Hoi AnHội An

The Thu Bồn estuary was a trading coast long before Hội An existed. Iron Age Sa Huỳnh people buried their dead in large clay jars along these dunes, and from about the 4th century the Cham kingdoms used the river mouth as the port for their capital and sanctuary upriver, including the temple valley at Mỹ Sơn. Chinese and Arab sources mention a Cham harbour on this coast, and ceramics from across Asia turn up in local digs.

The town took shape in the late 16th century, when the Nguyễn lords, ruling the south from Huế, opened a port here to fund their war with the Trịnh in the north. Every year, the north-east monsoon brought junks from China, Japan and Southeast Asia, and the south-west monsoon carried them home, so merchants stayed for months. Europeans called the town Faifo. Silk, porcelain, sugar, pepper, aloeswood and deer hides changed hands at seasonal fairs.

Japan's red-seal ships came regularly between about 1604 and 1635, and a Japanese quarter grew around the Covered Bridge. When Japan closed its ports in the 1630s, the community faded and married into local families. Chinese merchants stayed and multiplied, joined after 1644 by Ming loyalists fleeing the Qing; they formed the Minh Hương community and built assembly halls by home province. Portuguese Jesuits worked here from 1615, and their efforts to write Vietnamese in Latin letters fed into the script used today.

The Tây Sơn wars of the 1770s damaged the town badly, and most of the houses you see were rebuilt afterwards, in the late 18th and 19th centuries. By then the river mouth was silting up and larger ships could not enter. When the French took Đà Nẵng as a concession in 1888 and built a railway and port there, trade moved north for good. Hội An became a quiet market town with French-era shopfronts along the river.

That decline saved it. The town escaped heavy damage in the wars of the 20th century, and from the 1980s Vietnamese and foreign experts, notably the Polish architect Kazimierz Kwiatkowski, argued for its protection. UNESCO listed the Ancient Town in 1999 as a well-preserved example of a Southeast Asian trading port. Tourism followed fast. In July 2025 the former Quảng Nam province, Hội An included, was merged into Đà Nẵng city.

The old town runs along three streets parallel to the river: Trần Phú, the oldest merchant street, Nguyễn Thái Học in the middle, and Bạch Đằng on the waterfront, which was built up on reclaimed land in the 19th century. Houses on Trần Phú and Nguyễn Thái Học often run all the way through the block, with a shop on one street and a warehouse or landing on the next, so goods could come straight off the boats.

The Covered Bridge marks the west end of the old core and, by tradition, the old boundary between the Japanese and Chinese quarters. East of it, the Chinese communities built their assembly halls (hội quán) on Trần Phú: Fujian, Cantonese, Chaozhou, Hainan and a shared hall for all five groups. Each served as temple, guild office and social club, and each still holds its own festivals on lunar dates.

The Minh Hương, descendants of Chinese who settled for good and took Vietnamese nationality, have their own communal house and ancestral shrines. Families such as those of the old houses on Nguyễn Thái Học still keep altars in the middle rooms and trace their lines back six or seven generations. Across the Hoài River, An Hội islet was fields and boatyards until recent decades; it is now the night market and a string of riverside restaurants.

Beyond the old town, the villages each kept a trade. Trà Quế grows herbs and vegetables, Thanh Hà makes pottery, Kim Bồng on Cẩm Kim island produced the carpenters who built and repaired the old houses and boats, and Cẩm Thanh's water-coconut forest supplied palm leaves for roofs. The Cửa Đại coast and the Cù Lao Chàm islands are fishing communities with their own whale-worship shrines.

The typical old-town house is a timber shophouse (nhà ống), narrow at the front and very deep: a shop at the street, then a reception room with the family altar, a small open courtyard for light and rain, living rooms, and a kitchen and storeroom at the back. The structure is a frame of ironwood posts and beams joined without nails, with brick side walls shared with the neighbours and a roof of curved yin-yang tiles laid in two layers.

Carpentry mixes three traditions. Roof trusses and bracket systems follow Chinese models, some joinery and the use of space show Japanese influence, and the carving of crab-shell ceilings, beam ends and door panels is local, much of it by Kim Bồng craftsmen. Above many front doors are two carved wooden 'eyes' (mắt cửa), said to guard the house and watch the street. Upper floors often have a trapdoor for lifting goods during floods.

Tân Kỳ house is the textbook example, lived in by the same family for about seven generations and among the first houses listed as a national monument in 1985. Phùng Hưng house near the bridge has a gallery around an upper floor. The assembly halls are more ornate: gates with glazed-tile roofs, courtyards with dragon fountains, and incense coils hanging from the ceilings that burn for weeks.

Rules keep the look. Building heights, materials, facade colours and signs are controlled, and repairs to listed houses follow conservation guidelines. The yellow walls that dominate photographs are partly a 20th-century habit; earlier houses were often left in natural plaster and timber. Flood marks painted on door frames show how high the river has reached, and the 1964 flood is often cited as one of the worst.

Cao lầu is the town's own noodle and a small riddle. The thick, chewy noodles look like Japanese udon and the crisp squares on top recall Chinese fried dough, which is why they are linked to the port's foreign merchants, though no one can prove the line. By local tradition the noodles are made by only a few families, with water from old wells such as Bá Lễ and lye from the ash of trees from the islands, and the dish is eaten with very little broth.

Mì Quảng is the broader regional noodle of Quảng Nam: flat turmeric noodles with shrimp, pork or chicken, a few spoons of rich broth, peanuts and a sesame rice cracker to break over the top. Cơm gà, turmeric rice with shredded free-range chicken and herbs, is the town's lunch. White rose dumplings, bánh bao bánh vạc, are made by one family workshop that supplies most restaurants in town.

Bánh mì became the town's best-known export after a bánh mì stand featured on Anthony Bourdain's television show in 2009, and queues have formed ever since. Hội An's version is richer than Hanoi's, with pâté, several sauces and a thick layer of herbs. In the evening, restaurants around Bá Lễ well serve bánh xèo and lemongrass pork skewers to be rolled in rice paper.

Much of what makes the food taste of Hội An comes from the countryside around it. Trà Quế's herbs, grown on beds fed with lagoon algae, go into every bowl of cao lầu and mì Quảng. Cẩm Nam island sells bánh đập, a steamed rice sheet smashed onto a grilled cracker, and baby clams with herbs. Street vendors still sell xí mà, a dark herbal sweet soup, and the herbal cooler nước mót has become a modern favourite.

Lanterns came with the Chinese merchants, who hung them at the assembly halls and shopfronts, and the town revived the craft in the 1990s. Since 1998, on the 14th of every lunar month, the old town switches off its streetlights and lights lanterns and candles instead. Motorbikes are kept out, folk music, poetry and board games are staged in the lanes, and small candle-lanterns float on the river. It is the most crowded evening of the month.

The biggest lantern night is Nguyên Tiêu, the first full moon after Tết, when the Chinese assembly halls hold ceremonies and the old town is packed with domestic visitors. Tết itself closes most family businesses for several days; houses put out kumquat and apricot-blossom trees, and altars are cleaned and filled with offerings. Mid-Autumn, on the 15th of the 8th lunar month, brings lion dances through the lanes and children's lantern parades.

The halls and temples have their own dates: Quan Công temple marks its god's festivals in the 1st and 6th lunar months, and the Fujian hall honours the sea goddess Thiên Hậu. Along the coast and on Cù Lao Chàm, fishing villages hold Cầu Ngư festivals in spring to honour the whale, which fishermen believe rescues sailors, with boat races and rites before the season opens.

Bài chòi, a call-and-response card game sung as folk verse, is performed on the riverside on many evenings and was listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage in 2017. It began as a village pastime at Tết, played from bamboo huts; the singers improvise verses about the cards drawn, and players with a matching card win a small prize.

Hội An starts early. The fish boats unload at the market quay before 06:00, farmers in Trà Quế water their beds at first light, and residents take their coffee on low stools before the tour buses arrive. From about 09:00 to 17:00 the old town belongs to visitors; after dark, lanterns go on and the riverside fills. Most families who own old houses now let the front rooms to shops and live behind or elsewhere.

The river sets the year. From September the rains come and in October–November the Thu Bồn floods most years, sometimes several times, as water pours down from the mountains. Residents raise goods to the upper floors, shops move stock, and people get about by boat for a day or two. The floods leave silt that feeds the vegetable gardens and rice fields, and a mess that is scrubbed away within days.

Tourism has made the town prosperous and crowded. Tickets, car-free hours, limits on signs and lantern styles, and a ban on some kinds of boat music are the town's attempts to manage it. Tailoring, once a small trade, became a major industry in the 1990s, and hundreds of shops now sell made-to-measure clothes in 24–48 hours, backed by workshops outside the old town.

The coast is changing faster than the old town. Erosion has eaten much of Cửa Đại beach, and resorts have lined the shore with sandbags. An Bàng has grown from a fishing village into a strip of beach restaurants and homestays, and the rice fields between town and sea are filling with villas. The old centre, protected by law, stays small while everything around it moves.