My wordy word, if you haven’t got Hoi An on your list of places to go, you need to check yourself. You need to get it on that list and leave yourself enough time to do all the things and eat all the food. Here’s what to do in Hoi An.
1. Explore the Ancient town
The Ancient town of Hoi An is world UNESCO site and boasts the most interesting and diverse range of architecture. You’ll find small Chinese shop houses, French colonial buildings, temples and even a Japanese pagoda-style bridge. There’s plenty to do inside the town and you can probably lose yourself for a day or two just exploring the streets, lane ways and wandering the canals.
There’s heaps of places to eat and drink and shops to frequent, as well as fresh markets to explore, tailors to visit and shoes to buy. We weren’t totally impressed that you have to buy a VN120,000 ticket to enter the site, but it is valid for three days and give you access into 5 of the 22 heritage sites. You might get away for a little while not having bought one from the ticket office on the way into town, but they’ll probably catch up with you eventually and make you buy one.
2. Ride Bikes
The best way to get around in Hoi An and do all the adventuring and eating you need to do, is by riding bikes. We were lucky enough to have booked a beautiful Homestay (New Sunshine Homestay), that provided their guests with free use of bikes to ride during our time in Hoi An. We were about a 5km ride out of town, so not having to rely on walking everywhere was awesome. There were some adventures on those bikes and saw way more than we would have ever seen on foot. I recommend that if you don’t have bikes included in your accommodation package, that you set about hiring one.
3. Have fun in Basket Boats
From the minute we saw these things, we had to go in one. They’re round, look like baskets, but are boats. Hence the name, and for just a few dong you can take a ride in one. Our basket boat adventure was booked by our Homestay hosts and they kindly escorted us to ‘Coconut Eco Forest Tourism’ just along the road from where we were staying. The boat ride was about 30 minutes long, and just long enough. We had a character behind the oar of our boat, who managed to right-royally annoy a passenger on another boat. It was quite enjoyable to watch and was a reminder that you should never take yourself too seriously.
4. Visit the world’s cutest book exchange
Doi Sach is its name and the colours are yellow and blue. As a traveler and a reader, there’s always the issue of securing your next book, one that sounds good, has a pretty cover and is in the right language. You’ll find it here. The couple who own this place are very cute and there’s a wide range of books to choose from. I reckon head here and stock up for the rest of your trip.
43 Phan Boi Chau Hoi An
5. Take photos of the lanterns at night
One of the stand out features of Hoi An is its gorgeous lanterns. They look beautiful and vibrant during the day, but absolutely superb when the sun goes down and the lights go on. Head towards the centre of the old town to capture all the photos of the colourful silk lanterns hanging between the buildings across the streets. The place really comes to life in the evenings and all the tourists descend on the town to enjoy the festive feeling, so get involved.
6. Spend horrendous amounts of money on getting clothes and shoes made
Hoi An is famous for its hundreds of tailor shops and the ability to get custom made leather shoes overnight. We hadn’t planned to get any clothes made, but seemingly got ourselves caught in ‘one of those situations’ where we felt slightly trapped and couldn’t say no. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we walked away with the experience of getting clothes made to measure and some dapper new threads. The highlight for me was getting a pair of animal print leather sandals made with a super-quick turn-around time and meeting the ladies in the market who talked me into them.
7. Visit Tra Que Village
If you’ve got bikes then make sure you ride to the Tra Que vegetable village. It’s a unique place where families manage allotment-style vegetable gardens, giving you a sense of true Asian village life. It’s also cool to check out all the unusual herbs and different plants that we don’t have at home. By this point in our trip and a few cooking classes in, we were masters as spotting ‘Sweet basil’. There seems to be plenty of tours that let you get a bit more hands on in the vege patches, but were fine with our short ride-through on the way to the beach.
8. Frequent An Bang Beach
Hoi An has the added feature of a beach just down the road. A luxury that Hoi An has over the other major towns in Vietnam. We unfortunately weren’t blessed with amazing weather on our visit, and the beach looked like it had seen better days. But, we have seen some photos of the beach on a nice day and it looked ok and worth a visit. Just a warning about the weird parking system. You’ll probably have to shell out a few dong and have someone look after your bike while you’re at the beach. They have special bike parks and everything.
9. Eat all the food