Hoi An – Sun, Sleep, Shop, Eat, Sun, Sleep, Shop, Eat….

Whether you’re a foodie, shop-a-holic or beach bum; Hoi An is definitely some place that should be on your radar if you’re travelling through Vietnam. If flying is your preferred mode of transportation than you can easily pick-up a flight to Da Nang from Hanoi or Saigon. We paid $35 US per ticket for our Vietnam Airlines flight from Hanoi to Da Nang. You can also just as easily (and cheaper) pick-up a bus or train ticket from any major city in Vietnam to the Da Nang area. From Da Nang it’s about a 35 minute ride to Hoi An. I’d recommend booking airport transportation in advance for convenience purposes and to avoid getting scammed. Once in Hoi An you can get everywhere you need to go by bicycle. Many of the hotels will loan them to you for free or you can rent one for about $1 USD a day.

Sunset over the river in Hoi An, Vietnam

We had just come off a couple weeks inland so we were eager for some beach time. With that in mind we booked in for seven nights at the Hoi An Indochine Hotel. It’s a three star hotel within walking distance to Cua Dai beach, I’d go there again as the rooms were nice and the free shuttle to town was convenient. The downside of this hotel is the mediocre breakfast for western foods and the onsite restaurant was pretty lousy. We tried the onsite restaurant one night and never even thought to go back.

Our days were spent bouncing between the Hoi An Old Town and Cua Dai beach. It was so hot that we spent the middle parts of the day at the beach (lounging under the umbrella) and our evenings or mornings in town dining at any number of great restaurants or shopping at any one of the thousand gift shops and tailors.

We spent our days on Cua Dai Beach.

Hoi An is known for its vast array of affordable and quality tailor shops where you can get clothes made for you for very little cost. Walking through the town you get this right away as there’s a tailor every 50 meters or so, I only wish that we had the money and the baggage space to purchase some new suits and custom clothes. In our case all we could do was look but we do plan on going back when we have a larger budget and more room in our luggage.

So many lamps around Hoi An at night. These ones were for sale.

Staying for seven nights we had the opportunity to try quite a few restaurants for lunch and dinner. Our favorite restaurants were Vinh Hung for the amazing shakes and Hoi An Pancakes, Morning Glory for the awesome Vietnamese cuisine and a beach restaurant that pops-up out of nowhere at night. This particular beach restaurant will setup some plastic chairs and candlelit table for you right in the sand, wherever you want, and then cook your food right there in the sand. It was a great meal for about five us dollars and also very romantic (for the chicks).

Impromptu beach restaurant. All the lights in the background are candles on the beach.

My (DW) favorite part of Hoi An was relaxing on the beach day after day with my beautiful wife. After all, we’re on our honeymoon, we don’t have jobs and most of the time we don’t really have anything we need to do. J My least favorite parts of Hoi An were the stifling heat if you went to town in the middle of the day and the large river rats who closely watched us eat dinner at the Blue Wave restaurant.

Wrapping this up….Come to Hoi An if you like to ride a bike, shop, relax, eat great food and generally just chill out.  If you don’t like any of those things then I can recommend Hanoi J j/k Hanoi is a great place.

All of our photos from Hoi An (minus the rats) can be seen here: https://picasaweb.google.com/117257906652666550268/HoiAn?authuser=0&feat=directlink

Cheers for Now –

Pamela and Dave