Oh what a gorgeous little place Hoi An is

Hoi An, Day 54

It's moving day again! What did I say previously about us planning to do 'slow travel' in our retirement? Well I guess we can put this trip down to excitement and inexperience and when you look at places on a map and go "well we are so close to there, it would be a shame not to nip over and see that!".

So today we left Da Nang and took a 45 minute Grab taxi ride to the very picturesque town of Hoi An.

Hoi An

Hoi An Ancient Town is located in Vietnam’s central Quang Nam Province, on the north bank near the mouth of the Thu Bon River. It is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a small-scale trading port active from the 15th to 19th centuries, which traded widely, both with the countries of Southeast and East Asia and with the rest of the world. Its decline in the late 19th century ensured that it retained its traditional urban tissue to a remarkable degree.

The town reflects a fusion of indigenous and foreign cultures (principally Chinese and Japanese, with later European influences) that combined to produce this unique survival. 

The town comprises a well-preserved complex of 1,107 timber frame buildings, with brick or wooden walls, which include architectural monuments, commercial and domestic vernacular structures, notably an open market and a ferry quay, and religious buildings such as pagodas and family cult houses. The houses are tiled, and the wooden components are carved with traditional motifs.  They are arranged side-by-side in tight, unbroken rows along narrow pedestrian streets. There is also the fine wooden Japanese bridge, with a pagoda on it, dating from the 18th century. The original street plan, which developed as the town became a port, remains. It comprises a grid of streets with one axis parallel to the river and the other axis of streets and alleys set at right angles to it. Typically, the buildings front the streets for convenient customer access while the backs of the buildings open to the river, allowing easy loading and off-loading of goods from boats.

The surviving wooden structures and street plan are original and intact, and together present a traditional townscape of the 17th and 18th centuries, the survival of which is unique in the region. The town continues to this day to be occupied and function as a trading port and centre of commerce. The living heritage reflecting the diverse communities of the indigenous inhabitants of the town, as well as foreigners, has also been preserved and continues to be passed on.

Our Hotel

We are staying in a the Ancient Haven Hotel (we have a king room with a balcony) for 2 nights and we booked this through Booking.com after our original hotel tried to pull a fast one with us and informed us via WhatsApp that our room (river view balcony) was no longer available due to renovation works but they would substitute this with a room in their nearby sister hotel. No photos of the room they were proposing, the cost and the fact that the communications came directly via WhatsApp and not via the Booking.com messaging site were red flags for me, so we decided to cancel that booking and book somewhere else instead.

We arrived just about 12 and the Reception staff checked us in right away and the room is great. There is a glass window in the bathroom but the blind will be staying down for our duration as that is not something either of us could deal with! There is a small swimming pool and some sun loungers but I don't think we will have time to make use of these whilst we are here.

Our Afternoon Walk

R is still feeling pretty crap and knackered so we're just taking things easy and not overdoing things (there goes our step stats again!).

No sooner have we stepped out of the hotel than we get stopped by a couple of young girls asking if we would mind doing a quick tourist survey with them. We say "fine", and we go through their questions, which are all pretty standard tourist-type questions. How long are you here for? What brought us to Hoi An? What are the positive and negative things about Vietnam, etc? Then, as we finish, one of them says they have a small gift as a thank you for completing the survey. We both get cards to open, and R has 'won' a baseball hat, which they give to him right away. Then it is my turn, and guess what? I seem to have won a 'special' prize of either an iPhone, 7 nights' accommodation in a luxury resort chain or 60 million Vietnamese Dong. There is a big show from the girls, like they cannot believe my luck and that I have won one of these fab prizes. However, they don't have these prize items with them, and we would need to go to the luxury resort, listen to a presentation and then I'd find out which prize I've won. They were even ready to get a taxi to take us to the resort right there and then, and we would get refreshments whilst they told us all about the resort. By this point, we realised that it was a timeshare-type scam that we had been targeted for, so we politely declined and said we'd pass. They even told us that they only get paid if we went and that for everyone that attends the presentation (which lasts about 60mins), they donate something to charity.... aahh and there I was thinking that I was 'special'.....

Hoi An is very picturesque indeed, and you can see the charm and appeal as to why it is a UNESCO World Heritage site. That said, it is very, very touristy too and there are lots and lots of people trying to sell you stuff (boat rides, jewellery or cooking classes, bike tours etc.) or they are trying to get you to come into their restaurant (and there are loads of restaurants and coffee shops here).

As we are strolling along the area and trying to be careful that we don't get ripped off by ridiculous tourist prices, we see a big queue on the street beside a shop stall vendor (always a good sign). It turns out this is a famous Bahn Mi place (The Bahn Mi Queen) and we decide to have our lunch there. The place has quite an interesting history and there are photos on the walls of the original owner.

The seating area is quite small but we get a table for too and the waitress takes our order right away.

We get a Bahn Mi each and a watermelon juice for me and a mango smoothie for R. It was all very tasty and an absolute bargain at £4.52

R's batteries were fading fast at this point, so we headed back to the hotel for some rest and recuperation.

Whilst R was napping, I did some admin and tried to catch up on my blog posts. I am struggling at times to try and keep up to date, as I know if I leave it too long, then I will never catch up again. Strangely enough, R has mentioned a couple of places recently that somewhere has reminded him about it, and it's so hard to try and remember all the places that we have been, to work out where he is referring to. So that is why doing this blog should come in handy as our wee brains are ever so slightly frazzled these days!

Fast forward to the evening, and we leave the hotel to see what Hoi An is like at night, as it's supposed to be quite special with all the lights, stalls, people, etc. And yes, it is very busy and bustling. For me, it feels like a cross between Venice and Las Vegas for some reason. There are lots of bars and restaurants doing Happy Hour promotions, and lots of them have live music and singers performing (I cannot sing, but neither can a lot of the people we hear belting out their Karaoke songs,) but it's just too loud and noisy for us old introverts. I mean we're not your typical party animals anyway, but even less so when R's feeling a bit knackered with his 'bug'.

Again, we take a little bit of time to look around to try and find something that will suit us, and we come across Vy's Market Restaurant. This is more like a food court with lots of different stalls cooking food, but everything is listed in one big menu, and you order what you want from the waitress, and they bring it to you, so it operates like a single restaurant but has lots of separate vendors. They also offer cooking classes, bike tours and sell a cookbook.

I had a fab prawn wanton soup dish and R had a chicken and rice dish. The total bill with soft drinks was less than £10 and the restaurant had some lovely (not too loud) live music.

After dinner, we walked around a little more before heading back to the hotel to get an early night.

Hoi An, Vietnam

12 January 2025