Hoi An

Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage gem in central Vietnam. When going there, we felt like stepping into a living postcard. During the night, Hoi An transforms into a magical wonderland with colorful lanterns everywhere, which it is also famous for. Also, one can find many places with live music. In the old town, you find plenty of shops where you can have your dress made by a tailor (what Marina did) or do various types of workshops. For culinary enthusiasts, the city offers cooking classes where you learn how to prepare authentic Vietnamese dishes.

In this charming town of Hoi An, we spent six nights at a place called “An Nam 68 Homestay”. It was just a 10-minute walk away from the old town. The home stay was well located, affordable, and surprisingly modern for its price of 12 CHF per night. But, as it is the case for a lot of hotels in Southeast Asia, the bathroom’s is significantly different from what we are used to at home. Bathrooms in Vietnam are typically quite small and showers are usually built without a shower screen or curtain. So when taking a shower, water splashes everywhere, often directly onto the toilet next to it and all over the bathroom floor. It also often drains poorly because the floor has no or too little slope. As a result, hair, dirt, or soap can easily remain on the bathroom floor. But nevermind, we got used to this little annoyance by now. Another thing we got used to while travelling from place to place is that doors and windows always leave some space for little wildlife to crawl into the room. Once while watching the movie “To the Moon” in bed, a big cockroach crawled over Marina.
Nevertheless, our homestay also offered positive surprises. The owner, a very friendly elderly lady, invited us one morning to have vegetarian noodles for breakfast with her, despite not speaking a single word of English. How kind! Right? She even gave us umbrellas because it was raining most of the time we were there.

Due to frequent rain that sometimes flooded parts of the city during our stay, we had to adjust our plans a little. Instead of long outdoor adventures, we focused on activities that allowed us to explore Hoi An in a more relaxed and creative way. One of our absolute highlights was a leather workshop. We spent a full day at a local leather studio learning how to craft our own items from scratch. Matthias made a passport holder, and Marina created a cat-shaped coin purse. Both made with love for our goddaughters back home. It was a special handcraft experience that allowed us to learn something new while staying dry and productive. If you ever want to do the same, we can recommend “Blue Lotus Leather”.
Besides this, Marina had a custom dress made by a tailor and we visited many restaurants or enjoyed some beers with amazing live music at a bar.

When organizing a ride to go to the airport on our last day, we learned a new trick on how to get discounted Grab taxi rides. On the Grab app, the fare to the airport was 900,000 Dong, but according to the internet, Grab takes about a 35% commission from this price. So a couple days prior to our departure, we approached a Grab driver directly and were able to negotiate a price of 700,000 Dong without using the app. Win win for both us and the driver!

Places we liked eating, drinking and listening to music:
- Rosie’s cafe / Coffee & Brunch (great breakfast with big portions)
- Olivier Coffee (only a coffee place but with a nice interior, but not right at the city center - it was close to our hotel)
- Buttercup by Rosie’s cafe I Coffee & Brunch (best breakfast in town)
- Nourish eatery Café & Restaurant (vegan place with good food and also great for working on your laptop, but a bit out of the city center)
- Secret Garden (lovely hidden location)
- MAAZI Hoi An (good but pricy Indian food)
- Nostalife (springrolls, delicious chicken cashew or curry)
- Rasoi Indian Pure Vegetarian Restaurant (great Indian dishes)
- The LyLy Irish Pub & Sports Bar Hoi An (live music)Læs mere