HOI AN · VIETNAM
Lantern light on an old river town.
A UNESCO trading port of tailors and yellow walls, basket boats in the coconut palms, cooking classes by the market, and lanterns set adrift on the Thu Bon. Plus the day trips out to My Son, the Marble Mountains and Hue.
Only in Hoi An
Three things Hoi An does like nowhere else.
Old towns, boat rides and cooking classes turn up everywhere. A town lit entirely by silk lanterns, a coracle spun through a coconut forest, and a lunch from a cuisine found in one town on Earth do not.
Every evening, on the river
The Lantern Town
When the sun drops, Hoi An switches off the street lamps and turns on the lanterns. Hundreds of silk lanterns light the lanes and the bridges, and out on the Thu Bon you row a wooden sampan and set a paper lantern adrift on the current. No other old town in Asia does its nights quite like this.
- 1 Hoi An : Hoai River Boat Trip by Night and Floating Lantern
- 2 Hoi An: River Lantern Boat Experience with Free 5G eSIM
- 3 Evening Walking Food Tour, folk game and lantern boat
In the coconut palms
The Basket Boats
Just outside town, the Thu Bon spreads into a forest of water coconut palms, and the way through it is a thung chai - a round bamboo coracle the boatmen spin like a fairground ride. Crab traps, coconut-leaf rings and a paddle in the green half-light. It is the most-booked thing in Hoi An for a reason.
- 1 Cooking Class Hoi An:Local Market, Basket Boat, Fishing & Cooking
- 2 Hoi An Cooking Class(Market,BasketBoat Crabfishing&Cooking Class)
- 3 From Hoi An: Market Tour, Basket Boat Ride and Cooking Class
From the market to the pan
A Cuisine of Its Own
Hoi An cooks dishes you will not find anywhere else: cao lau noodles made only with water from one ancient well, white rose dumplings, and the banh mi an American chef called the best sandwich in the world. The classes start at the market and end at your own clay pot.
- 1 Cooking Class Hoi An:Local Market, Basket Boat, Fishing & Cooking
- 2 Hoi An Cooking Class(Market,BasketBoat Crabfishing&Cooking Class)
- 3 From Hoi An: Market Tour, Basket Boat Ride and Cooking Class
The one everyone books
Hoi An's single most popular experience.
More travellers book this than anything else in Hoi An. If you only lock in one thing before you go, make it this one.
The classics
Hoi An's Most Popular Tours & Classes
Basket boats in the coconut forest, lantern-making by hand, market-to-table cooking and the My Son day trip. The experiences most travellers book first.
Where to begin
The experiences a Hoi An trip is built around.
Lantern cruises, cooking classes, basket boats, the Cham temples and the countryside rides. The categories most Hoi An trips are planned around, and the best of each.
After dark
How to spend your evenings.
Hoi An saves its best for after sunset. Three ways to spend an evening once the lanterns come on, depending on whether you want to be on the water, on your feet, or sitting down.
A town of makers
Tailors, lanterns and the potter’s wheel.
Hoi An has been a craft town for four hundred years, and it still is. Tailors run up a suit or an ao dai in a day, lantern-makers fold silk over bamboo by hand, and across the river the potters of Thanh Ha turn their wheels the way their families have for generations. Spend an afternoon making something to carry home.
See the workshops and classes →Past the rice paddies
Bicycles, buffalo and herb gardens.
A few minutes out of the Ancient Town the lanes turn to rice paddies. Pedal past water buffalo and duck ponds to Tra Que, the herb village that supplies the kitchens, or take the back roads by Vespa down to the beach at An Bang. This is the quiet Hoi An, the one that lives between the old town and the sea.
See the countryside rides →The old town
Four hundred years, best after dark.
Hoi An was one of Asia’s great trading ports, and its old quarter came through the centuries almost untouched: merchant houses, the Japanese Covered Bridge, the assembly halls, all behind walls washed the colour of egg yolk. Come evening the traffic stops, the silk lanterns come on, and the whole UNESCO quarter turns to gold.
Walk the Ancient Town →An hour inland
Cham temples in a jungle valley.
An hour west of Hoi An, the red-brick towers of My Son rise from a green valley below Cat’s Tooth Mountain. The kings of Champa raised them to their Hindu gods between the fourth and thirteenth centuries, laying the bricks without mortar in a way nobody has fully explained since. The best tours leave at dawn, before the heat and the crowds. A UNESCO site, and the spiritual heart of old Champa.
- 1 Hoi An: My Son Sanctuary Early Morning w. Champa Food Brunch
- 2 Hoi An/Da Nang: Golden Bridge , My Son Sanctuary & Marble Mt
- 3 Hoi An: My Son Sanctuary and Thu Bon River Boat Trip
The road north
Marble peaks, a golden bridge, the pass.
The big day out runs up the coast to Da Nang. Climb the Marble Mountains to the cave shrines cut into the rock, ride the cable car to the Golden Bridge held up by two giant stone hands at Ba Na Hills, and come home over the Hai Van Pass, the cloud-wreathed clifftop road that Top Gear once called one of the best in the world.
Browse the Da Nang day trips →Beyond the Ancient Town
Six day trips from Hoi An.
My Son for the Cham temples. Hue for the imperial city. The Marble Mountains and the Golden Bridge above Da Nang. The Hai Van Pass for the coast road, and Cham Island for the snorkelling.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
A cooking class if you came to eat. A basket boat if you came for the water. A lantern cruise after dark, a tailor for something made to measure, or the back lanes by bicycle and Vespa.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Hoi An? A few days that balance the Ancient Town, the countryside and a trip out of town.
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