the appearance of the street that has not yet left the suburban style. Regardless of all that, Pham Dinh Toai Street (Vinh City) still leaves in the perception of the people here a promising potential...

Pham Dinh Toai Street.

It has been 15 years since the crossroad connecting Ha Huy Tap Street to the new urban area of ​​Nghi Phu was named after a famous person from Nghe An - Pham Dinh Toai. The road has undergone many changes to have its appearance today. For a long time, that spacious road encountered many difficulties and obstacles during the process of site clearance. 5 years ago, in the memory of people living in the street, the road was still full of wasteland, asphalt, mixers, rollers... of unfinished construction projects. Even at that time, a section of the road adjacent to VILe-nin Street was cut off and assigned to Vinaconex 9 to build Nghi Phu urban area and was blocked. People who wanted to go from Ha Huy Tap Street to VILe-nin Street had to go down to Ly Tu Trong Street and turn around...

All the inconveniences and frustrations were finally compensated by the spaciousness, which raised the residents’ confidence in a decent future. Pham Dinh Toai Street also acts as a “border” between Ha Huy Tap Ward and Nghi Phu Commune, when one side of the street belongs to Block 5, 6 and Yen Toan of Ha Huy Tap Ward, and the other side of the street goes through two hamlets 18 and 19 of Nghi Phu Commune…

Pham Dinh Toai Street is located across the two most bustling streets in Vinh City, Ha Huy Tap Street and ViLe-Nin Street, so the bustling sounds from both sides have somewhat permeated the spacious space of the street, making the street look clearly visible. There are also a few food stalls selling congee, banh muot, and xoi sang; there are also car wash and repair shops; then there are mechanical and glass door assembly shops that occasionally flash with welding sparks; recently, there have also appeared popular hair salons and shampoo shops, gradually becoming more bustling... All those services on the nearly kilometer-long street are certainly not enough to form a specialized street, but they are bustling with the atmosphere of buying and selling, distracting from the monotony and boredom of a deserted street where the town still has a village feel.

In recent years, residents of Pham Dinh Toai Street have been active in expanding new services, such as building rental rooms. The main customers are students from Nghe An University of Economics. From here, services began to open: grocery stores, online clothing stores, etc., adding to the youthful bustle of the street. The name Pham Dinh Toai Street - once somewhat confusing to city residents, is now closer to everyone's memory.

The street becomes more vibrant every day, but there is still a very clear feeling that the changes are taking place slowly, not as rapidly as many other streets. It seems that because Pham Dinh Toai Street is still burdened with traffic rather than bustling street space, the services opened here are also reserved and moderate. That is understandable, because the majority of residents on both sides of the street are originally farmers, livestock farmers, manual laborers..., only a few households that have moved here later are state officials and civil servants. The peaceful lifestyle permeates the appearance of the street, so even though the street has shaped the urban shape, that sound is still the echo of many decades of suburban countryside.

I have walked on that street many times, at first, because it was beyond the reach of the motorbike's throttle, I missed the turn to Ly Tu Trong Street, then I clicked my tongue and drove too far to accidentally meet Pham Dinh Toai Street. From that initial bewilderment, until now, I have lost count of how many times I have gone back and forth along the same street, sometimes because I had to turn to ViLe-nin Street for convenience, and not infrequently, when I had nothing to do, I leisurely indulged my mind with such peaceful feelings of the street. Many times I have passed by, but each time I have the same pleasure, that when the summer sun sets, the road cools down completely, the heat of the day is gone, leaving only the cool breeze lingering in the scene from the fields, refreshingly blowing into my face; or even on chilly weekend mornings in early winter, I carefully wrap myself in a warm scarf, and walk lightly on the street, thinking about all sorts of random things, which is enough peace for the whole day.

The street frontage is so youthful, but occasionally on the way, you still see vacant lots. The road has not yet shaken off all the old suburban nostalgia, but don't be sad because that hesitation, partly creates a difference in the feeling of the street, and partly, is also the promise of the real estate market in the near future? I secretly call it "the promise of the street", and surely many other residents feel the same as me, when the trust and sympathy for that spacious road is increasing, proportional to the population density from other places to live!

Article and photos:Phuong Chi