For many people, Hoi An is the most charming place in Vietnam. For centuries it was one of the great trading ports of Southeast Asia, where Chinese junks, Japanese ships and European vessels dropped anchor. That mix of cultures was frozen in place in its old town: wooden merchant houses, Chinese temples, a covered bridge of Japanese origin and narrow streets of ochre façades that have barely changed in two centuries. As evening falls, thousands of coloured silk lanterns light up and reflect on the river, and the city turns into something out of a fairy tale.
But Hoi An is more than a postcard for the camera. It is a city to experience slowly. You can have a suit or dress made to measure by one of its hundreds of tailors (ready in a day or two), learn to cook at a class among vegetable gardens, or cycle through rice paddies to An Bang beach. At dusk you can set a little paper lantern afloat on the river, and you can slip away to the ancient Cham ruins of My Son. All of it comes with a calm and friendliness that contrast with the frantic pace of Vietnam's big cities.
This guide covers the best of Hoi An from a practical angle. It explains how the old town ticket works and what to visit with it, and when the magical full moon night falls. It also covers how to choose a good tailor without falling into traps, where to eat the local dishes (cao lau, white rose and the most famous banh mi in the country), and how to combine the city with the beach and day trips. Hoi An is one of those places where you plan to stay two nights and end up extending your trip.
Hoi An grew up on a settlement of the Cham kingdom of Champa, but its golden age came between the 16th and 18th centuries. Under the name Faifo, it became one of the most important trading ports in Southeast Asia. Under the protection of the Nguyen lords, who followed open-door policies, ships from China, Japan, India, Persia and Europe docked here to trade silk, ceramics, spices and tea. Foreign merchant quarters took shape. The Japanese built their famous covered bridge. The Chinese community grew a great deal after the fall of the Ming dynasty, and its members built assembly halls and temples that still stand today. That heyday left the old town we admire today, an exceptional fusion of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and European architecture. Decline came when the Thu Bon River gradually silted up and large ships could no longer get in. The French colonial administration chose the deep-water port of Da Nang instead, and Hoi An fell asleep, forgotten for almost a century. Paradoxically, that same decline saved it: because it was neither developed nor bombed, its historic centre survived intact and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1999. The full story, from Cham port to city of lanterns, is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The historical heart of the country: the Hindu kingdom of Champa and its My Son sanctuary, the imperial capital of Hue, the international port of Hoi An, the caves of Phong Nha and the old border at the 17th parallel.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Hoi An's story begins long before the lantern-lit houses that tourists photograph today. At the mouth of the Thu Bon River, where fresh water meets the sea, there was port activity from very ancient times. The region was part of the kingdom of Champa, the Hindu civilisation that dominated central Vietnam for more than a thousand years. Close by, in the My Son valley, the Cham built their great religious centre, and at Tra Kieu they built their capital, Simhapura.
The Cham were a people of sailors and traders, and they already used this coast as a trading point on the sea routes linking China, India and the Malay world. The even older Sa Huynh culture had also left remains in the area, a sign that this corner of the coast was a crossroads since prehistoric times. Aromatic woods, spices, ivory and other goods prized all over Asia moved through its waters.
The Vietnamese pushed south from the north between the 11th and 15th centuries, in the long process known as 'Nam Tien', the march to the south. As they gradually absorbed Cham territory, this port passed into the hands of the new Vietnamese lords. But its calling didn't change: it was still a prime spot for maritime trade. A few centuries later, one of the great trading hubs of Southeast Asia would grow on those ancient foundations.
Hoi An's great moment came between the 16th and 18th centuries, when it became one of the most important trading ports in all of Southeast Asia. Western merchants knew it as 'Faifo'. The key to its prosperity was political: the Nguyen lords, who ruled southern Vietnam from Hue, followed open-door policies and encouraged foreign trade, which was unusual in the Asia of the time. Faifo became the great market where goods from the interior and from abroad came together.
Ships arrived at its port from China, Japan, India, Persia, the Netherlands, Portugal and England, drawn by silk, ceramics, tea, sugar, pepper and aromatic woods. Settled communities of foreign merchants formed, living and trading in the town. The 17th century is considered its golden age. Japanese ships sailing under official licence (the 'shuinsen', or 'red seal ships') docked one after another, and Faifo became one of the largest Japanese trading centres in Southeast Asia. The Japanese built their own quarter and their famous covered bridge.
When the Japanese shogunate closed the country to the outside world in the 1630s, the Chinese took over. Their community grew enormously, especially with the refugees who fled after the fall of the Ming dynasty in the mid-17th century; by around 1750 there were an estimated 10,000 tax-paying Chinese residents in the town. They built the assembly halls, the temples and many of the merchant houses that give Hoi An its unmistakably Chinese feel. That mix of peoples and architectures (Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and European) is what made the town unique.
No golden age lasts forever. From the late 18th century, Hoi An's fortunes began to fade for several reasons. The most decisive one was geographical: the Thu Bon River gradually filled with sediment, and its ever shallower channel could no longer take the big merchant ships that had made the town rich. Sea trade needs deep water, and Faifo was running out of it.
On top of that came political conflict, especially the Tay Son rebellion, which shook the whole region in the late 18th century and hit trade hard. Then, when the French colonised Vietnam in the 19th century, they made a decision that sealed the town's fate. They chose the nearby deep-water port of Da Nang, which they called Tourane, as their main maritime and trading base in the centre of the country. Trade moved there, and Hoi An was left off the routes.
And so the town that had been a bustling international trading hub fell into a long sleep. For nearly a century and a half it was a minor port, quiet, poor and forgotten by the world. But over time that very decline turned out to be an unexpected blessing. Hoi An never modernised, never industrialised and was never an important military target, so it kept its old town of houses, temples and streets from its heyday almost intact. While other Vietnamese cities were razed or transformed, Hoi An stayed asleep and in one piece.
The 20th century was devastating for much of Vietnam. The country went through French rule, Japanese occupation during the Second World War, the war of independence against France and, above all, the long and bloody Vietnam War. The centre of the country was one of the hardest-hit areas of the conflict. Nearby Da Nang became a huge US military base, and the Cham sanctuary of My Son, not far from Hoi An, was bombed and lost a large part of its temples.
Hoi An, on the other hand, was extraordinarily lucky. It had little strategic or military value, so it escaped the mass destruction that flattened other Vietnamese towns and villages. Its old town came through the wars almost unscathed, as if time had stood still there. While the rest of the country was reshaped by bombs and rebuilding, the old merchant houses, the Japanese bridge and the assembly halls were still standing, ageing gracefully.
After reunification in 1975 and the hard post-war decades, Vietnam began opening up to the world with the economic reforms of the late 1980s (the 'Doi Moi'). That was when Hoi An was 'discovered' again, this time by travellers. What had been a poor, forgotten corner for a century and a half turned out to be a one-of-a-kind treasure: a traditional Asian trading port preserved almost in full, something that no longer existed anywhere else in the region.
In 1999, UNESCO added Hoi An's old town to its World Heritage List. It recognised the town as an exceptionally well-preserved example of a traditional Southeast Asian trading port and as an outstanding expression of cultures blending over time. It was international recognition of what the town had preserved almost by accident: more than a thousand historic buildings, an intact street layout and an atmosphere you won't find anywhere else.
That recognition changed Hoi An's destiny. It went from a poor, forgotten town to one of the top tourist destinations in Vietnam and in all of Southeast Asia. The old merchant houses became shops, cafés, tailors and galleries. The river came back to life, this time with tourist boats. And the town revived the tradition that made it world-famous: silk lanterns, which now light up its streets every night, and above all during the monthly full moon festival.
Today Hoi An faces the challenges of success: too many tourists, pressure on a fragile historic centre, and floods that are becoming more frequent with climate change. But it still has its magic. Walking its streets at dusk, among glowing lanterns and reflections on the water, takes you back to the days when Chinese junks and Japanese ships docked at Faifo. Few places in the world tell their own story as beautifully as this small town on Vietnam's central coast.
