Jon and I spent one month living in Hội An (hereinafter Hoi An), Vietnam. During that time, we rented a motor scooter from our landlord which allowed us to easily get around town and explore. While we spent some days relaxing and being lazy without leaving our apartment, we also made the most of our time by getting to know the city and surrounding area. This list is by no means all-encompassing of what you can see or do in Hoi An; these are merely the things that we chose to do while living in the city. There are museums that we never visited, bike tours we didn’t do, cooking classes we didn’t take, and monuments that we didn’t see. However, we were very happy with our experiences and can recommend these to anyone visiting the city!

Markets

We visited a total of three different markets in Hoi An during our month in the city. We quickly realized that our favorite was the non-touristy Chợ Tâ An, where we shopped among locals for our fresh produce. It was fun to wander and look at all of the stalls, seeing the different types of food that was offered. The main market in the Old Town (Chợ Hội An) is large, covering a couple of city blocks. There, you can find food stalls selling prepared items for meals, fresh fruit and vegetables, dried goods, kitchen utensils, and even a few souvenirs. Because our apartment was lacking kitchenware, we purchased a spoon and spatula set as well as chopsticks that doubled as a souvenir for us to bring home.

Local markets contain such interesting items, although after seeing the way meat is displayed and sold, we decided to eat vegetarian for the remainder of our stay!

Trà Quế Village

In my previous Typical Tuesday article, I briefly described our farming outing in Tra Que Village. This small island on the outskirts of town is known for their fresh vegetables, farmed and shipped throughout the country. There are a handful of restaurants and cooking schools on the island that you can visit, but we elected to do something a little bit different. We signed up for a farm visit where we learned and practiced traditional farming techniques and then enjoyed a couple of local dishes with ingredients sourced locally. It was a private class and showed us a different side to Vietnamese culture.

Our afternoon in the farming village of Tra Que was a fun activity, learning about agriculture and farming in Vietnam.

Pottery Village

Another fun activity that we did one afternoon was to visit the pottery community, again on the outskirts of the city. Rumor has it that there is an open-air museum with various replicas of famous buildings in Vietnam, but we weren’t able to find it. The streets (if I can call them that, since they were so narrow that two scooters had a hard time passing one another!) zig-zagged around houses and pottery workshops, making it a bit difficult for us to find the museum. However, we were able to find the pottery and visited a couple to see demonstrations, browse their offerings, and even try our hand at making a small cup! This was my first time working with clay and our teacher was very patient with me, helping me to form a small cup that I was able to bring home as a souvenir. While not up to the quality of professionals, I love my little handmade cup!

After making a small cup to take home, we browsed the items on sale and purchased a coffee cup and spoons.

Old Town
When you Google Hoi An, you will most likely be viewing pictures of the Old Town. This is the area where tourists congregate, with a lot of restaurants, cafes, and shops lining the streets. Situated along the Thu Bồn River, the buildings are all painted yellow and many are decorated with lanterns. This part of town was the old trading port, in use from the 15^th to 19^th centuries. The current layout is original from the 17^th and 18^th centuries and has remained intact, even during the war. The buildings are wooden structures, many of which have been restored in order to preserve their structural integrity. A few bridges span the river, making for an enjoyable walk in the late afternoon and evening (during the day, it was too hot!).

We lucked out visiting Hoi An in the springtime; flowers were in bloom everywhere we went!

Lantern Festival

Once per month, the Old Town in Hoi An plays host to a lunar lantern festival. As dusk approaches, lanterns are lit decorating the streets. Vendors come out to sell small paper lanterns, which you can purchase and set afloat in the river. The candles float lazily down the river, providing a magical backdrop for you to witness on a stroll through the streets.

While some got dressed up for the lantern festival, most were in regular street clothes and would set their lanterns afloat from the shore.

Japanese Bridge

One famous landmark in Hoi An is undoubtedly the Japanese Bridge. Built as a way to join the Japanese and Chinese quarters of the city, it remains as an icon of the city. The bridge is made from wood and decorated with porcelain bowls, statues, and even includes a small temple in the center. Construction began in the Year of the Monkey and finished in the Year of the Dog, so statues of these two animals flank the entrances. (Side note: I found vastly different dates when researching to find out when it was built. One article stated that it was built in 1593 and one in 1719 – quite a bit gap!)

The Japanese Bridge is a popular spot for photographers coming to Hoi An.

Lantern Making

Hoi An is famous for its lanterns, seen all over the city as decorations, sources of light, and for sale to locals and tourists alike. I stumbled upon a blog that mentioned a lantern-making class, so I called and we scheduled a time to visit a lady’s home one morning to make our own lanterns. She already had the wooden structures prepared for us, so we didn’t get to make the lanterns from scratch. However, we did cut and assemble the fabric sides, trim, and tassel. For only $4 each, this was a fun way to spend an hour and take home another handmade souvenir!

We spent one morning making our own lanterns, which we will hang up in our home one day as a memory of our time in Hoi An.

Ðà Nẵng

While Hoi An is more popular with foreigners who visit Vietnam, Ðà Nẵng (hereinafter Da Nang) is much larger and popular with Vietnamese. Due to its proximity and firework festival happening during our stay, we decided to travel to the city and spend a night. There is a direct bus that connects the centers of the two cities, which cost little more than $1 each and is how we traveled after taking the train down from Hue. Since we had a scooter at our disposal, we took the more scenic road that follows the coast into the city. 45 minutes of driving led us from the small and manageable Hoi An to the bustling and busy city of Da Nang. Since we were there primarily to see the fireworks, we didn’t get a chance to see or do much other than try a few new foods and do some shopping (I had been on the lookout for a new journal, since my previous had filled up). I’ll write more on the fireworks in a separate post, but rest assured it was worth the drive and the night’s stay!

Da Nang is a much bigger city than Hoi An, although Jon did a wonderful job of navigating the crowded streets!

Marble Mountains

Between Hoi An to the south and Da Nang to the north lie the Marble Mountains. This is a set of five mountains where marble is harvested, open to the public for sightseeing. The five mountains represent the five elements (metal, water, wood, fire, and earth) in Vietnamese culture. We woke up early one morning in order to arrive when they opened (7am) and toured the one closest to the road, representing water. There were numerous pathways and staircases leading to grottos, caves, overlooks, and temples around the mountain. We took our time climbing to the top to get a view over the region, but particularly enjoyed seeing the caves both large and small. Intricate carvings were found throughout, depicting religious scenes in the Buddhist and Hindu religions. After two or three hours, we were hot and tired, our legs shaky from all of the stairs we had climbed. It was the perfect time to leave, since tour busses had started to arrive and take away from the serenity that we had experienced early in the morning.

The Marble Mountains were covered in dense trees and greenery; paths led the way through the jungle to various lookout points, caves, and temples.

Beaches

Since Hoi An is located on the coast, a popular activity for those who live in the city and who visit is to visit the beach. The most popular is An Bàng, although we chose to stick closer to home and visit two near our apartment. Cửa Ðại Beach was just a couple minutes’ walk from our apartment, down two blocks and over a small dune. This beach was propped up by large sandbags, erected to help prevent erosion. The sandbags provided structures for the local children to play on, running from one to the next. This was a smaller beach and slightly crowded with Vietnamese families out after work. The next beach (and our favorite) that we visited was called Hidden Beach (I haven’t been able to find out if there’s a Vietnamese name for this or not). We rode our scooter down the street just a few minutes and turned down a tiny walkway to park between a couple of resorts. There was hardly anyone on this beach when we were there, making it ideal for us to relax and soak up the sun. The water was warm, so we played in the waves and then dried off watching the sunset.

We lucked out finding Hidden Beach one afternoon. There was hardly anyone else with us; we had a beautiful sunset all to ourselves!

Mỹ Sơn

The final excursion that we did in Hoi An was our second-to-last day. We woke early in the morning and set off by scooter to the ruins of Mỹ Sơn. This is a group of Hindu temples that were constructed between the 4^th and 14^th centuries. Most are dedicated to the god Shiva and were built by the kings of the Champa dynasty. It was estimated that My Son was the longest inhabited site in Indochina and often compared to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Borobudur in Indonesia, and Ayutthaya in Thailand. However, unlike the previous sites mentioned, My Son is now in ruins due to the extensive bombing that took place during the Vietnamese/American War. This bombing occurred primarily during a single week in 1969 and the area remains somewhat dangerous due to unexploded land mines thought to remain. We could easily spot craters in the ground where bombs had exploded and destroyed the temples. While not on the same scale (in size or in preservation) as Angkor Wat, it was interesting for us to visit Mỹ Sơn. We both left saddened by the destruction but hopeful that collectively, we will learn from our history and not repeat the past.

Although not as impressive as Angkor Wat, visiting My Son was a morning well spent as there were hardly any other tourists there!

*Note: The use of accent marks is inconsistent for a reason. I found it easier to refer to the cities by the Anglicized version, since this is what most of you will recognize. For the lesser-known places, food, or people, I’ve kept with the accent marks since this is what we got used to while traveling.