Hoi An

A beautiful small town surrounded by countryside; Hoi An is a great central Vietnamese stop to get away from the musky city air. The Ancient Town is extremely well restored and a contribution of 120 000 VND (about 4,30 Euros) is well worth it as it includes a visit to five select sights.

The five sights we chose to visit:

The Japanese Covered Bridge

This sight we visited on accident, while trying to cross the bridge we ended up having one of our five tickets cut to enter a tiny room with an unspectacular Buddha Statue. Hint: you do NOT have to give a ticket to cross the bridge, just to enter that room, which isn’t worth going into in the first place. They do try and get you to give them a ticket however, because to see more sights all you need to do is buy another ticket for another 120 000 VND.

The temples, pagodas, assembly houses and old family homes are a lot more interesting to look at.

The Quang Trieu Assembly Hall

This Cantonese Assembly Hall is a beautiful structure with an incredible mosaic dragon fountain in front of it. The spiral incense sticks hung from the ceiling currently sport wishes of health and good fortune for the year of 2018, in all kinds of languages. The hall itself is intricately decorated and a beauty to behold.

The Fujian Assembly Hall

This assembly hall is a vibrantly coloured piece of Chinese architecture. The courtyard is filled with a variety of different potted plants and the assembly table still stands inside. The Hall leads up to an assortment of small buddha statues and the large 3 dimensional paintings on the wall are impressive to behold. Out back there is a smaller dragon fountain similar to the one from the Quang Trieu Assembly Hall

The Tan Ky House

The Tan Ky house is an old family residence, the family still resides in the upper level of the house and has given the ground floor free for tourists to visit. It presents a merge of Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese architecture. In the Tan Ky house you can see the extent of floods that Hoi An experiences during the rain seasons; one of the highest markings on the wall is dated to 2016. The tan Ky house however is built of very durable material and has never suffered great amounts of damage from any flooding.

The Phung Hung House

The dark wooden Phung Hung House is home to a family in the embroidering business. As well as visiting the house, you can watch locals work of their embroidery in the sitting room. I’m not 100% sure but I think the family that owns the house still resides in one closed off room in it, and has made the rest available for tourists to visit.

As well as visit the sights of Ancient town we walked along the market to the Precious Heritage Photography Gallery. This gallery is free of charge, it shows a French photographers trip through Vietnam, attempting to find and identify the ethnic tribes of Vietnam. He displays photographs of the women in the traditional costumes and brings one back for his exhibition. The photographs he takes capture diversity within Vietnamese culture, and each donned costume is presented in a way that transmits the pride in their heritage to the beholder. A little paragraph describes the tribe and their remarkable traditions next to the photograph and the traditional costumes.

All the photos can be purchased in various sizes in the shop.

One last thing we did in Hoi An was rent a bicycle and visit An Bang beach. We spent a relaxing day at a calm little spot we found, away from the main crowd and just listened to music built a small sandcastle and Darius practised flying his drone a bit. The ride there was an easy one through Hoi An and past rice patties, And that was a fun way to see a bit of local life and get an impression of the Vietnamese countryside.

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Em

22/01/2018

Siem Reap

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