Hoi An: A Lantern Town Trying Not to Drown in Its Own Reflection
By Finn O'Sullivan | 1,420 words | 8-minute read
The first thing you notice is the silence. Not absolute — cicadas hum in the banyan trees and bicycle bells chime from somewhere down Nguyen Thai Hoc Street — but a particular kind of quiet that settles over Hoi An's Old Town after the day-trippers have climbed back onto their buses. The Japanese Covered Bridge empties. The tailor shops pull down their shutters. And then, around six, the lanterns come on.
Hoi An is a place that understands lighting. The town's famous silk lanterns — red, gold, saffron, jade — hang in clusters above every alley, casting pools of colored light onto the mustard-yellow walls of two-hundred-year-old merchant houses. At night, the Thu Bon River becomes a mirror, and the town seems to exist in duplicate: the real one above, the imagined one below, both glowing.
But Hoi An is not a museum piece, no matter how carefully UNESCO has wrapped it in preservation orders. People live here. They always have.
What Hoi An Actually Is
Before the lanterns, before the Instagram queues, Hoi An was a port. From the 15th to 19th centuries, this was one of Southeast Asia's most important trading posts — a funnel for silk, spices, porcelain, and the silver that paid for them. Chinese merchants settled here, then Japanese, then Europeans. Each group built in their own style, and somehow the result doesn't look like a mess. It looks like a conversation.
The town's architecture is its real signature. The "tube houses" — narrow fronts, long interiors — were built this way because taxes were calculated on street frontage. Walk into one and you'll find three or four courtyards receding toward the river, each one cooler and quieter than the last. The houses are timber-framed, with carved balconies and tiled roofs, and many still function as family homes and businesses. The Phung Hung Ancient House, built in 1780, has been in the same family for eight generations. The current owner, Mrs. Thi, will show you the raised platforms where goods were stored during floods, and the trapdoor that leads to a hidden basement where merchants once hid their silver from pirates.
The Japanese Covered Bridge — Chua Cau — is the town's most photographed structure, and for good reason. Built in the 1590s to connect the Japanese settlement with the Chinese quarter, it's a timber bridge with a small pagoda on top, guarded at one end by a pair of stone monkeys and at the other by stone dogs. The Japanese believed these animals protected against earthquakes and floods. So far, it's worked: the bridge has survived four centuries of typhoons and the American War, though it tilts slightly to the left now, like a man leaning against the wind.
The Morning Market and the Real Economy
If you want to understand Hoi An, go to the Central Market at 6 AM. This is before the tourists arrive, when the market belongs to the town. Women in conical hats sell baskets of morning glory, live crabs tied with bamboo twine, and quail eggs still warm from the nest. The fishmongers arrive by boat, unloading tubs of squid and mackerel onto the riverbank. The air smells of fish sauce, coriander, and diesel from the long-tail boats.
Find a stall selling cao lau — Hoi An's signature noodle dish. It's only made here, and there's a reason. The noodles must be made with water from the Ba Le well, a specific ancient well on the edge of town. The lye used to create their chewy texture comes from ash of trees grown on nearby Cham Island. The pork is marinated in five-spice and slow-roasted. The result is a bowl of thick, chewy noodles, bean sprouts, herbs, and sliced pork, topped with crispy bits of fried noodle. A good bowl costs 30,000 dong, about $1.25. The stall run by Auntie Bay on Tran Phu Street has been serving it since 1985.
The market is also where Hoi An's famous tailoring trade operates in plain sight. Rolls of silk, linen, and wool are stacked in every other stall. The town has over 400 tailor shops, a number that has grown exponentially since the early 2000s when word got out that you could get a bespoke suit made here for the price of a mediocre dinner in London. Quality varies wildly. The good shops — Yaly Couture, A Dong Silk, Bebe — employ skilled pattern-makers and use proper construction. The bad ones will sell you a "cashmere" coat that unravels in the rain. If you're getting something made, allow three days for fittings, ask to see their sewing machines (industrial Juki machines are a good sign), and never pay the full amount upfront.
The River, the Islands, and the Disappearing Beach
The Thu Bon River made Hoi An rich, and now it threatens to erase it. Climate change has brought higher tides and more frequent flooding. The town's wooden buildings weren't designed for seawater; every major flood causes irreversible damage. In 2020, the highest flood in recorded history turned the Old Town into a lagoon. Residents moved furniture to the second floor and waited it out. The water reached the top of the doorframes on some streets.
The town is adapting, slowly. Some historic houses have raised their ground floors. The government has built a sea wall and floodgates. But there's an awareness here that the place is fragile — not just the buildings, but the entire ecosystem of the coast.
An Bang Beach, ten minutes by bicycle from the Old Town, is Hoi An's other major draw. It's a decent stretch of sand with beach bars and seafood restaurants, though the umbrellas and loungers are packed tight during high season. What most visitors don't know is that An Bang is eroding. The beach has lost significant width in the past decade, and storm surges occasionally wash away sections of the waterfront restaurants. The locals have seen this before. "The river gives, the river takes," a fisherman named Mr. Tuan told me. He was repairing his coracle on the sand, stitching the bamboo frame with plastic twine. "We build, the water knocks down. We build again."
For a quieter beach experience, cycle further north to Hidden Beach or take a boat to Cham Island, an hour offshore. The island has basic homestays, snorkeling, and a Marine Protected Area where fishing is restricted. The coral is damaged in places — dynamite fishing in the 1990s saw to that — but the water is clear and the island's fishing villages operate largely as they have for generations.
The Food You Actually Want to Eat
Hoi An's cuisine is distinct from the rest of Vietnam, shaped by centuries of trade and available ingredients. Beyond cao lau, there's mi quang, a turmeric-yellow noodle dish that's more soup than stir-fry, topped with shrimp, pork, herbs, and crushed peanuts. It's traditionally eaten with very little broth — just enough to coat the noodles — and sesame rice crackers on the side. The best version in town is at Mi Quang Ba Mua on Ngo Thi Nham Street, where the broth is made from pork bones and dried shrimp, simmered for six hours.
Then there's banh bao banh vac — white rose dumplings. These are delicate, flower-shaped dumplings made from translucent rice paper, filled with minced shrimp and mushrooms, and steamed. They're only made in Hoi An, and traditionally only by one family. The White Rose Restaurant on Nhi Trung Street claims exclusivity, and while other places now make similar versions, the original recipe remains with the descendants of the family who created it in the 1950s.
For breakfast, try com ga — chicken rice. It's Hoi An's answer to Hainanese chicken rice: shredded free-range chicken, rice cooked in chicken broth with turmeric, served with a ginger-scallion dipping sauce. The version at Com Ga Ba Buoi on Phan Chau Trinh Street opens at 6:30 AM and usually sells out by 10. A plate costs 40,000 dong.
At night, the street food scene moves to the riverfront. Vendors set up grills on the sidewalk, selling banh mi sandwiches stuffed with grilled pork, pate, and pickled vegetables, or banh xeo — crispy rice flour crepes filled with shrimp and bean sprouts. Sit on a plastic stool, order a cold Bia Saigon, and watch the lantern boats drift past. Each boat is lit with a single candle in a paper lantern. Tourists pay 100,000 dong to release one onto the water. The boatmen collect them downstream and sell them again.
What Nobody Tells You
Hoi An is crowded. The Old Town's narrow streets were designed for pedestrians and bicycles, not for the thousands of visitors who arrive daily on tour buses from Da Nang, twenty minutes north. From 9 AM to 5 PM, the main streets — Tran Phu, Nguyen Thai Hoc, Japanese Bridge — are a slow-moving crush of selfie sticks and matching tour group hats. The magic hours are early morning and evening. Plan your wandering for 7 AM or after 8 PM.
The town also floods. If you're visiting during rainy season (October to December), check the tide charts. A high tide combined with heavy rain can turn a pleasant evening into a wade through knee-deep water. Most hotels have sandbags ready. Some of the best restaurants close during major floods.
The tailor shops are relentless. Walk down any street and you'll be approached with offers of "custom suit, sir?" or "you want dress? Beautiful dress." The sales tactics can be aggressive. A polite "khong, cam on" (no, thank you) usually works, though you may need to repeat it.
How to Do It
Getting there: Fly to Da Nang (DAD), then take a taxi or Grab to Hoi An (30 minutes, around 300,000 dong). The airport is served by domestic flights and some international routes.
Where to stay: The Old Town itself has heritage hotels and guesthouses, but they can be noisy. For quiet, stay in Cam Thanh or Cam Chau, two villages just outside town where rice paddies and water coconut groves still dominate. Many homestays here offer free bicycles for the ten-minute ride into town.
Getting around: Walking covers the Old Town. Bicycle is the best way to explore further — rentals cost 30,000 dong per day. Motorcycles are banned from the Old Town center during daylight hours.
Best time to visit: February to April, when the weather is dry and mild. Avoid October to December (rainy season) and July to August (extreme heat).
Costs: Mid-range travelers can expect to spend $40-60 per day. Budget travelers can manage on $25-30. A bowl of cao lau is $1.25. A beer is $1. A custom suit ranges from $100 (questionable quality) to $400 (proper construction).
Final tip: Buy a lantern. Not the cheap paper ones sold to tourists, but a proper silk lantern from one of the family workshops on Nguyen Thai Hoc Street. They cost more — around 200,000 dong for a small one — but they're made by hand, and they last. Hang it somewhere you'll see it. When it glows, you'll remember the silence.