Hoi An Aglow

Being our regular habit, we booked a walking tour to familiarize ourselves with Hoi An. 

Picked up by our guide, Thang, we wandered over to the Old Town, conveniently a few minutes walk from the hotel. 

Along the way, we stopped at the day market, learning all about the local fruits and delicacies, while gently encouraging Thang to shorten his vivid descriptions of the meat and fish stalls whose smells wafted through the warm hall.  All of the market vendors quickly learned that we were vegetarian and waved us over to try their “meat-free” food, which Thang confidently attributed to Beth’s small size being a dead giveaway for vegetarianism. He did not understand how it was possible that Geoff was also vegetarian – the only acceptable answer was that he must drink a lot of beer.

Hoi An Ancient Town, once a major Southeast Asian trading port in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, saw its fortunes dry up with the silting up of its river beds, and is now a living museum of what Vietnamese life would have been like hundreds of years ago.  

Made a UNESCO heritage site in 1999 (thanks in part to a Polish expat who fell in love with the city and spent most of his career encouraging the locals to takes steps to protect its special history), the city now welcomes tourists to its Chinese temples, pagodas, French-colonial shop houses and canals to experience this multicultural city made up of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and French influences.  It also strongly encourages visitors to get a custom-made suit, which can be made in less than a day!

Our first stop was to the Quan Cong Temple, where we learned about the Cham and Chinese influence on the city, with Vietnam incorporating many Chinese symbols and beliefs, including part of its language, into its everyday customs.  Although 80% of Vietnamese do not practice religion, many will still come to the temple to pray to the goddesses of fertility, wealth and independence.  Surprising was the number of female gods that guided the community, with the Goddess of Mercy being the most prominent figure, and even more of a draw than Buddha himself.

As we wandered around the town, we were struck by the large number of tourists in the city.  The Japanese Covered Bridge – a Hoi An landmark – was so packed that we wondered if this 18^th century bridge might actually collapse.

Collecting tickets on one side but not the other, this famous bridge was built by a prominent Japanese man as a way of reaching into the Chinese quarter of the city.  As a result, the bridge blends both Chinese and Japanese symbols, with sculptures of dogs and monkeys at the two entrances to represent either the Chinese Years when the bridge was built or the birth years of two Japanese emperors.  Though which reason was the right one remains a mystery, the fact that we prefer to travel slightly off-season to avoid an onslaught of tourists had become very clear.

Striking was that despite the small size of the city, most of the tourists seemed incapable of walking, with the Koreans particularly opting to be ferried around in cyclotaxis that clogged up the streets.

A boat ride to watch the sunset led us to a riverside café to enjoy Cao Lau, a special noodle dish found only in Hoi An.  These noodles are made from special well water in Hoi An, making them specifically local. If you didn’t think too hard about the cleanliness of the well water we saw that day, the noodles and their crispy fried noodle garnish, were divine, as was the craft beer offered at the café.

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To finish the day, we made a quick trip to the night market to check out the local merchandise and see thousands of lanterns lining the street and for sale in the kiosks (another key Chinese influence), and watched as the local bingo players undertook their nightly games, vendors sold neon trinkets and buskers played peppy music to bring the town alive.

With so many lanterns aglow, the power actually blew, bringing one side of the canal to a midnight black.  As we breathed in what we were confident was overheated carcass for sale on the side of the road, the darkness of the town meant we could imagine that it was simply the pleasant smell of “cinnamon”.