It came to my mind that I should also say something about the place where we stay for 2 months.
Started in the second century as a small trading pos of the Sa Huynh people, Hoi An was an important trading port until the 16th century. The Sa Huynh people lived in the Iron Age from 500 BC to the year 100, in central and southern Vietnam. Their heritage includes ceramics, jewelry and salt production. From 15th to 19th century, merchants from China and Japan, later also from Europe, settled in what is now Hoi An's ancient town, due to its ideal location for transportation. The influx of money and goods as well as people and ideas led to today's melting pot of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and European, especially French, influences.
The ancient town of Hoi An is extremely well preserved, so much so that it was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1999. Fortunately, you have to say, when you see how much and how they build in other places. Even if the ancient town itself looks like a museum, it is still an area where people live. For example, one museum open to the public, "Tan Ky", is still a private house. The descendants of the merchant family who built the house still live upstairs. It is unimaginable to endure millions of visitors permanently in your own home. Despite the many tourists and the resulting changes, the old town has remained so authentic because the people who live there preserve their traditions and cultures.
When we came to Hoi An for the first time in September 2015, it was still a manageable tourist destination and the ancient town was not as crowded as it is today. The lantern festival is celebrated once a month to mark the full moon. That evening, all the houses around the river turned off their lights. Only the typical Hoi An lanterns were switched on. You can buy paper lanterns with small candles and set them afloat with a wish. In the semi-darkness with the little lights in the river, the place was totally enchanting. We fell in love with Hoi An. After almost 10 years, Hoi An has developed rapidly. The lantern festival now takes place every day. The town is no longer darkened. To launch a paper lantern, you have to stand in long queues and wait. If a place is beautiful, everyone wants to go there. However, there are also days when there are hardly any tourists, like today, when the charm of the place comes to the fore again.
Hoi An offers a wide variety of food, partly due to the different influences from its origins and partly due to the expats, many of whom settled here early on and opened cafés and restaurants. The "Dingo Deli" is the first western café where the digital nomads, of which there are many here, opened their laptops and worked, long before there were co-working spaces. From the very beginning, they also offered a small range of Western food, bread and cakes that were not available elsewhere. Not only is the deli still there, it has even expanded.
Shopping works differently here, it's more of a supply than a demand market, i.e. if you see something you could use, you have to buy it because you don't know if you'll either find the store again or the point of sale is mobile and won't come back to you. The exception is tourist goods such as leather goods, tailored clothing and souvenirs, which you can get everywhere. If we need something specific, we consult Google and if it "spits out" stores, we walk there with the help of Google Maps. I actually found many of the interesting stores via Google and ads in the Hoi An Expats group on Facebook.
I find the many mobile vending carts on mopeds or bicycles exciting, some of them announce themselves with megaphones. We saw carts with snacks, but also with household goods, cleavers and scythes. You can often get household goods in the markets, too. There are mini-marts on every corner, selling mainly drinks and snacks. There is a Vietnamese supermarket chain with several stores that are similar to 7Elevens but do not have a full range of products. So there are no places comparable to our supermarkets where you can get virtually everything.
A quick word about An Bang, where we stayed in the hotel during our stopover. An Bang has a long, beautiful sandy beach and is a great addition to the city. It used to be a fishing village, even today you can still enjoy very fresh fish and seafood simply prepared in simple restaurants. The beach huts of the time attracted hippies and surfers, and you can still experience that laid back feeling there today. We loved going to "The Deck House" restaurant with beach access, it is set up like a beach club and you can lounge around all day on the deep cushioned benches and order drinks and delicacies again and again.
Even though the city has grown a lot and more tourists are coming here, we still love this place. Perhaps you don't necessarily have to stay in the middle of the ancient town.
They are the people who are very friendly to strangers and helpful. They are very hard-working people, they don't know 8-hour days and weekends. It's a place where people take things more slowly and quietly. How many times have I had to listen to: "Take it easy.", "relax". The only grumpy people we encountered were the women carrying two baskets of fruit with a stick over their shoulder in the ancient town. Selling fruit is more of a fake, they want to be your photo subject and collect money for it and they are very aggressive about it and if you refuse, they can be very, very angry.
You have a wide choice of good and cheap food, but also food in a higher category. It's the only place where I can live into the day. We like to sit somewhere with a drink and watch what's going on around us. And here I have the feeling that everything is possible and easy, there are no problems. I only knew a similar feeling from California.
After two weeks I already get the feeling again - yes, I could live here, my dear Hoi An!
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