Riding in Hanoi During Tet: Traffic Changes and a Backup Travel Plan

Twice a year, Hanoi turns into two completely different cities within the space of a week. In the days before Tet, the Lunar New Year, the streets are as packed as they ever get: flower markets spilling onto the roads, families hauling kumquat trees home on motorbikes, and traffic that tests the patience of people who were born here. Then, on the first morning of the new year, the same streets fall silent, and you can ride down roads that are normally too busy to breathe on. If you are renting a motorbike across the holiday, you need a plan for both versions of the city, plus a backup for the days when shops close, mechanics go home to their families, and the country hits the road. This guide walks through how traffic actually changes, what stays open, and how to build a riding plan that survives contact with Vietnam’s biggest holiday.

When Tet Happens and What the Holiday Covers

Tet follows the lunar calendar, so the dates move around between late January and mid-February. To give you the near-term reference point: in 2027, the first day of the new lunar year falls on Saturday, February 6, and the Vietnamese government has approved an official public holiday running roughly from February 4 to February 10, with Tet Eve, the night of fireworks and family dinners, on February 5. The festival’s atmosphere stretches much further than the official break, though. Preparations visibly ramp up for two weeks beforehand, and the city does not fully settle back to normal until well after the holiday, with some small businesses taking an extra week or more.

For a rider, the useful mental model is a three-phase holiday:

• The buildup: roughly the last one to two weeks before Tet Eve. Maximum crowds, maximum shopping traffic.
• The core days: Tet Eve through the first two or three days of the new year. The city empties out and most family-run businesses close.
• The revival: from around the third day onward, as street food stalls, cafes, and shops reopen one by one and normal traffic seeps back.

Phase One: The Pre-Tet Rush

What the streets look like

The buildup is Hanoi traffic at its most decorative and its most chaotic. Peach blossom branches and kumquat trees ride home strapped to the back of motorbikes, sometimes wider than the bike itself. Sidewalks turn into flower markets and decoration stalls, pushing pedestrians into the road and the road into gridlock. Markets are packed as families stock up, and every evening the whole city seems to be out buying something. Riding in this phase is slower and more stop-start than at any other time of year, and your usual departure-time habits matter more than ever: leaving early in the morning saves you an hour of weaving through shopping crowds.

Riding advice for the buildup

• Expect overhang. Blossom branches and kumquat trees stick out sideways from bikes in front of you. Give motorbikes carrying cargo more space than you normally would, and never squeeze past one between it and the curb.
• Watch the parked-vehicle crunch. Flower sellers and market crowds mean motorcycles parked in places they never usually park. Your usual parking-spot judgment needs to be stricter, especially near markets.
• Slow is normal. Trips inside the city take noticeably longer in the final days before Tet. Budget the extra time instead of making up for it with speed.
• Enjoy it anyway. This is one of the most photogenic traffic environments on earth. Park once, walk the flower market, and come back to the bike instead of riding through the middle of it.

Phase Two: Tet Eve and the Empty Days

The strangest traffic of the year

From the evening of Tet Eve, the city drains. Families travel to their hometowns, migrant workers close up their shops and head out of the city, and by the first morning of the new year, central Hanoi is startlingly quiet. Rides that normally take forty minutes of concentration can take fifteen minutes of almost floating. For experienced riders, the empty days are a strange gift: the Old Quarter’s normally jammed streets open up, and you can hear your own engine for once.

But the silence changes the character of riding, and not every change is safe:

• Speeds rise. Empty roads invite everyone to go faster, including you. On a rented scooter you know only slightly, this is exactly the combination you do not want to discover at 50 kilometers an hour.
• The usual traffic flow is gone. In normal Hanoi traffic, other bikes around you set the pace and create a kind of pack protection. Empty roads remove that. You are riding alone with your own judgment, and any mistake is entirely yours.
• Celebration drinking peaks around Tet Eve. The night of fireworks is the year’s biggest party, and not everyone celebrating stays off a motorbike. If you ride on Tet Eve, finish early, and after dark stick to your night-riding disciplines or park the bike entirely.
• Services thin out. Garages, rental shops, and roadside repair stands close for the core days. A puncture that would be a thirty-minute nuisance in March can become a stranded afternoon in the middle of Tet, because the man who would have patched your tube is at his grandmother’s house.

Fireworks night deserves a specific plan

On Tet Eve, Hanoi puts on organized fireworks displays at set locations, and large crowds gather around them in the hours before midnight. If you want to see them, the workable plan is the same one you already use for the weekend walking streets: do not ride into the crush. Park well away from the crowd zone, on the far side of a main road, lock up, and walk the last stretch. After midnight, the crowd dissolves all at once onto the roads, a river of pedestrians and bikes flowing in every direction; that half hour after the finale is the single worst riding window of the entire holiday, and the correct move is to already be parked somewhere with a drink in your hand, waiting for it to clear.

Phase Three: The Gradual Revival

Hanoi does not switch back on; it warms up. From around the third day of the new year, street food stalls and cafes begin reopening, tourist-area businesses come back first, and by roughly the fifth to seventh day much of the city is functioning again, though some family-run places stay shut for another week. Traffic rebuilds gradually, with a distinct second wave of congestion at the end of the holiday as everyone who left for their hometown rides back into the city.

For riders, two practical consequences:

• Do not assume open or closed. In the revival days, one street of pho stalls can be serving while the next is shuttered. Check locally, ask your hotel, and keep a couple of known-open fallbacks in mind before you set out.
• Expect the return traffic wave. The day the official holiday ends, intercity roads into Hanoi are busy and the city refills. Apply your rush-hour timing instincts to that window.

Renting a Motorbike Across Tet: Talk to Your Shop First

Rental shops are family businesses, and during Tet they behave like family businesses. Some close entirely for the core days; others keep a skeleton presence. The time to find out is the day you pick the bike up, not the day you need help. Ask concretely:

• Which days will they be closed, and is anyone reachable by phone during that window if something goes wrong?
• If your rental period overlaps their closure, where and when exactly do you return the bike, and what happens if you cannot?
• Do they have a partner shop or a mechanic who stays open, in case of a puncture or breakdown during the shutdown days?
• What do they recommend for fuel? Fill up before Tet Eve; petrol stations, like everything else, may run reduced hours or queues on the holiday days.

The cleanest arrangement for most visitors is to keep the bike through the closure, park it securely at your accommodation, and ride it only inside the empty city on the quiet days, then return it once the shop reopens. Agree on that plan in advance, keep the shop’s number saved, and send a message if anything changes. The communication habits you already use for breakdowns and no-starts matter even more when the entire support network of the city is on holiday.

A Day-by-Day Way to Think About the Holiday on a Bike

1. Before Tet Eve: do all your fueling, checking, and shopping. Treat the bike as ready for a multi-day expedition, because support is about to disappear: tires sound, chain and brakes looked at, phone charged, cash withdrawn.
2. Tet Eve: ride early or not at all. If you are going out for fireworks, park far, walk in, and stay off the bike until the after-midnight surge has dissolved.
3. Days one to three: short, familiar, daylight rides only. This is a wonderful window to see the empty Old Quarter at walking pace, not the window to attempt your first ride to Ninh Binh.
4. Days three to five: reconfirm before you commit. Ask your hotel what has reopened, pick one destination instead of three, and keep your return cutoff honest.
5. After the holiday: expect the city to refill, ride with your normal rush-hour planning, and enjoy the fact that you now know Hanoi in both of its personalities.

Building Your Backup Travel Plan

“Backup plan” during Tet means assuming that the ordinary safety nets of travel are thinner, and compensating in advance. The rule for each element is the same: move it from something you arrange on the day to something you arranged last week.

Money

Cash is the first one. Card machines at small businesses go dark along with the businesses, and ATMs see heavy withdrawals in the run-up and can run low over the holiday itself. Withdraw what you expect to spend for the entire holiday before Tet Eve, keep it split between your bag and your pocket the way you already do at night markets, and treat topping up as a pre-Tet chore rather than a mid-Tet one.

Food and fuel

Know, in advance, which convenience store chains and supermarkets near you stay open, because they are the reliable skeleton of the holiday. Buy water and snacks for the core days. Fill the tank the day before Tet Eve. A rider with a full tank, a charged phone, and a bag of provisions is immune to most of what Tet can throw at them.

Long-distance travel

If any part of your trip involves leaving Hanoi by bus, train, or plane, this is the one area where Tet is genuinely unforgiving. The country carries out its largest annual migration in the days before and after the holiday, and intercity transport sells out well in advance, with prices at their highest. The practical rules:

• Book as early as you possibly can, in both directions, and do not plan to buy anything at the counter in the final week.
• Assume the days around the official holiday window are the peak, not just the holiday itself.
• Do not plan a long motorbike trip as a spare tire. Riding an unfamiliar intercity route during the homecoming rush, with holiday traffic at its heaviest and support services at their thinnest, is the opposite of a backup plan.
• If you already hold a rented bike when plans collapse, the backup that actually works is staying in Hanoi, not improvising a cross-country ride to make a booking.

Navigation and information

Update your offline maps before the holiday, because the map does not change but your needs might; if you end up riding to a different part of the city than planned on a closed day, you want the map cached. Save your rental shop’s number, your accommodation’s address in Vietnamese for showing to anyone who helps you, and the location of the nearest always-open convenience store. That is the whole backup kit, and it takes one evening.

Should a First-Time Rider Be on a Bike at All During Tet?

Honestly: the buildup, no. The empty days, cautiously maybe. The honest answer from anyone who has ridden here for years is that Tet is a poor time to learn. The buildup demands the full toolkit of close-quarters skills that takes months to build, and the empty days remove the slow-moving traffic that, oddly, is what protects a new rider in this city. The sudden availability of space and speed is where inexperienced riders get hurt, and with emergency and repair services running thin, the consequences of a small mistake are magnified.

If you are already comfortable on the bike and know the city a little, Tet can be one of the most memorable riding windows you will ever have: the chance to move through a capital city in near silence. Earn it with preparation. If you arrived the week before Tet with zero riding experience, use the holiday to do the sensible thing: walk, take cars, and rent the bike after the city comes back.

FAQ

Is Hanoi completely shut down during Tet?

No, but it changes shape. Many family-run restaurants, small shops, and museums close for the first days of the new year, while convenience stores, most hotels, and tourist-oriented businesses in the core areas keep running, some with reduced hours. Street food and local shops reopen in waves from around the third day. The city empties rather than closes.

When is the worst traffic of the Tet period?

The final three or four days before Tet Eve, when shopping and homecoming travel peak at the same time. City streets are packed and slow, and roads leading out of Hanoi are busy with people leaving. It is the one stretch of the holiday when riding brings the least joy and the most frustration; park near what you need and walk the rest.

Is it safe to ride during the empty days of Tet?

For an experienced rider, it is safe and often wonderful, with two cautions: speeds rise on open roads, and celebration drinking peaks around Tet Eve. For a new rider, the empty days can be more dangerous than normal traffic, because the pace is set by your own right hand and there is no stream of slower vehicles around you. Ride familiar streets, ride sober, and keep it short.

Do motorbike rental shops close for Tet?

Many do, at least for the core days, and those that stay open often run reduced hours. Ask about their exact Tet schedule and their after-hours contact before the holiday starts, agree on the return arrangement in writing or in a message, and keep the bike parked and locked at your accommodation during the closure if that is the plan.

What if I get a puncture or breakdown during the closed days?

This is the scenario to prepare for, because the usual network of roadside mechanics and repair shops is at its thinnest. Check your tires and general condition before Tet Eve, ride gently on the quiet days, keep the shop’s phone number and a backup taxi plan with you, and if the bike dies, secure it and deal with it when the city reopens rather than hunting for a closed garage.

Can I ride from Hanoi to another province during Tet?

You can, but it stacks the wrong factors: unfamiliar roads, the year’s heaviest intercity traffic in the days around the holiday, thin roadside services, and a long way between help. If you must, do it in the middle days when the roads are quiet, start early, keep the trip short, and know where you will stay. For most visitors, the better Tet plan is the city, with long rides saved for a normal week.

Do buses and public transport run during Tet?

They run on holiday schedules, generally reduced, and intercity buses and trains are at their busiest and most booked-out of the year because of homecoming travel. Treat city buses as a reasonable backup during the quiet days, but never plan to buy an intercity ticket at the last minute during the Tet window.

What should I absolutely do before Tet Eve if I am keeping the bike?

Four things: fill the fuel tank, withdraw your holiday cash, check the bike’s condition or have the shop look at it, and confirm in a message with the shop exactly when and where you will return it. Everything else about Tet on a motorbike is flexible; those four are the difference between a holiday and a problem.

The Bottom Line

Tet gives you two Hanois for the price of one, and a rider should meet each with a different plan. In the buildup, ride less and park more: accept the crowds, leave early, and give blossom-laden bikes the extra room they need. In the core days, the city goes quiet; that silence is beautiful and slightly dangerous, because speed rises with the space, support services vanish, and your fuel, cash, and repairs must have been arranged in advance. Confirm your rental shop’s Tet schedule before the holiday, fill up before Tet Eve, keep the fireworks crush a walking affair, and treat any long-distance travel as something booked weeks ago or not at all. Do that, and Tet becomes what it is for the people who live here: the best week of the year to be out on two wheels in a city that finally has room to breathe.