Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Window Shopping

 

While walking to our next attraction, we kinda got distracted by all the lovely shops that was starting to open up in the town area. Something about rustic old shops with bright signs attracts us in. So it took lomger than expected for us to get to our next tourist spot!

We didn't visit every shop, only those that we found interesting. It just so happens, there are many! So here are some of the highlighted ones. 

Again love the personalised lantern of Hoi An! And I love their red flags hanging everywhere too. The colours really goes well with the yellow buildings and dark brown building pillars! Needless to say, lanterns are sold almost everywhere here. You can also take a class to learn how to make your own, and I guess you can paint anything on them!

Saw this cute "Tired City" one in the shop and thought of my friend back home who is forever tired of life ...

I also loved this pretty little minty green shop that sold jewelries. I mean, it was just so beautiful! Green and brown, just like the forest! Haha. Everything here just calms my nerves! Except for the price. For some reason everything is priced as USD. 

I am thinking they conduct workshops here too? Lovely spacious place inside the shop.

The shop layout is kinda like those shop houses you find in Penang or Malacca where it just goes in and in and in. From the shop front, you can never imagine how huge the shop is until you walked inside.

So many lovely things! And the small indoor garden inside. 

I think it's the open concept and the greeneries indoor that I love about this. If I have my dream home, I would have large plants inside it. But I need someone to help me water them when I'm travelling. So as for now, I try not to have too many plants at home. 

It's so private from the outside crowd. I think they sell drinks here too.

Ceramic shops was also another thing I like here. But I didn't bought any home. They weren't really cheap. Maybe everything on this road is just tourist price. 

There are some of the ones that I did like. 220k VND. That's almost more than 10SGD for a small piece! I mean, I could get better Japanese pottery at that price surely!

These coasters were really pretty too. Again, it wasn't cheap.... Gone are the days of cheap souvenirs in South East Asia! Granted these might be locally made, and with better quality. But a souvenir is still a souvenir. Unless they have special meaning or usage, it was kinda hard for me to part with my money. ..

I love these drip coffee set. However, I already have a special one which I got on my first business trip to HCM. It was a lot finer than these too. And that one has a special meaning, cause it was my friend who asked me to buy it and went with me to the shop to get it :)

Chocolates. Marou chocolates are lovely, but also expensive. 

Some leather bags and gong. I was in the look out for leather products as I heard you can customised anything here. 

Ah, finally, after almost an hour of window shopping, we almost arrived at our second attraction. The above photo was not it. The above was the Cantonese Clan House. As me and my friend were Hokkien, we wanted to visit the Hokkien Clan House. But! That turns out to be our third attraction, cause the Ceramic Museum was nearer and was in the list of places I wanted to visit :P

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Old Japanese Bridge

After meeting up with my friend at the hotel and having out breakfast, we started our own DIY formal tour of the old ancient town. The very first location was just across the bridge, how convenient! And it was the old Japanese Bridge that you will often seen featured in Hoi An's tourism postcard.

However, we can't enter it without a ticket. So officially to visit the ancient town, you are supposed to get a ticket from their tourist office. I read that these office was notorious to locate, so I've done my research on where to find one. True enough, it wasn't the most noticeable tourist office at all! 

It was pretty empty inside, but on the walls are the rules and details of the ticket and what it allows or not allow you to do. Basically it's kinda like a day pass for you to be in the historical part of the town, and comes with 6 visits of the attractions available in town. You can pick the 6 attractions from a list of many, mainly museums, cultural centre, old historical houses, temples and clan houses etc. 

We managed to get our tickets. They only came in paper format. No online reservation and stuff . I kinda already decided which 6 places I wanted to visit, and my friend didn't seems to object although she did mentioned she would like to visit the Mazu Sea Goddess temple. Since that was at the Hokkien Clan House which I planned to visit, I was super ok with it! 

With our tickets, we ventured into the first attraction, the Japanese Bridge. Frankly, I thought it was a waste to use our tickets to enter this place, cause there wasn't much to see. The best view was actually from the outside, so it wasn't really worth going inside at all. It was after all, just a bridge, with a small adjacent temple beside it. 

I guess by going in, I shouldn't waste my chance of taking photos from the inside looking out! I do like the lanterns with the word "Hoi An" written in Katakana on it. It was, after all, a Japanese bridge. Japan seems to have a close relationship with Vietnam. I was quite surprised by it when I came to work here during my business trip. 

Anyway, here is what you can see inside the temple next to the bridge, which is, not much. It was really really small. So maybe save your tickets for visit other more worthy places. I guess I just had to step in because it was so historically significant to this place I was visiting. 

This is the entrance to the temple. Everything was made of wood. The bridge itself was made of wood too, with some stone as it's base. It felt really old here. 

Here are some official information about the bridge. I really like it that it also has a French explanation. Did you know, it took me till just recently to realised that IndoChina actually refers to the French colonisation period of Vietnam and Cambodia? And maybe Laos? I didn't really realised that until I think after I visited Cambodia! I think my country's history lesson really failed me!

Some historical stone tablet. 

The street view looking out :)  Pretty isn't it. It's almost like somehow I've stepped back in time to the past.

Managed to take a cheesy artistic view point from the tile area looking out into the back river too! Got to get my ticket's worth of photos!

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Ancient Town Solo Morning Walk Back (3/3)

 

Part 3 of my solo walk back, more lovely photos I took along the way. Mirror images of the sky and the river merged into one :)

Seeing the houses opposite the river and wondering how do I get across there. What was it like there. Was it where the residence stay?

Finally I was back at the old bridge that connects the old town to where our hotel was located. Too another reflecting photo of it. 

Walking along the road that would eventually turned into a chaotic night market at night. This was the place we landed at the night before, cramped with tourist and vendors. Look how quiet it was now. You could walk in the middle of the road!

The restaurant area where we had our dinner. It was almost unrecognisable! It seems to serve a different crowd in the morning. More local food. I guess all the tourist are having their international breakfast in their hotels? Lol.

Soon I reached the corner mural of this pretty massage shop just opposite our hotel. I doubt many day tourist ventured all the way here, so I think this mural is special just to those who managed to stay nearby. Lucky me!

Souvenir shot of me and the river. I think this was taken in the middle of the bridge?

And me with our secret mural of Hoi An which I thought was rather pretty too! End of my solo time now.... 

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Ancient Town Solo Morning Walk Back (2/3)

I'm guessing the walk must have been rather long, since I broke it down into 3 parts! I hope I can managed to update everything before I disappear again! I am also guessing that this part is about the lovely river view? And the lovely coconut tress that looked so lovely in the backdrop of the photos. 

It's almost like a coconut plantation opposite the river. We didn't venture far during our trip. I'm not the type that fights for quantity over quality when I travel. I was actually quite happy to just chill in a small town. Hoi An does grow on you if you give it a chance. 

The small little streets with their colourful buildings. The tress especially green after a light shower of rain. The lanterns, looked so lovely at night. But! Always always try to avoid the touristy crowd as much as possible! Else you will not enjoy this place much. It would just be cheesy and loud and crowded. 

If you try to slow down.... smile at the locals. Eat some local snacks along the road instead of inside the restaurant. Buy from the market people instead of the tourist souvenir shops. You would find a calmer side. A friendlier side. Just normal people living their life here. That was the Hoi An I found eventually, after hating it on the first night, lol. 

It has it's charms. Rustic. it wasn't well maintained, but it had character. The idea of tourism was there, but at the same time, people can turn away and let you go in to sites for free on a slow rainy afternoon..... Above is the back door of one of the tourist attraction, an old ancient home which I will write more about when I actually visit it. 

As the blue skies started to appear along with the sunlight, the river became like a giant mirror reflecting everything around it. That only means great photo shots!

And so I linger, longer than expected by the river. Knowing that I do have to hurry back to meet my friend, yet not wanting the moment aline to slip by. 

I was happy here. Running around alone in a small town that has yet to awake to welcome more bus loads of day tourist later on in the day. But for this moment, it was all mine :)  And so I cherish it :)

Danang/Hue/HoiAn 2025 - Hoi An Ancient Town Solo Morning Walk Back (1/3)

Sorry for the sudden break in the blog entry. Somehow things became too much and too repetitive that I just had to step back a while. I realised that so many entries went out with just photos for almost more than a month now. Let me slowly try to make my way back. Just as I continue on this entry of my first solo walk in Hoi An after visiting their wet market. I remembered that I had to hurry back to have breakfast with my friend who was still in the hotel room.....

 

It was still early, maybe 7am? 730am? So the streets were still relatively quiet. It was also quite cooling which makes a nice walk back to the hotel. I chose to walk by the river side back so that I can see a different view of the town. 

The roads were definitely wider by the river. It was still lined with shops that has yet to open. But their deco promises a lovely ambiance, especially if they were a restaurant or a cafe. I am thinking to myself, this must be the higher end of the small town, kinda like the main street.

On my right walking back were the buildings, but on the left were the river and neatly parked boats. These boats give rides to tourist at night and are lighted up. But in the morning, nobody is here yet. So everything is parked nearly by the side. There were so many of them!

It's like there are more boats than people!

I guess it was a huge industry. I guess you could also take the boats to other parts of Hoi An. But all I ever saw were tourist taking them out at night to make a wish in a river of coloured lanterns. I guess the brown water river also looked nicer at night when it's just black in colour.

As I looked back from time to time, I can see the sun rising, and the clouds clearing up to show some blue in the sky I hope it was going to be a beautiful day. We were planning our own DIY tour of the ancient town. 

Here's a photo of me with the boat. I was all dressed up ready to explore the town. It's quite pretty here, and all the girls dressed up so nicely for photo taking. I had put on my floral blouse for the day too, wanting to look pretty among the lovely small town.