Hoi An

Bai Choi Hoi An

On UNESCO's intangible heritage list since 2017 and originally from these provinces. You buy a card, sit in a bamboo hut, and a singer chants riddles that name the cards.

Chua Cau

A covered bridge with a temple built into its side, put up by Japanese merchants around 1600, and the image on Vietnam's 20,000 dong note since 2006.

Precious Heritage Art Gallery Museum

A French photographer spent years reaching every officially recognised ethnic group in Vietnam. The museum holds an authentic costume from each one, and several of the groups have stopped weaving.

Tra Que Vegetable Village

UN Tourism named Tra Que a Best Tourism Village in November 2024, picked from 260 candidates across 60 countries. The beds are fed with seaweed raked out of the river, and have been for about 400 years.

Cao lau stalls, Hoi An Old Town

Cao lau's traditional recipe needs water from an old Cham well in town and lye from wood ash burned on an island 15 km offshore. Take either away and it is a different noodle.

Hoi An Ancient Town

On the 14th of each lunar month the old town switches off its electric lighting and the streets run on silk lanterns and candles floated on the river. The practice dates to about 1988.

Banh bao banh vac White Rose

One family has held the recipe for three generations and supplies essentially every restaurant in Hoi An that serves them. A dish on fifty menus is cooked in one place.

Hainan Assembly Hall

In 1851 a commander killed 108 Hainanese merchants and repainted their ships to pass it off as a pirate raid. A survivor reached the emperor. The hall is their memorial.

Hoi An lantern workshops

The Hoi An lantern is a modern revival with a named author: the craft had lapsed after the war until an artisan brought it back in the 1990s with a collapsible bamboo frame under silk.

Hoi An tailors

Upwards of 350 tailoring shops in a town of about 30,000 people, working to a 24 to 48 hour turnaround. The concentration descends from centuries as a textile trading port.

Cu Lao Cham

Cu Lao Cham became a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 2009 and banned visitors from bringing plastic bags the same year, more than a decade before such bans became ordinary. It was the first in Vietnam to make one stick.

Thanh Ha Pottery Village

A working pottery village dating to the 15th century, still turning on foot-powered wheels, and one of the five craft villages behind Hoi An's UNESCO Creative City designation in 2023.

Bay Mau Coconut Forest

The thung chai is a round woven boat sealed with resin, worked through nipa palm waterways planted about 200 years ago. The forest hid resistance fighters during the war.