Hoi An: Made for Instagram

Hoi An was made for Instagram. Traditional yellow houses, paper and silk lanterns reflecting in the water, the covered Japanese bridge, prayer candles floating, pagoda after pagoda, seafront beaches, balconies of trailing bougainvillea…. Even the drive there from Hue was picturesque as we passed water buffaloes frolicking and farmers in their conical hats working amongst rice paddies so verdantly green that it seemed I was watching it through a supersaturated filter. 

To get there, we passed through the Hai Van Pass, a high mountain pass that provides a view of Da Nang city and the sea on sunny days, but we were clouded in completely at the top and     on the way down the other side we saw a cloudfall, which looked like a waterfall made of clouds cascading down the side of the mountain. Never seen that before. 

We did stop at an oyster lagoon in case anyone needed some emergency pearls, and drove through Da Nang. It looked like a charming beach resort. 

Hoi An is known as “the ancient town” and also as “the yellow town.” It’s the ancient town because there is evidence it was an active port as early as the 2nd century BCE. It has been a hub for trading with China, Japan, India, Persia and Arabia. It’s one of the few spots not bombed during the different Vietnamese wars, so some traditional buildings remain and many more buildings have been reconstructed in the original styles. Even the shops in the old part of town - souvenirs, t-shirts, cafes, tailors - are in pretty, traditional-style buildings. They are usually one or two stories, built with teak (or teak-look wood for the modern lookalikes) with a room or two in the front, an open courtyard and a room or two at the back, including what would have been a kitchen. The two story buildings are the same layout with a balcony facing the street. It’s the yellow town because all the buildings are painted yellow, which sets off the traditional teak wood architecture quite nicely. Add in bougainvillea flowers in all the colours and you have an idea how charming it is.

Interspersed amongst the shops are all sorts of cute little museums and traditional display  homes. Throughout the old section there are spots where they will sell you a ticket that gets you into a number of these museums, homes, community houses and pagodas. The ticket costs very little and these sites are worth the time. We visited the ceramics museum, the folklore museum, the traditional medicine museum and more. The ceramics and medicine museums were fairly traditional - here’s a thing and its plaque. I did like the set up of the traditional medicine museum with all the mannequins in the traditional dispensary and consultation room. The folklore museum had people actually doing all the traditional arts, like making lanterns and carving. We met the woman there who brewed and served us her family tea that we loved so much. In one of the traditional houses there was a family in the kitchen making the “white rose” dumplings that are famous in Hoi An. They are shrimp, pork, salt and pepper wrapped in a delicate and intricately folded tapioca dumpling. Apparently, if you order them off a menu anywhere in town, someone will run to this house and get them because they are the only ones with the recipe. We tried a version later with veggies in a tapioca wrapper and it was like eating diced carrots in a booger tent. 

The pagodas here are quite different from Cambodia and Thailand. Most of the former Indochina region (Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar) follows Theravada Buddhism, while the form of Buddhism we see in Vietnam is Mahayana mixed with Chinese Chan. The short, simplified version of the difference is that Theravada follows the teachings of the historical Buddha to seeks individual liberation from samsara, or the cycle of reincarnation, while Mahayana Buddhists revere the Buddha and other celestial deities in order to cultivate compassion and alleviate suffering of all, and choose to stay in the cycle of samsara to liberate others. Mahayana pagodas tend to have a range of supernatural beings in the design. Most of the pagodas in Hoi An also have a strong Chinese aesthetic. In fact, it is mainly Chinese gods we see in them. And, in one case, a massive statue of a goat family.

There is a section of the old town that was known as the Chinese area with more of that influence in design and a section known as as the Japanese area. The Japanese have worked with Vietnam to reconstruct some of the old buildings in that area and to rebuild a Japanese style covered wooden bridge that includes a temple to the side accessible with that ticket I mentioned. It’s quite gorgeous, especially when lit up at night and features on the 20,000 dong banknote.

Hoi An has a number of bridges and waterways that are all dolled up for the tourists at night. Our first, and actually every, night in town we wandered down to the water in the old section. The bridges over the river to the island and islet are all festooned with neon and finery, with older ladies lining the sides trying to sell “prayer boats” with candles to light and set in the water to…pollute the fish with our prayers? Every bridge and street this end of town has a line of street carts that seem to rotate hourly. Need rolled ice cream, Nutella pancakes, mango sticky rice, fruit tea, octopus tentacles, bahn mi, grilled corn, grilled fish, vapes or mixed cocktails? There’s a cart for you but it will be gone if you think too long. On weekends the whole section of town is filled with tables and tables of street market. Souvenirs, silk scarves, toys, household goods, it’s all there. Miles and miles of it and everyone is competing for your attention. People are trying to snag you to sell you a ride up and down the river on the beautifully lit wooden boats and they don’t care that you don’t want a ride. The people to any given side of you need to stop for selfies every few feet. “Madam, madam, you need some crocodile on a stick!” There are people launching toy birds in the air that actually seem to fly a bit and toy Spidermen crawling on the ground firing bright loud machine guns (what?) and led lit gyrocopter toys just missing your head as they whirl around. It’s a lot and can be a touch overstimulating.

The first night we decided we needed a front row seat in a bar to watch the gorgeous freneticism without having it foisted upon us. We began to scout bars that would give us a good vantage point, and first we noticed everyone does 2 for 1 cocktails (Yay!), then we noticed some interesting names. Should we sit in the hopefully Duchamp inspired Art Toilet or the confusing Bar Horse Slut? We settled for Tiger Tiger, where the tagline read “don’t be a pussy be a tiger!” We were neither, although we did got some tiger beer down our necks.

What makes this town so scenic by night are the lanterns. There are silk and paper lanterns all over Vietnam but Hoi An really capitalizes on them. They are strung above the cobbled streets of the ancient town and over all the shops. Girls in beach resort wear and traditional áo dài dresses and conical hats pose in front of them pouting endlessly. At night shops charge you to pose amongst their social media arranged lantern setup. It appeared they were cleaning up even without selling a single lantern. 

Hoi An is also famous for its silk tailoring and everyone claims they can whip you up an outfit in one or two days. The models in front of the shops tend to feature fancy patterned silk suits that would look amazing on Harry Styles but I can’t imagine on anyone not living the glam rock star life. If I got to run the planet, men would be wearing those kinds of suits all the time. They’re pretty groovy.

We did see a Big Man Shop just outside the old town area. We had to stop and take photos because the mannequins were hilarious. They were cartoonishly obese with super broad shoulders and stomachs so large and pendulous I don’t think an actual human could stand up. Is this what westerners look like to the Vietnamese? My vanity didn’t want to think about that for too long. 

All this roaming around taking in the beauty and the bizarre did mean that we needed another leg massage. How sad it is that this isn’t a thing at home. We are making the best of it while we’re here.