Hoi An
We bought bus tickets to Hoi An in Saigon. These are “open tickets” where you decide your final destination of the bus trip. On the way to your destination the bus stops in different cities and you can stay there for several days. The night before you want to depart again you just tell them and then you can go on further to your final stop the next morning.
After some days we stayed in Hoi An, in central Vietnam.
The bus went mostly through rice fields but also passes some beautiful beaches and high mountains.
Hoi An is a charming, old, and very genuine town with 60,000 citizens. We have visited Hoi An two three times (2001, 2002 and 2015) – this is a place you can´t miss when traveling to Vietnam!
Hoi An is one of the oldest towns in Southeast Asia. The old town has buildings that are several hundred years old.
You can find small shops selling lamps everywhere.
There’s also many beautiful temples in the town.
InIn Hoi An there are about 100 tailor shops (2001). We bought our clothes in the shops Gia Hung and Bao Khanh.
We were very pleased with our clothes and the service in both shops. Make a visit to them and send our regards!
Vinh Hung 2 is located at Nhi Trung Street and we have really enjoyed the visit there. This is a hotel that we would strongly recommend.
During our last trip we also stayed some nights at a beach hotel.
The traffic is quite calm with a lot of bicycles. The nice beach in Hoi An is named Cua Dai Beach and passes 20 km to the north of Danang.
There are some restaurants but the beach is noticeably deserted (this was 2001 – pictures below).
When we came back in 2015, there was not so much left of the beach. Large hotels has popped up along the beach side.This is the new look (see below). We stayed at “Sunrise Resort”, it was really good!
My Son is the most important place for the Cham-culture in Vietnam. The books say that it is Vietnam’s equivalent to Angkor in Cambodia.
Unfortunately a large number of the monuments were destroyed during the Vietnam War, and having traveled to both places, we don’t think that it could be compared to Angkor.