Danang itself is a large city, the fourth largest in Vietnam, and an upscale one, but by itself isn't a huge tourist destination. The real tourist destination is the pearl of a town known as Hoi An, located 45-55 minutes south of Danang. It's close enough, and the two so easily though of in tandem, that it has me thinking if need to adjust my city rankings to basically combine these two as one city in that list. You can argue that Hoi An is more a suburb on Danang than its own city - you basically don't leave urban roads to get between the two, its truly within one hour, and the airport for Hoi An is Danang. Anyway, I'm leaning towards doing that for my rankings, but this is less about my rankings. This is about a fairly magical, if hot and sweat-filled, day in Hoi An, which is about as perfect a fully tourism-focused town can be.
The day started with going to the main beach near Hoi An, the An Bang beach, which is the same coastline as the My Khe Beach and the other beaches in Danang, but more secluded, more "beach" rather than strip of sand in a city. That said, I probably prefer the scale and options (and the concrete jungle behind you) of the Danang beaches. Anyway, it was a nice time people watching and soaking in the sun and getting my feet wet - and there's some nice shacks and bars / coffee shops lining the main two roads off of the beach, where we gulped down the Vietnamese classic of draft beer poured into an ice-filled glass, which while that definitely does water down the beer, it also keeps it cold on this humid as hell day.
From An Bang, we headed into the actual town of Hoi An, which is centered around its "old town" area that is roughly a 10x20 block stretch with a river running through the middle. This area is pristine and lovely and we would walk nearly each block of that old town. Hoi An smartly does not allow any grab cars to go into the old town (both cars and motorcycles), and the true interior blocks around the river are pedestrian only. It sets up just a great atmosphere. But that's getting ahead of ourselves.
The say two to three blocks leading into the old town on the North end already start giving you a crash course into what Hoi An is all about - lanterns adorning nearly every shop, tree, structure and lovely, ornate architecture on every block. Oh, and commercialism - tourism is the industry here, and not in a bad way. From a bevy of coffeeshops, eateries, and of course stores (though that's more pure old town), every block has something.
One of those somethings was our lunch spot at Quan Cao Lau Thanh, which is a place that as its name would indicate, serves just one thing - Cao Lau, which is a super-local soup-ish dish of rice noodle, mint, basil, roots, and a combination of sliced pork with deep fried crackling, all with a base of broth htat is more a dressing than say a pho. It all combines for something really special - the broth so crisp, clear and tart (it's definitely spicier than Pho). More than anything, eating at a place like this is just great - it's basically a food cart that has a little seating area with three ladies that just crank this dish out with great precision. It's beautiful to watch. We also split some meat boa buns which were quite good, but the real star here is the Cao Lau itself, which was staggeringly good.
The next four or so hours was the first of two blocks of just traipsing around Hoi An Old Town. There are a few sites scattered around, be it a series of like 4-5 temples, all fairly small but still quite ornate, and then a few heritage house type museums. We went to two of those, the more popular of which was around Vietnam's long history of tea. That wasn't all that interesting other than the free tea. The more interesting was a place called "Precious Heritage Art Gallery" which is a house converted into a mini-museum that focuses on the local tribes of Vietnam - generally with a wood model draped with the local dress, and then a hauntingly beautiful large-scale photo behind it from a well known French photographer Rehahn (well known in photography circles I guess - so well known he goes just by Rehahn). It's truly beautiful.
The shopping aspect is overwhelming, but I will say the level of curation isn't bad. Many are selling clothing, and there's a few all-types-of-wares spots taht sell normal tourist stuff - not crap by any means (some hidden gems) but all clearly mass produced. Then you have the more itneresting stores selling specific stuff - most of these are selling clothing or large artwork, but then you have some pottery, clay, metal work, jewelry and other stuff. Which ones did we go to? Well, just know there was a correlation near 1.0 of which places had air conditioning or at minimum many, many fans, and which ones we went into. It was hot, it was humid - so much so it seemed to be impacting everyone, so yeah, access to air conditioning was seen as more beneficial at times to authenticity.
As you walk through these roads and lanes of the old town, you get a bit overwhelmed by the beauty and consistency of it all - and it starts with the lanterns. Of course, they would be even more beautiful and present at night (still to come), but even during the ady it gives a clear tapestry to the roads, from them being hung at many stores, to stores that sell them, to lanes where there are lanterns hung from side to side. In the case of that last one, it reminded me a bit of Oaxaca, and in a weird way I think the cities are quite similar. Oaxaca is larger, more of a "city" but the vibe is very similar, in a good way. Little did I know how apt taht comparison would be.
After getting through enough walks and doing one through the riverfront, we wanted a bit of a reprieve, so we went to 7 Bridges Craft Taproom. I should say this wasn't so much a "bit" of a reprieve, given we took a couple reprieves to get coffee during the day, again as much a way to escape the heat as anything else. But 7 Bridges was really nice, a mix of an indoor bit at the beginning, with a large makeshift canoe for a communal table in the middle, to a lovely garden area out back. The beer was pretty good as well.
By the time we left 7 Bridges, it was about 6:15pm and darkness was starting to descend on Hoi An, which is when this place really comes to life. Helps I guess that the temperature, and seemingly, humidity, drops quite a bit, but more importantly, the lanterns get lit. Every lane becomes magical, but nothing mathes what happens to the river, where hundreds of canoes with lanterns on them start rolling down the river. It's quite a scene, it is incredible - hard to describe really. Yes, there is a bit of "over tourism" maybe happening in Hoi An at this point, but places like this deserve that level of patronage. The shops and everything are still flourishing as well in the evening, but at night you reject going inside shops to get some AC to instead remain on teh streets soaking it all in.
We did have dinner in Hoi An, going to HOME Hoi An - the local location of an upscale restaurant that exists in quite a few large Vietnamese cities. The conceit being the menu is heavily adjusted to highlight the local area cuisine. I had been to the HOME in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, both on my 2019 trip, and enjoyed both meals. Safe to say, HOME went 3 / 3 after this one. I don't know if the menu was all that different, but the meal was great as is. We got a selection of things, my favorites being a caremalized chicken thigh that was flash grilled and brushed in this amazing sauce, or a veal salad that was so bright, refreshing and fresh. You can say going to a restaurant taht is something of a chain is a bit of a cop-out, but HOME really is very good, and most of the other restaurant options in Hoi An aren't all that unique - not taht they're bad, but they're all variations of HOME more or less (other than places like the Cao Lau cart). In the end, was another great meal.
Our time in Hoi An had one last element, which is visiting one of the cocktail bars, and after some hemming and hawing, we decided on Mezcal Cocteleria, which is a Mezcal/Tequila forward cocktail bar upstairs of a mexican restaurant right off the edge of old town. Weird, I know, but its run by Vietnamese folks who just happen to love Mezcal and want to showcase that spirit to their local peoples. Two of the bartenders were fascinated when I told them I had recently been to Oaxaca. The cocktails themselves were excellent, strong, inventive and the bar as a whole could've existed in Oaxaca easily - again, Hoi An is the Oaxaca of Vietnam, a comparison I do wonder if I'm the first person to make.
From there, having lived many days in our time in Hoi An, we headed back to Danang for some more merriment, first checking out another cocktail offering, Black Wolf, and then back to Saga. Black Wolf was excellent, probably my favorite within Danang to date. It's one of the places that have no menu, you just tell them some stuff you like and they'll whip something up. Mixed results with some of these places over the years, but they were excellent, even if some of the choices are a bit odd. For instance, for my final drink I had asked for something smokey, and while they did give me something smokey, I did catch him pouring in way more Jaegermeister than I would've ever expected. Still tasted great - sometimes just trust these guys, I guess.
Saga also was great, a bit more crowded (Wednesday v Tuesday...), and more lively. The scene is great, with a decent beer selection (including a local IPA), and of course balloons which for better or worse my colleagues have started to like as much as I do. The only weird part was they decided to clsoe up shop at 2:20 (listed closing time is 3am), despite the place being somewaht still crowded. We weren't quite ready to be done, so we roamed the few nightlife heavy blocks aroudn Saga, found mostly things that are worse impressions, though did briefly stop by for a song or two at Blends Social Bar, where they played music aimed directly at us. I guess also aimed at people between 18-26, as we felt summarily old and left and called it a day and night, a busy, eventful, lovely, day mostly experiencing the cute little gem of Hoi An.
