Vietnam’s World Heritage listed historic town of Hội An has aged well, so well that it is often referred to as a living museum in terms of its variety of middle age oriental architecture and preserved traditions. For the modern traveller, the town also offers plenty of boutique hotels, craft and souvenir shops, and a lively café and restaurant scene, especially on the riverside. It also feels like a safe, developed and well-trodden destination, and whilst you won’t be discovering anything that 1,000 Chinese tourists haven’t discovered ahead of you, Vietnam’s endlessly charming ancient town by the river should still be on your hit list.

Hội An’s glory days were during the 16^th and 17^th centuries when it was an important international trading hub for merchant ships arriving for commercial fairs. Many visiting traders lingered on to set up their own permanent emporiums and homes, so the town offers a wonderful mishmash of buildings in the styles of the Japanese and Chinese to Dutch and Indians.

Getting there

Heading from our visit to Lan Ha Bay and Cat Ba Island, we arrived to Hội An (Dan Nang airport) on an internal flight from Haiphong. From the airport it is about an hour’s taxi ride to the ancient town centre. When we left we took a small-ish propeller plane from Da Nang on to Siem Reap in our next country of Cambodia.

Getting around

The town is easily navigable by foot, just be alert for the hundreds of motorcycles zooming around! Luckily, much of the centre is pedestrianised during the evening. If, like us, you want to explore further afield without going on a tour, it’s easy and cheap to rent a scooter, just ask your hotel/guest house. Just be aware that a degree of experience on the chaotic streets would be advisable.

Where to stay

Accommodation is abundant, but for budget and peace and quiet reasons, we decided to stay on the more residential nearby island of Cam Nam. There’s not much going on there, but it offers a view into the daily lives of families living in the area. We stayed in a homestay type arrangement and enjoyed the company of the enterprising local family and a comfortable room.

The island has some incredibly cheap eating opportunities if you are prepared to be the only foreigner sitting in the restaurant! We did even see some dog meat restaurants, but luckily for our squeamish side, it wasn’t the right (auspicious) time of the month for the Vietnamese to be eating dog. So to make it perfectly clear, if you see some animal being spit roasted, it’s not pork…it’s Fido.

What to do

A tourist ticket needs to be purchased to enter the ancient town and the attractions. There are a couple of booths from which to buy the ticket and you might find yourself being asked to present your ticket just to walk into the ancient town. We were banned from entering the ancient town on the first day by a typically feisty Vietnamese female official because we did not have the ticket yet. The ticket allows you to pick 6 attractions, from which there are various buildings like temples, ancient houses, assembly houses, a Japanese covered bridge and museums to choose from.

As you work your way through the tourist ticket, there are plenty of opportunities just to enjoy the colourful town, which is decorated with hanging lanterns and climbing shrubs.

Stopping for a coffee and watching the world go by is a must, as is walking the length of the river and admiring the grandest of the ancient buildings. Traditional boat trips with food and music are also being hawked along the riverside.

Nightlife

At night the town becomes doubly fascinating as the lantern lit streets are pedestrianised and a buzzing night market opens up on the An Hội islet opposite the main town, accessed via a bridge over the Hoài River.

The market has street food stalls and also lots of souvenirs, the most impressive being the colourful home lanterns.

Every night it is possible to make a small lantern release on the river from the shore on out on a rowing boat. If you happen to be there for full moon then the celebration is much enlarged and you will see many twinkling lanterns floating out into the river whilst being surrounded by the colourful lights and lanterns of the ancient town. Although it is a very pretty sight, we stuck to our policy of never releasing balloons or lanterns as they are essentially mobile and burning rubbish which can be hazardous to humans, animals and the environment.

The Market

Down by the dock on the riverside, you can see a fresh produce market on the streets filled with the fresh catch of fish, meat and fruit and vegetables sold by traders in their iconic broad and pointy hats. In this area you will also be able to enter the central market buildings, one of which contains many tailors and shoe shops for which the city is especially famous. So, if you need a cheap but well-made suit, go in and get measured up! The other building is the indoor food market which has more fresh produce and also a section with many stalls where you can grab breakfast or lunch.

Whilst browsing the market area, you may witness the custom of ancestor worship, that is, each family setting up elaborate offerings to their loved ones who have passed to the other side. This can take the form of tables piled high with food offerings, incense and gifts, or the ritual burning of symbolic paper items customised to be to the liking of the deceased. For example cars, tools and toys. Quite often we commented that those in the after world were much better fed than us two poor travellers!

Shopping

Often referred to as the art street, Phan Boi Chau Street contains more upmarket souvenir shops selling genuine Vietnamese crafts and some art galleries. The most magnificent Precious Heritage Art Gallery Museum displays the photographs of French professional photographer Réhahn and his vast collection of traditional costume and artefacts in a modernised space.

Around Hội An

We explored the area around Hội An by scooter, rather than booking any tours, although these are certainly plentiful. We drove through rice paddies and vegetable and herb gardens, stopping to snap photos of the farmers at work in the fields and their huge water buffalos. We stumbled across some ancient tombs and cemeteries and also the nearby beach, but as the season was a bit off, we didn’t stop for long.

We then located the famous circular basket boats’ launching point in the watery coconut forest and had a look at some other unfortunate tourists being spun around by overzealous (and to be honest, perhaps drunk!) captains, accompanied by pounding techno music! Er, no thanks!

Eating

Eating in Hội An was a pleasure, almost equal to the wonderful culinary delights we experienced in Hanoi, and at the same rock bottom prices. Many places just specialise in one or two dishes, so you know they are the experts in the field!

One of the best places to try out the local specialities is to eat at one of the stalls in the central market which are relatively sanitary and well organised. The ladies running the stalls will try to win your business by any means necessary, if you have got a place in mind be prepared to say no, as they can be quite insistent! We quickly favoured a stall run by Mrs An where we tried Cao Lao, a delicious noodle soup of home-made rough rice noodles, meat, delicate herbs and crunchy crisps, all washed down with a freshly prepared smoothie. Yummy!

She also serves other specialities like the fragrant herby chicken rice called Com Ga, wonton soups and Hoi An’s famous White Roses which are a rice ravioli stuffed with shrimp.

A staple in Vietnam is Banh Mi, massive baguettes stuffed with cold meats which show the French influence in Vietnam.

Bale Well serves just one dish, that is fresh rice paper rolls, which you get to make yourself (don’t worry, they show you how) with the piles of ingredients that are brought to your table like Vietnamese pancakes, deep-fried spring rolls, chicken satay, crunchy pickles, peanut sauce and mountains of fresh salad and herbs.

Pho Xua serves a small menu of delicious phos and White Roses. It’s a small place so you have to queue, but it’s certainly worth the wait.

There is also a street of very cheap plastic tables and chairs open air restaurants on the An Hoi Islet serving all the classics. We liked the family run Hi Restaurant where we got to try Quang Noodles, a dry-ish noodle ‘soup’ typical to the town. Many of these small stalls also offer cooking courses.

Coffee is very important in Vietnam, as you may have read over in our Hanoi post, so unsurprisingly the town is full of coffee houses, from Vietnamese Starbucks-like chains to independent third generation shops. We particularly enjoyed ‘Phin Coffee’, named after the most common coffee-making device in the country. A phin is a gravity assisted dripping device in which near-boiling water is poured over ground coffee before being left to drip through slowly. It takes some time, and the product that drips down is an extremely strong black cup of coffee, best enjoyed with a touch of the ubiquitous condensed milk. We also tried and loved hot coffee with coconut milk & cold yoghurt coffee. Don’t worry, thre’s no shortage of caffeine served in many creative manners in Vietnam.

So, Hội An is touristy and that’s because, rightly so, it’s one of the major tourist destinations in the country. It is also strategically located to some of the best beaches in Vietnam and, as a result, there are a proliferation of resorts on the coast, mostly built to satisfy the booming tourism coming from China. Despite herds of tourists arriving by the busload every day, we found Hội An charming and still in possession of a certain sense of magic without having become a tourist-pleasing Mc Donald’s-double arched plastic town. We guess that is the “advantage” of still being a communist country, at least on paper.

Hội An remains a must visit for anyone visiting Vietnam. No other town can give you a better idea of how things used to be, as well as how they are going to be, all without losing a unique character and charm.