Hoi An

There is a way Hoi An behaves at dusk that only really makes sense if you stand by the river and watch. The lanterns come on slowly: first the ones in the shop windows, then the ones strung across the bridges, then the ones the boatwomen sell to drift downstream. The town quietly stops doing whatever it was doing in the afternoon and becomes a different place. It looks staged because it is, and that doesn't make it less pleasant.

When to go

February to April is the obvious window. Warm but not yet humid, dry enough that the river behaves itself, and overlapping nicely with the lantern festival on each full moon (in 2026 the most theatrical of these falls on March 2nd, the first full moon of the Lunar New Year). May to August is hotter and stickier but still workable, especially if you're going to the beach. From mid-September through November, Hoi An floods. The river takes back the riverside streets and most of the boat tours stop running. November is the peak of this; some shopkeepers move their lower stock to the upper floors before the rain arrives.

What it's actually like

Two speeds, depending on what you came for. The Old Town is a kilometre square of yellow-walled merchant houses and shophouses, mostly turned over to tailors, lantern shops, cafes, and people taking photographs of each other in rented áo dài. The river runs through the middle of it and there are bridges. Fifteen minutes east by bike, An Bang Beach is the other Hoi An: long fine sand, a row of beach restaurants with shaded loungers, and far fewer people. Most travellers split their days, town in the morning, beach in the afternoon. The bicycles most hotels lend out for free are how you do that.

The neighbourhood you want

Stay in the Old Town if it's your first visit and you want to walk to the lanterns and the food without a transfer. Stay at An Bang Beach if you want to swim, eat seafood, and feel quieter; the bikes get you to the Old Town in fifteen minutes, the taxis in five. Both have small boutique hotels rather than international chains, which is part of Hoi An's charm. The countryside between the two is interesting if you want rice paddies and bicycles but probably not as a base.

Don't miss

The white rose dumplings. They are made by one family in Hoi An, the Tran Tuan Ngai family at 533 Hai Ba Trung Street in the Cam Pho ward just outside the Old Town, and supplied to most of the restaurants in town. The dumplings are translucent rice-flour parcels of shrimp, served with fried garlic and a dipping sauce. The technique is genuinely passed down, not a story. If you go to the family's restaurant you get them straight from the kitchen, less prettily plated than the Old Town versions and more interesting. While you're there, walk to Madame Khanh's Banh Mi Queen at 49 Tran Cao Van Street for what is most likely the best banh mi in Vietnam.