18 Hours in Hội An

Hello and xin chào!

Moving right along through my spate of trips the past month or so, I come to you with a post about the picturesque Central Vietnamese town of Hội An.

Three Tuesdays ago, I left class at 8pm, stopped home at 8:15, and got to the airport at 9 for a flight at 10:05. Flights here are always delayed, so it ended up being 11:05. After a one-hour flight, I arrived in the relatively major city of Đà Nẵng. I then wandered through the parking lot of an international airport out to the road to catch my 45-minute motorbike taxi to Hội An. A little after 1am, I made it to my hostel.

Roughly 18 hours later I'd be making the same trip in reverse. Moreover, this was six days after I came back from Myanmar. It just goes to show what I'll put myself through for $50 roundtrip tickets.

Walking street in the center of Hội An.

That said, I was pretty well-rewarded. The center of town has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1999, designated for the 17th-18th century architecture that has remained uniquely intact since its days as Vietnam's premier trading port.

Hội An waterfront.

The city center likely would not have remained so intact were it not for the Thu Bốn River silting up in the 19th century. Meanwhile, trading activity shifted north to Đà Nẵng, leaving  Hội An a forgotten backwater until a tourist boom in the 1990s and 2000s.

Walking street in the center of Hội An.

Likely owing to its relatively early UNESCO listing, Hội An retained an impressive amount of local character in spite of being packed with tourists.

Burning a papier-mâché dragon for the full moon.

My trip happened to coincide with the first full moon of the lunar new year, which meant that some of the temples were quite crowded with Vietnamese people (and sometimes Chinese and Korean tourists) praying and making offerings. As on other full moons, it's custom to burn incense and joss paper (fake money). As I was walking around, I actually saw those people above burning a large dragon on the river.

Burning joss paper at the Hainan (Hải Nam in Vietnamese) Assembly Hall.

Lamps at the Hainan Assembly Hall.

The main sights in Hội An are its historic temples and homes, most of which have been very well maintained or restored. The temples are usually components of larger complexes called assembly halls, usually founded by groups of Chinese traders. The assembly halls would then be designated by which region of China the members were from. The one above, for example, served traders and migrants with origins in Hainan.

Incense sticks at Fujian (Phúc Kiến in Vietnamese) Assembly Hall.

Some sort of offering from a family in Đà Nẵng. In black are names, and in red are birth years and their address.

Flowers and a worshipper at Fujian Assembly Hall.

I was really impressed with how well Hội An balanced tourist activities and traditional culture. There were lots of tourists, but it was clear that there was still a living place underneath all that.

Outside one of the ancient houses.

A familial shrine inside an ancient house.

I also visited two "ancient houses," which have been preserved as miniature museums. Most of them actually still have families living there, so you aren't allowed to go upstairs.

Cooking in the back of an ancient house.

In the first house I visited, the woman at the entrance actually told me she was the seventh generation to live there. In the back, meanwhile, there were a few women eating lunch and making food for sale.

The Japanese covered bridge.

The view from the bridge.

I also visited the famous Japanese bridge, unique for having a pagoda in/on it.

My café for the afternoon.

View from where I was sitting.

I was getting tired at this point, so it was time to pick out a café where I could relax for a bit. I sat outside at a lovely place called Rosie's and had a wonderful tropical smoothie bowl in the shade. Again, lots of tourists, but I could tell that most of the surrounding buildings were family homes.

Fresh from Bánh Mì Phượng.

Speaking of food, I also tried what is reputed to be the best bánh mì in all of Vietnam. The bread was indeed delicious, and the flavors and ingredients seemed much more complex than any bánh mì I've had before. There was delicious grilled pork, pickled vegetables, lemongrass, and some sort of sauce. My palate is regrettably not refined enough to say much else about it other than that it was really, really good. (Especially at 25,000 VND, or roughly $1.)

A woman riding through central Hội An, featuring the ubiquitous banyan tree in the background.

A hammer and sickle flag adorning a shop.

Sunset over Hội An.

Later, I wandered some more and camped out at rooftop cafe to catch the sunset. (Unfortunately I was far from the only person who had this idea.)

Lanterns after sunset.

When darkness fell, all the lanterns strewn across the city came alight. At some point, I noticed that classical music was being piped in on some of the streets, à la Disney World. That was bizarre. Even so, I've found that it's rare in this part of the world to find somewhere so well-maintained and accessible without being tawdry.

More lanterns above the walking street.

Hội An waterfront after sunset.

Eventually I found a nice ledge along the river where I camped out for a solid hour to watch the crowds go by. I had a wonderful time, but I made the horrible mistake of sitting by an inland body of water at sunset without mosquito repellent. I ended up with six or seven bites the size of quarters.

On the opposite side of the street, I watched two women who were at least in their late 70s sell little boxed lanterns to float on the river. I couldn't help but think about how this was a war zone when they were my age—Central Vietnam saw some of the heaviest combat of the entire war. I wondered what they thought about the hordes of tourists now shuffling past them.

That's a recurring theme of my time here: it's hard to wrap my head around the things that have happened in these places, and it's even harder to wrap my head around what anyone over 40 has lived through. As a brief side note, for example, a Vietnamese coworker who's 25 was telling me how her father speaks some Khmer because her dad fought the Americans in Cambodia. She then also told me how she doesn't hate Americans; she hates the Chinese. But that's a whole other political and historical can of worms.

Around 7:30pm in Hội An, meanwhile, it was time for me to head back to the airport in Đà Nẵng. After the 45-minute motorbike ride, I was dropped off by the side of the access road and again had to wander through the parking lot of an international airport. It was back to teaching the day after.

Check out more pictures here. Keep an eye out for a post about my most recent trip to Malaysia! (I'm finally catching up!)

Till next time,
Gray