Meet paradise : Hoi An

Hoi An has it all. This little town in the center of Vietnam is a window to a different time because of its history and colorful old buildings. Next to that you’ll find lots of heritage sites, traditions that are a mixture of several countries and cultures, stunning beaches, bright green rice fields, secret recipes that are carried onwards from one generation to the next and most of all, the most friendly people you’ll ever meet.  I think I can say for us both that this will be the highlight of traveling for 23 days in Vietnam although we still visit Ho Chi Minh for a couple of days. We stayed four nights at Lila Homestay which was located about two kilometers from the beach and two kilometers from the old town of Hoi An. A fist we thought that meant a lot of walking, but our lovely hosts provided us with free bikes which approximated everything within 10 minutes of cycling through amazing landscapes just like the one below.

Hoi An is also located near a clean and not overcrowded beach. We decided that we wanted some luxury time and so we cycled over to one of the big resorts and payed them a bit for some towels, beach beds, access to their swimming pools, showers and beds on the beach. This was us being smart with the budget, staying in a cheap Homestay yet still enjoying the luxury of a big resort without paying a crazy amount of money for it.  

Because there are a lot of tiny rivers, there are a lot of little Islands on Hoi An that are reachable by bridges. One of these islands was transformed into a organic herbal/vegetable farm. On this big farmland every family that lives there has a small piece of land to grow greens that they can sell on one of the many markets that are organized daily at Hoi An. One afternoon, we learned how local farmers fertilize their lands (with a sort of weed that grows in the rivers surrounding the island) and how they maintain their organic crops.

After gardening and getting a little tour around the Tra Que Herbal Village, we got pampered with a delicious smelling hot herbal foot bath made from herbs in the garden.

After that, there was also a cooking class. We found this place by stumbling upon the house of a family that offered to show us the gardening (the grandfather and grandmother showed uw how to do it). Afterwards their son (he is a chef in one of the big resorts) and daughter in law demonstrated us how to cook some of the famous dishes that Hoi An is known for, using vegetables freshly plucked from their garden. 

The following are the ingredients that we used for the four dishes we cooked.

The salad you see below is the starter we prepared ourselves which tasted very fresh (mint), sweet (several sauces) and spicy (garlic, chilipeper ).

The best thing about this place is probably the old town of Hoi An itself. Like I said before, it is like stepping through a time window. It has such a rich culture because of the trading history it has with Japan, China and Indonesia. We mainly noticed the Japanese influence by the cutlery in the restaurants, the souvenirs, how the people behaved and how some of the buildings had that specific Japanese atmosphere to them. But you can also notice it somewhat more obvious : there is a Japanese styled bridge which they conveniently call “the Japanese bridge”.

But don’t be mistaken, it certainly still feels as if you are walking into a Vietnamese town where the scents of good smelling Vietnamese street food captivate you, the colors of Hoi An’s famous silken lanterns strike you and the beauty of the people that keep on smiling all the time make you fall in love with it.

This is just one example of lanterns. When you go by night to Hoi An, the whole town lits up. If you want you can do a wish as well by buying one of the little candle lanterns (like the ones the boy in the second picture is selling) that someone will put on the floating river for you.

Although it takes you a few night trains from either Ho Chi Minh or Hanoi to get to the center of Vietnam, make sure you don’t miss it because it is different from all other destinations in Vietnam in a very positive way. We were there for four nights but we could’ve stayed for 10 days without getting bored. Maybe you can also fly directly to Da Nang from one of the major cities if you don’t feel like sleeping on trains and/or are limited in time.

All I can wish for today is that I will be able to go back to Hoi An one day.